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“The daredevil,” she qualified.
“I have been known to take some risks, that’s true,” he confirmed.
“You nearly scared poor Kate to death when you flew over earlier,” Marti contributed in explanation. “I think she thought a plane was about to crash into us.”
He hadn’t taken his eyes off Kate even when his sister spoke, and he didn’t now. “You must be easily frightened,” he goaded.
“It did sound like you were going to land in the bedroom,” Marti said.
He grinned as if that was exactly what he’d been going for. But he finally glanced away from Kate to look at Marti. “I had to let you know I was on my way,” he countered remorselessly. “And I wanted you to see the banner.”
Marti rolled her eyes at him, apparently not wanting him to know she’d been delighted by his antics.
But it was to Kate that she said, “I’m forgiving him everything today because he got Gram out of hiding in the kitchen for my wedding—that was where she watched Wyatt’s because she’s so skittish about being around a lot of people. I don’t know if you saw her and Mary Pat, but they came down the stairs and watched from just behind where everyone else was sitting—it made me feel like she was at least a little more a part of it.”
“I did see her and her nurse,” Kate said. She’d also noticed out of the corner of her eye during the ceremony the frequent glances Ry Grayson had cast in that direction, accompanied by reassuring smiles.
“She’ll do things for Ry that none of the rest of us can ever get her to do. He’s a master,” Marti said with admiration.
“Your grandmother wouldn’t stay downstairs afterward, though?” Kate asked because she hadn’t seen Theresa since the pronouncement of Noah and Marti as man and wife.
“Not even Ry could get her to do that, no,” Marti said sadly. “She’s fearful and phobic. And she’s particularly embarrassed about facing people in Northbridge—I’m sure Noah has told you that we’re just piecing together why that is and trying to convince her that she doesn’t need to be.”
But as if that wasn’t a subject for a festive occasion, Marti changed it and said to her brother, “Ry, I also wanted you to meet Kate because she’s a masseuse.”
That brought a slow, lascivious smile to Ry Grayson’s handsome face. “A masseuse. Really? You know, when someone says masseuse the first thing you think of is—”
“Medical massage therapist?” Kate challenged, knowing what he was insinuating.
“Ry…” Marti said in an exaggeratedly reprimanding tone. “You are not honestly making a massage-parlor innuendo to the Reverend’s granddaughter—who you just met—at my wedding, when I’m trying to get you medical aid, are you?”
“Who? Me?” he asked, the picture of innocence were it not for the gleam of mischief in his remarkable eyes.
Marti shook her head and said to Kate, “He can be incorrigible.”
“I never would have guessed,” Kate responded partially under her breath.
But rather than being insulted by her remark, Ry Grayson laughed again and his gaze locked onto Kate’s once more as if he were enjoying the polite sparring.
“Anyway,” Marti continued. “What I was about to tell you, Kate, is that Ry hurt his shoulder yesterday—trying out his neighbor’s son’s skateboard, if you can believe it. I thought there might be something you could do to help since he couldn’t see anyone in Missoula before coming here.”
Kate didn’t have a chance to respond to that because her own brother appeared behind Marti right then, insisting that there was someone his new bride needed to meet.
“Can I trust you alone with Kate?” Marti asked Ry, rather than merely agreeing to go.
“Absolutely. I’ll be on my best behavior,” he swore, raising his right hand.
Marti must not have been completely convinced because she still said, “Do not give Kate a hard time. Remember she’s my sister-in-law now and the Reverend’s granddaughter.”
“Best behavior,” Ry repeated.
Marti cast him a warning look before abandoning Kate to him. Kate, who was still backed into a corner.
She raised her chin, wondering if Ry Grayson was going to keep his word to his sister or not, ready for it if he didn’t.
Then he surprised her and did.
“So you’re Noah’s little sister,” he said conversationally. “Wyatt and I both think a lot of him.”
“I’m glad,” Kate said, meaning it.
“We weren’t sure anyone could ever replace the guy Marti was with before—Jack. We all knew him since we were little kids and he was more than a friend. He was like one of us. When he was killed in the car accident on the way to their wedding, Wyatt and I grieved almost as much as Marti did.”
“It must have been awful,” Kate said, her guard dropping a little in spite of herself because what he was saying—confiding—seemed genuine and heartfelt.
