Page 3 of Caden

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CADEN

Ruby McCray is goingto be the death of me.

At the gym’s front desk, I keep my head down, focused on the laptop screen in front of me, pretending I don’t notice her kicking off dirt-clod shoes before walking barefoot to the back room to turn on the hose. Never in my thirty-two years has a woman possessed the ability to turn me on with bright pink toenails.

Or maybe it’s those damn Daisy Duke shorts that get my blood running a few degrees too warm. She might be short—five three or four if I had to guess—but damn that woman has legs for days.

If I’d known Ruby McCray was part of the deal, I never would’ve agreed to open this gym with her brother.

Since the day I met her, she’s all I want.

Gram lets out a gentle whine as he watches Ruby ignore him and slip into the back without so much as a wave. I give him a head scratch as apology. I know she’s not snubbing the pup—just me.

It’s better this way.

It’s better that she ices me out just as much as I ice her out. Chemistry crackles between us whenever we stand too close. There’s an unexplainable pull that’s existed between us since the first day I met her. I’ve caught Ruby raking her gaze over me more than a few times. This isn’t one sided.

But it can’t happen.

I owe my life to Marshall. The least I can do is keep my fucking hands to myself when it comes to his little sister.

“Caden?”

The sound of my name on her lips instantly sends blood rushing south. I force myself to think about anything and everything else—the new workout class I’m planning, the Braves game later tonight, Mom’s terrible cooking—before there’s an embarrassing incident below the waistband. “Yeah?” I call back to her, slowly turning in my swivel chair.

“Can you help me with the spigot?” Her grimace matches her tone, promising she wouldn’t ask me if she had another choice. But Marshall’s off until later this evening. So me it is. “It’s stuck.”

Because I don’t have a good reason to say no, I stand up. “Coming.”

Gram looks up at me as I slip past him, leaving him on his rope leash at the front desk. His pitiful expression is comical enough to make me chuckle. To make me consider, for the dozenth time, of adopting my own dog. But until I have a house with a fenced-in yard, that desire will have to wait a little longer.

“Hold down the fort, boy,” I tell him.

I follow Ruby through a tight, employees-only hall to the back. It takes every ounce of willpower and inner strengthnotto stare at her ass in those tight denim shorts. But there’s nothing I can do about her sweet, floral scent—the landscaperwouldsmell like a bouquet of wildflowers—that assaults me in the narrow, confined space.

Mom once tried to make lasagna on your birthday and it tasted like watery tomato soup. Remember how you ate it anyway?

“I’ve tried everything I can think of,” Ruby says, pointing at the spigot. Giving me a task I can focus on instead of the dirt smudge across her prominent chest. “But it won’t budge.”

“I got it.”

When I step closer to the spigot, Ruby jumps away like I’ve startled her. As much as I know it’s better this way, I fucking hate it. “I don’t bite,” I say, lifting one corner of my mouth in amusement.

“Unless you ask?” she supplies, biting her lip a moment later as if she wishes she could take it back.

I can’t stop a tiny smirk from forming; a silent question forming in the upward quirk of my brow.How do you know I don’t want to? Very much.

Her bottom lip, noticeably plumper and more kissable, slides out from under her teeth as realization dances in her eyes.Oh. Really?

We share a gaze that lingers several seconds longer than it should. I could get lost in those emerald eyes and never find my way back. Iwantto get lost in them. To get lost in her as we roll and tangle in my sheets.

“I’mnotasking,” she says, a wicked gleam in her eyes that begs to differ.

“Yet?”

Gram woofs softly from the front counter and we both snap back to reality. To where we are standing.

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