Page 26 of Fierce-Hyde

It might be the charming smile on his face more than anything that had her laughing and blurting out, “I know all about Ryder’s reputation with the ladies. I’m going to guess you’ve got the same, right?”

“In my past,” he said. “I swear. I won’t lie and say it wasn’t there. I’ve tried hard to prove I don’t have it anymore, but it seems to bite me in the ass more than I care for. Part of what I’ll explain with this story.”

Their food was brought out and it gave them both a moment to process the change in the conversation.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Say what you feel comfortable with. If I ask too many questions, you can tell me to be quiet.”

“I won’t,” he said. “I was asking you questions about your mother. Maybe even judging how you handle things with her.”

He was and she didn’t take offense to that when in the past she might have.

Could be she needed to be asked the hard questions and wanted him to know what was going on in her life too.

“You were,” she said. “And sometimes an outsider gets you to see things clearer, but I still stand by my decisions because I’m the one cleaning up the messes with my mother anyway.”

“And that is your choice. For me, in a nutshell, I had a reputation with the ladies. Even up to a few years ago. I think I saw Ryder’s life and how Tommy came into it without him knowing, then finding Marissa again. I thought, well shit, if he can find love and make it work, maybe I can too.”

She’d heard enough about Ryder’s story through Raina. “I don’t think that is something everyone can make work and it’s great they have. Just tells you how powerful love can be.”

“That’s right,” he said. “And I wanted that. I still do. My parents have been married for almost forty years. I’ve got a sister who is twenty-five. She was an accidental pregnancy, butmy parents didn’t care. They were thrilled rather than frustrated that it might mess up the plans they’d made in their lives.”

“As we both know, things happen beyond our control,” she said.

“I don’t need to go into details about my life. You get the picture of what I was like. I was out having fun. Dating women that I knew I wouldn’t have a future with and was fine with that.”

“Until you weren’t fine with it,” she said.

“Yes. I decided to focus on another type of woman.”

She squinted one eye at him while he cut into his steak. “Not loose women?” she asked.

She had some of her salmon while he smirked at her. “Your words, not mine. I got off of dating apps and tried to meet someone in person. You know, no device finding that perfect match.”

“That’s right,” she said. “Apps don’t work as much as people think they do.”

He chewed his food and then picked up his beer. “They don’t. I met Shana at a party of a coworker. She was the cousin of the guy having the party. She’d lived in the same condo complex and just walked over.”

“That’s a good way to meet people. Better than dating apps,” she said.

“It was. She was nothing like what I normally dated. Not on personality levels. She had dark blonde hair and blue eyes, which I seemed drawn to, but other than that, nothing else was the same. I realized looking into your eyes the odd shade of brown they are. I’ve never seen it before. Maybe even on the serious side too.”

She didn’t want to say it sounded like he only dated bimbos. He said he turned over a new leaf and called Shana his girlfriend.

Looks didn’t mean as much in her eyes.

“What was different about her?”

“She was quiet. She had a good job working in sales.”

“Someone that was in sales isn’t normally quiet,” she said.

“I thought so too, but she was very confident in her job, just not so much in her personal life. At least it came across that way. We talked most of the night and set up a date, but the next day, she called and said she’d been asking around about me and wasn’t sure she liked what she’d heard.”

“And this is where your reputation was going to get you in the end?” she asked.

“I told her it was a thing of the past. I never lied I had it. Trust me, it took a lot of work for her to believe me.”

She didn’t know if she would put that much work in.

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