Rebel (36 page)

“Hey.”

Rubi turned her gaze from the house—where she hadn’t realized she’d focused—back to Wes.

“You don’t have to meet them tonight,” he said. “You’ve had a long day. Want me to find someplace to stay? We’ll go there.”

She couldn’t stand the disappointment in his eyes. “No. It’s fine. I just…”

I just don’t know how to socialize in normal situations.
Put her in a bar, a club—even a sex club, and she knew how to control the situation. Put her in a group of studly men, like the Renegades, and she could pull their strings like a puppeteer. Put her in a business meeting, and she could hold her own with the brightest minds in the industry. At a photo shoot, she owned the cameras. On the runway, she possessed the crowd.

But put her in a room full of relatives, people who had a myriad of invisible connections with each other, who loved each other, felt obligation and fondness and duty to each other, and she was a sailboat in a storm.

“I’m just warning you,” she said, sliding her hands over his biceps, “I’m not good at this.”

“You do it with me and Lexi and Jax and the other guys all the time.” He threaded their fingers as they made their way up the stairs. “We’re like family. Just think of this as meeting extended family.”

Easier said than done. Especially for someone who didn’t understand the concept of family. But for Wes, she smiled and nodded.

Approaching the house, Rubi realized the scene inside was even more chaotic than she’d first suspected. There weren’t just people in the kitchen and living room, but milling deeper in the house as well. And there were more children, more than just Wes’s two nieces.

Anxiety sang over her nerves. For a reason she couldn’t begin to understand, she flashed back to her life as a kid and all the turmoil with her father. Their millions of fights. Her dozens of nannies—only a few of whom were ever good to Rubi.

At the door, Wes leaned forward and gripped the handle. But he paused, settled those beautiful gray eyes on Rubi. “I’ve got your back, okay? Just be yourself, baby. I know my family, and if I love you, they’ll love you.”

One of the kids inside squealed—the pitch so high, the sound so loud, Rubi winced. A houseful of laughter followed, but that didn’t settle Rubi’s nerves. Wes opened the door and pushed it wide, his other hand settled on her lower back, ushering her into the house.

Panic gripped Rubi. Stepping over the threshold felt a hell of a lot like stepping off an emotional cliff. And she had the most surreal sensation of time slowing as she stood there on the polished hardwood floors, just where she’d been earlier today.

The house slowly went eerily quiet as conversations stopped and all attention turned on them. Correction—on her. She swore every person in the room gave her a slow sweep with their eyes, from the very tip of Rubi’s head to the pointed heels of her pumps. She calculated most of the gazes filled with shock. Not exactly a surprise she didn’t fit in.

Most of the guests were dressed down in jeans, T-shirts, and boots, including the women. One older man wore overalls.
Overalls
. Rubi didn’t even know they made those anymore. The women kept their hair mostly one length, their faces mostly clean of makeup, their bodies bare of jewelry but a simple wedding band here and there.

If she hadn’t felt awkward over fitting in before, she sure as shit did now.

“Hey, Uncle John.” Wes’s voice seemed to kick-start time again, jolting Rubi out of her funk, and the room churned back into real-time speed again. Guests’ gazes, ones that had seemed frozen, strayed back to their conversations and sound filled the space. Rubi felt like she’d just come off some mind-altering drug.

He closed the door at her back, and, keeping one hand on her shoulder, he offered the other to his uncle standing near the door. “Great to see you.”

The older man, silver-haired and attractive with those familiar crystal blue eyes, grinned. Rubi wanted to like his family, she really did. And despite Birdie calling her Missy, Rubi had found the woman kind. But there was a familiar look in the man’s eyes as he surveyed Rubi that told her he wasn’t a guy she’d like.

“This is my girlfriend, Rubi.” Wes’s introduction was as casual and noncommittal as they came, but the label “girlfriend” made her restless, as if the simple thought of being assigned to one man gave her the urge to escape.

“Well, Wes,” John said, offering his hand to Rubi. “You always snag the beauties, don’t you?”

Rubi didn’t like the inappropriate dig at Wes which mentioned other women in front of his “girlfriend,” and she didn’t like the insinuation that she was no different from the other women in Wes’s life—but she smiled politely anyway.

“Where did you come from?” he asked with a derogatory note in his voice.

She pulled her hand back and smiled. The worst thing she could do was let him rattle her. “Some days it feels like Venus, but I live in Los Angeles. You?”