“Jack was a hard act to follow,” Ry continued. “And even though we never said it to Marti, we didn’t think it was possible for us to ever like anyone else as well. But we’ve talked about it—Wyatt and I—and while Noah is different from Jack, we think he’s great.”
Okay, so Ry Grayson was gaining ground with every kind word he said about Noah. Kate couldn’t help it; she was close to her brothers and sister, they were important to her, and it was nice to know Noah’s in-laws were welcoming him so warmly. Nice for Ry Grayson to tell her….
“We feel like we’ve hit the jackpot with Noah when it comes to the remodel and with the work on the Home-Max location, too,” Ry was saying.
Noah was the contractor who had been hired to update and refurbish Theresa Hobbs Grayson’s long-neglected childhood home. It was how Noah and Marti had met and from that, Noah had also agreed to do construction on the building that would house the Northbridge branch of the family’s chain of home-improvement stores.
Ry went on with his accolades. “There are places in the house where Noah has replaced a section of the original crown molding or the spindles in the staircase and even I can’t tell what’s new and what’s old.”
“He is good at what he does,” Kate agreed. Then, testing to see just how fond of her brother the Graysons were—and knowing that Noah had been concerned about what Ry and Wyatt Grayson thought about the fact that Marti was pregnant with Noah’s baby due to a one-night stand at a hardware convention—she said, “What about the baby? Are you and Wyatt okay with that?”
The question didn’t seem to faze Ry. “We’re fine with it. Actually…”
He moved slightly toward her as if what he was about to say was even more of a confidence, and Kate caught a whiff of clean, citrusy cologne that was like a breath of fresh orchard air enticing her a fraction of an inch closer to him, too.
“…I hated what Marti had told us before,” he said in a slightly quieter voice. “She claimed she’d had artificial insemination and I was afraid she’d done it because she was so lonely after losing Jack that it had driven her to extreme measures. I felt like Wyatt and I must have dropped the ball, that we must not have given her enough time or comfort or attention. That we’d really failed her. But the thought that she had met somebody who made her realize that she hadn’t died along with Jack? Somebody she wanted to spend the night with? That just proves she’s human and let me know she was getting over Jack’s death. And to tell you the truth, it was a relief to me not to have to think we’d let her down somehow.”
Kate couldn’t help smiling at that. And wishing he hadn’t just given her a reason to like him.
“What about your side?” he asked then. “A reverend’s family? Are you all wanting to hang your heads in shame because the pregnancy came before the wedding? Or thinking less of Marti because of it?”
“No,” Kate said without hesitation. “I mean, those of us who know Marti is pregnant don’t want to hang our heads in shame and we definitely don’t think any less of her.”
“Those of you who know?”
“Noah hasn’t told the Reverend yet—”
“You call your grandfather the Reverend?”
“No one calls him anything else,” Kate said. Then she went back to answering his question. “The Reverend would be outraged that a member of his family had conceived a child out of wedlock, so Noah put off telling him. In a month or so, Noah will announce it to him as if it’s just happened and leave it at that. But the rest of us know, and since this will be our first niece or nephew, we can’t wait. Well, I can’t wait. And Meg is excited, too. We’ve already started buying baby things. And we really do love Marti. We think of her as another sister. We couldn’t have picked anyone better for Noah ourselves.”
“No, you couldn’t have,” Ry Grayson confirmed. Then, with that subject exhausted, he smiled a smile that was reminiscent of his earlier devilish one, and said, “So, we’re talking medical massage?”
This time there was nothing about his teasing that seemed offensive. “That is what I’m trained in, yes,” she said. “And you hurt yourself riding a neighbor’s kid’s skateboard?”
He grinned, deepening those lines around his supple mouth. “I suppose it was some of that spirit-of-youth,” he countered facetiously. “But I’ve dislocated the shoulder twice before so it doesn’t take much to set it off and when I tried the half-pipe I wiped out a few times. As a result the shoulder is pretty stiff and sore. But usually a therapeutic medical massage helps.”
The way he said that—with a grin—made her smile, too. It was just so dangerous to be enjoying herself with a grown man who had hurt himself skateboarding. Kate knew it as surely as she knew she was standing there. But could she help it? Apparently not, because she was enjoying herself.
