“Grrrrr.”
Lexi giggled at the tiny, unintimidating rattle in her dog’s throat. “Sprinkles doesn’t take shit from anyone, Ryder. Stop judging her.”
“Or what? She’ll lick me to death? Is that a tutu? You put a pink tutu on her?” He shook his head and started organizing the samples into neat rows. “That’s not right.” But he didn’t look mad. In fact, a smile crept across his lips every time he looked back at Sprinkles.
Lexi got the feeling that Ryder was more of a softy than he let on.
The next hour passed in a blur as they settled into a routine together. Ryder handed out samples and chatted up the event-goers until eventually they began gathering and talking around Lexi’s tent. The ebb and flow of laughter as old friends caught up around them made Lexi’s heart happy. Ryder was a capable man who seemed to adapt instantly to what needed to be done, and before long, he was working with her side-by-side, bringing her supplies from the giant cooler, cooking the mushrooms and onions, cutting the steak, sectioning off the filling for the miniature hoagie rolls, the whole nine. And all while charming the socks off the people who visited her—their—tent.
No one was more charmed than Lexi, though.
Maybe it was his comfortable, friendly nature, or his ease at conversing with strangers. Perhaps it was that he could place a witty one-liner perfectly, or that he made the kids giggle and always reflected their smile as though he truly enjoyed making people happy. But it was also the way he looked people directly in their eyes as if they were the only ones in the world he wanted to talk to. It was the way one side of his lips curved up higher than the other when he laughed. It was the way his blue eyes danced, turned intense, and then danced again every time he cast her a glance—which was often. It was the way he brushed her hip with his fingertips when he needed her to move over but let his touch linger there, and the way he wrapped his arm around her shoulder when the crowd was happy and murmured, “You look pretty today,” against her ear. It was the way his presence working beside her was unforced, and the way he kept leaning into her when he wanted to tell a joke.
She’d never giggled so much in a single afternoon in all her life.
Air Ryder Croy was either the smoothest man she’d ever met, or he was something really special.
“Last sample,” Ryder declared.
“I want it!” Alana called from her tent. She jogged over, pulling off her plastic gloves as she approached. “I’ve been smelling these all day, and I’m starving. Gimme, gimme, gimme,” she said as Ryder pretended he was going to eat it. Lexi chuckled at Alana’s happy moaning sounds as she chewed.
Lexi had started packing everything up after cooking the last batch of samples and was already halfway done with Ryder’s help. “This is the first time I’ve ever worked with a sous-chef,” Lexi said.
Alana gulped her food down, and her dark eyes went round. “Ryder was helpful?”
Ryder shook his head and looked utterly disappointed. “You’re about to get demoted, second best friend.”
“Watch out, Alana,” Lexi teased. “I’m coming for your spot.”
“You can have it,” Alana grumbled. “Last week Ryder asked me to check a lump in his balls.”
Lexi gasped at Ryder. “Are you okay?”
Ryder was smirking, and Alana said, “He didn’t have a lump in his balls. He was just trying to see if he could get me to touch his nuts. Aaron bled him for trying.”
“Bled you?”
Proudly, Ryder pulled up the back of his shirt and showed off four long, silver claw marks that looked years healed. “I almost got out of his way, but Aaron had rage on his side.”
“But you’re in the same crew. You’re friends…right?”
“Crews fight, especially the men. It’s ingrained in them to brawl and usually fixes what ails them.” Alana bullied the lid to the old cooler closed and carried it to the back of Lexi’s jeep parked right behind the tent. Over her shoulder, Alana winked and said, “They’re monsters, all of them.”
But when Lexi looked at Ryder, he was squatted down in front of Sprinkles’s bed, refilling her bowl with water from his half-empty plastic bottle. As he shuffled closer, Ryder reached out gently and scratched her dog behind the ears. He was a giant compared to her dog, but he was being so tender. Soothingly, Ryder murmured something too low for Lexi to hear.
That man was no monster at all.
Chapter Five
“Sooo,” Lexi drawled as Ryder shoved the last of her supplies into the back of her Jeep. “Thanks for helping me out today.”
He sat on the bumper and stretched his legs out. “I actually had fun.”
“Yeah?” She sat next to him and watched the hustle and bustle of vendors packing up tents on Main Street. “No thoughts of Serena?” She shouldn’t have asked that, she knew, but it was hard to get Ryder’s ex out of her head completely. He’d been obviously working very hard to keep in contact with her.
Ryder crossed his arms over his chest and huffed a laugh. “You jealous?”
“No.”
“Liar. How many times did you stare at my sexy picture?”
Oh! Heat flooded her cheeks for the tenth time in an hour so she looked anywhere but at him. “In my defense, it was a really interesting picture.”
“It was the abs right? Or my perfect nipples?” He looked down at his chest where indeed they were puckered up against the thin material. “I was blessed with perfect nipple symmetry.”