“Kansas City.”

“You look great,” Wes told him. “Took off a few pounds?” He gripped the man’s bicep beneath a crewneck sweater. “Beefing up?”

“That heart scare last year did the trick. But it’s tough for me to get to the gym.” The man’s gaze slid toward Rubi, his mouth curved in more of a smirk than a smile. “I mean, it’s not like I get to play games and set my own schedule at work like Wes does, right? Some of us have responsibilities.”

John laughed at his own joke with way too much satisfaction. Rubi’s temper flared and Wes tensed beside her. His hand tightened, signaling an intent to move on. But she wasn’t done here.

“Or priorities. I know Wes works some long-ass days, but he’s always at the gym at five a.m.” Rubi gave John a smile designed to make his circuits blow. “So what do you do?”

“Doctor,” John said, his tone carrying an edge of my-work-is-more-important-that’s-why-I-don’t-get-to-the-gym. “I have my own family practice.”

“Nice,” Rubi said, feigning impression, then wrinkled her nose. “I bet you have to be on call a lot.”

“No, not much.” He’d done just what Rubi had expected—contradicted himself in an effort to appear important. “One of the perks of having my own practice.”

“Right, right,” she said, her voice thick with appreciation, giving him one last stroke before she pulled out the knife. “Oh, but, now wait.” She tilted her head and pushed a casual lightness into her tone. “You have your own practice, but you don’t set your own schedule?” She chuckled at her upcoming joke, much the way John had laughed at his own. “Man, that secretary really has you by the balls, doesn’t she?”

John’s grin fell. Confused indignation filled his eyes. And Rubi reveled in popping the man’s inflated ego.

She turned to Wes. “You really do have it good. Work hard and play hard all at the same time, loving every minute of it. And all when it suits you. The killer money doesn’t hurt either.” She leaned into him, slid both hands around his arm and stared up at him like a starstruck groupie. “
And
you have me.”

He had an I-know-what-you’re-up-to quirk to his mouth. “No doubt. I wake up every morning thinking what a lucky bastard I am.”

Just because she was having so much fun, Rubi lifted to her toes and kissed him, eyes open—as were his—sharing a silent message of
we’re in this together
.

When she lowered, he pulled his arm from her grip and circled Rubi’s shoulders, tugging her toward the kitchen. “I’m going to introduce Rubi around, Uncle John.”

“Why don’t you let me do that?” Both Wes and Rubi turned toward the voice.

A middle-aged woman stood beside John. Hair a mix of blonde and gray, Rubi guessed she was in her late fifties. Her eyes were blue, and Rubi could see a lot of Wes’s handsome face in this equally handsome woman—the high cheekbones, the beautifully shaped mouth, her eyes.

“I’m Susie Lawson,” she said, her smile warm and genuine. “Wes’s mother.”

Great. She’d just sniped family in front of Wes’s mother. Just another episode in Rubi’s version of how
not
to win friends and influence people. But she had to admit, poking John’s ego had alleviated her immediate panic and placed her in a “safe”—or at least saf
er
—emotional zone.

She held out her hand to Susie. “Rubi.”

“Aren’t you refreshing?” The woman’s smile deepened with the same mischievous sparkle Rubi had often seen in Wes’s gaze as it darted to meet her son’s. A silent communication passed between them, one Rubi couldn’t read. She led Rubi toward the kitchen. “Let’s see who else we can set straight tonight.”

Rubi bit her bottom lip, then glanced down at Wes’s petite mother. “I don’t know what Wes has said, but you should know I’m really not good with the whole family thing.”

Wes’s mother’s gaze was filled with flash and humor as she patted Rubi’s arm. “Oh, sweetheart, I think you may be more of a natural than you realize.”

Twenty-Three

Wes watched Rubi stroll away with his mother. He smiled as something shifted inside him. Something deep and warm and un-freaking-bearably sweet.

He’d just fallen in love with the woman. All over again.

“She’s certainly gorgeous.” His sister’s voice drew his gaze. “You won’t have to worry about forgetting that—or reminding anyone else.”

Wes refocused on Whitney with some crazy-ass fizzy brew messing with his stomach. “But the best thing is”—he took the beer Whitney held out to him and met her gaze with a smile of fresh confidence—“she’s even more beautiful on the inside.”

She didn’t hide a flash of suspicion. “Sure you’re not just blinded by love, bro? You’ve always been a closet romantic.”

