Page 62 of Risky Game

And how she handled it after.

God, my thoughts had raced all day. More than once Molly and Jassen had to get my attention by calling my name several times.

“Everything okay with work?” she finally asked me over dinner of simple grilled cheeseburgers, corn on the cob, and baked beans. “You seem distracted.”

“It’s nothing. Work is great.” I flashed her a smile that felt crazed and her responding look agreed.

I cleaned up for Molly. Jassen and her went and helped get changed into pool clothes. By the time Luke and Brittney were running around the backyard, I was drinking a glass of wine on their covered back patio and Jassen sat next to me when things went to shit.

“I’ve debated bringing this up, but Paulie called me last week.”

“Excuse me?” I jumped so quickly from my seat wine splashed over the rim and onto my legs. “Damn it!” I brushed it off and took a large swallow. “When? Why?”

Oh God. He hadn’t told them. Had he?

No, Paulie wouldn’t. He’d lose too much and his whole shtick was getting people to believe he was a nice guy.

The greatest.

Barf.

Jassen’s brows tugged in, and he scratched his clean-shaven jaw. “I don’t know. Like on Wednesday? Tuesday or something? He asked for you, said he tried calling you and he couldn’t get ahold of you.”

“What’d you tell him?”

Not that it mattered. It wasn’t like Paulie would come looking for me, but the fact he still tried to get ahold of me after everything he did made my blood boil.

“I said I’d let you know he called. But since you look like a ghost, why won’t you be honest about what happened?”

I barked out a laugh. “Never gonna happen, just don’t answer again if he calls. I blocked him.”

“But why? You seemed happy…” His voice trailed off and we watched Molly at the edge of the pool, splashing her feet. Brittney was floating in a contraption with a ring around her to keep her out of the water and Luke was doing cannonballs into the pool from his other side, bouncing up and out of the water from the floaties on his skinny biceps. “It’s all right if he wasn’t the one, but you always said he was good to you and that you were happy. And then all of a sudden, you’re here and not talking to him. I’m worried, Ruby. That’s all.”

“You’re my older brother. That’s your job. Or it used to be. Stopped being your job a long time ago.”

I’d been on my own for four years after he went to college. He came home as often as he could, but I’d raised myself since I was fourteen.

“That’s not fair,” Jassen muttered, his lip curling.

“It wasn’t supposed to be a dig. You’re married with your own family. I was living a country away. Things happen.”

“And Paulie is one of those things that happened?”

“We were together for a long time. I decided he wasn’t the kind of guy I wanted to marry, so we broke up. Why does it have to be more complicated than that?”

But oh, it was. Because there was the theft when I kicked him out, sure. But the list of secrets he’d kept hidden from me for years still made me want to smash something. Namely his face into a wall. And I’d been the blind, naïve idiot who had the same horrible taste in men as her mom.

So yeah, I wasn’t giving my heart to anyone again.

“Fine,” Jassen muttered and took a drink of his iced tea. “Keep your secrets, but they have a way of coming out when you least expect them to.”

Well, Jassen would never find out this one. I’d make sure of it. Or the other one I was now keeping from him.

He’d never look at me the same way again.

I went back to sipping my wine, now irritated and still wishing the phone in my hand would buzz with an incoming text.

I didn’t want to be the girl who texted first, and after all, I’d told Logan he’d be fine for a few days without me.

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