“Don’t tell her that. Romance freaks her out.”

“How’d you convince her to come? I thought she said no way.”

“She did,” Wes said. “Then changed her mind and just showed up today while I was at the VA with Wyatt.” He glanced at Whit and shook his head. “What a cluster that almost turned out to be.”

He relayed the story about Melissa and the kiss.

“And you
still
convinced her to stay? You must have a serious way with words.”

“Me? Way with words?” He lifted the backs of his fingers to her forehead as if testing her temperature.

Whitney batted his hand away. “True. I forgot who I was talking to.” With her gaze on Rubi and his mom again, a sly grin edged her mouth up, and Whitney cut her gaze toward Wes with a slight lift of her chin. “This ought to be entertaining. Let’s see if she can slice a few inches of those two.”

Wes hoped it was entertaining in a good way. He’d always believed Rubi could handle herself in any situation, but this new vulnerability around family was more than a little unnerving.

He and Whitney both took a drink from their bottles, watching as his mother introduced Rubi to his cousin Martin—the I-made-partner-last-month-what’s-new-with-you CPA, and his cousin Sam—the check-out-my-latest-Mercedes attorney. Both men, about five years older than Wes, turned from their conversation and focused directly on Rubi with a deer-in-the-headlights sort of shock.

“They’re frothing at the mouth,” Whit said, her voice droll with disgust. “Not a surprising start.”

“Give her a minute,” Wes said. “She likes to make them feel comfortable before she plunges the knife.”

Martin and Sam chatted easily with Rubi for a few moments. Wes caught a word or a phrase, but nothing more. Whitney must have been just as diligently struggling to hear the conversation, because she wrapped her fingers around his wrist and pulled him toward a snack table closer to the group. Wes kept his back that direction, facing Whitney as he speared a piece of salami with a toothpick.

“Russo Industries is owned by my father,” Rubi was saying, “and even though he and I aren’t close at all, he is all over that rig Wes built for Wyatt. It is a truly cutting-edge design, let me tell you. Dolph cherry-picks every project, and when he believes in a product, you can bet he’s going to send that inventor into the stratosphere as a rising star. But I’m having a hard time convincing Wes to entertain the idea. He’s so focused on getting Wyatt back on his feet, selling the rig is the furthest thing from his mind.”

“Fascinating,” Martin said with all his manufactured sophistication. “What would something like that go for? Hypothetically, of course.”

Rubi laughed. “Oh, I couldn’t even fathom. There would be an initial purchase, then typically royalties based on the number of units sold. We’re talking multimillions.”

Wes was imagining the look on his cousins’ pompous faces when Whitney spewed beer across his shirt. He jumped back. “What the—?”

He caught himself before he roared
Fuck
across the house, brushing at his now wet shirt. Whitney choked on a laugh, one hand covering her mouth.

“I’m fine.” She put up a hand to the observers. “Sorry. Wes just made me squirt beer from my nose laughing. Nothing new.”

Wes glanced over his shoulder and caught Rubi’s eye. The sparkle there sent the message that she knew he was listening and she was having fun.

When she turned away, Wes glanced down at his shirt, then back at Whitney. “What was that about?”

She took a step closer, her eyes watery from holding back laughter. “You should have seen their faces when she said millions. They both went as white as fish bellies.” She pulled herself together, wiping at her eyes, then sobered suddenly and pinned him with a gaze that had a way of being so intense. “Wait, is that
true
?”

He lifted a shoulder, glanced down at his beer. “She knows better than I do, and she knows her father’s business. But she’s the brilliant one, not me.”

“Not crazy at all,” Rubi was saying. “Wes doesn’t need the work, the money, or the fame. He’s already at the top of the stunt game, getting the best, highest-paying jobs in the industry, working with the top stars. I mean, he got that black eye while he was out with Jason Bolton last week. He works side by side with Jax Chamberlin every day. Tom Cruise, Jason Statham, Bruce Willis, Vin Diesel, you name a big star, Wes knows them all. He taught freaking Angelina Jolie how to fall off a building and not kill herself.

“Really, how much higher could he go in his chosen field? I mean, he’s working the latest Bond movie now. And we all know only the best of the best are chosen for a Bond film,” she said with authority. “In fact, he’s been asked to act on several occasions—by Daniel Craig himself—but Wes loves the thrill of the stunt more. I really admire that.”