But just for now, when there was no escape. It wasn’t going beyond this.
“I’ll be at my office at the hospital in the afternoon tomorrow,” she said, forcing a heavy dose of professionalism into her tone. “I’m booked solid but if you come at six, I’ll stay an extra hour as a favor to Marti, since you’re family,” she said, thinking that maybe it might help to put him into those ranks.
“Family…” he repeated. “Hmm…I don’t know that I like thinking of my masseuse as family.”
“That’s what we are, though,” she insisted. “Just plain old family.”
His smile then was small and amused as he shook his head, and his gaze touched on her hair before he said, “I hate to tell you, but there is absolutely nothing about you that’s plain.”
The hair always did seem to be a factor, she thought, trying to take his flattery with a grain of salt.
Rather than responding to his comment, she said, “It’s my turn to take the Reverend home and I’m sure he wants to leave since the cake’s been cut. So what’ll it be? Six tomorrow night or taking care of it yourself?”
Ry Grayson laughed. Spontaneously, boisterously, wickedly. “Oh, I definitely don’t want to take care of it myself. I’ll be there at six—I’m sure someone can tell me where the hospital is.”
“It’s on the west side of Main Street, a block up from South. You could walk from here.”
“I’ll be there,” he assured.
At some point after the lure of Ry’s confidences, Kate must have pushed herself against the corner walls again without realizing it because she had to straighten away from them now. But Ry had apparently not backed up any because when she did, it put her much closer to him than she wanted to be. Close enough to smell that cologne again. Too close for comfort.
And he didn’t step away and give her any breathing room. He stayed where he was, looking down at her from a full six-foot-three-inch height that towered over her five foot four.
His smile this time was boyish and sexy, and it made Kate’s heart beat a bit faster.
“Absolutely nothing plain about you,” he repeated, more to himself than to her.
Then he pivoted on his heels like a door opening to let her out, and Kate went past him.
“Let me know if you change your mind about tomorrow night so I don’t wait around for you,” she instructed.
“I need the massage, I won’t change my mind.”
“I’ll see you then, then,” she said, feeling dumb for not finding a way to say that without using the word then twice.
But once she had moved beyond him, she kept going, searching for her grandfather so she could get out of there before she had to see Ry Grayson again.
Because while, yes, it was probably good to have established a relatively friendly rapport with her brother’s new brother-in-law, that was as far as it would go.
He had a skateboarding injury, for crying out loud.
Even without the other things she’d heard about him, even without both of his over-the-top entrances today, what could scream I-don’t-want-to-grow-up louder than that?
And not only had she reached a point in her life where she knew exactly what she wanted, she also had experience to teach her what kind of man she could never get it from. Nothing she’d learned about Ry Grayson after meeting him had changed her preliminary opinion of him as that kind of man.
The fact that he was fantastic looking, and as personable and fun loving as all reports had claimed, on top of it?
That just made him a triple threat.
And definitely not a candidate for what she was looking for.
Chapter Two
“So now you’re going to be with me for a while, Ry?”
“I am, Gram,” Ry confirmed for his grandmother. He didn’t point out that it was the third time she’d asked the same question already today and they’d only just finished breakfast. “Marti has gone on her honeymoon and Wyatt went back to Missoula. He’ll be here with us one day this week but otherwise, it’s just you and me, babe,” he joked, making her smile. “Well, you and me and Mary Pat,” he amended then.
Theresa’s nurse, Mary Pat, suggested she take Theresa to dress for the day. As the two women got up from the table, Theresa said to Ry, “I don’t think you’re going to like it here.”
That was a new one.
Ry raised his eyebrows at her. “Why is that, Gram?”
“It isn’t your kind of place. It’s quiet, things move more slowly. I don’t think it’s going to be enough for you.”
“You know I can usually stir things up a little,” he said, winking at her because he knew it always tickled her.
She waved a hand at him as if she were swatting a fly but giggled anyway before Mary Pat ushered her out of the kitchen.
Ry took a drink of his second cup of coffee.
His grandmother might not always be in her right mind, but there were still some things she had insight into. And despite his making light of it, he thought the possibility that Northbridge wasn’t for him was one of those things.
Granted he’d only been here for Wyatt’s wedding three weeks ago and again now for Marti’s, so he hadn’t seen much of Northbridge. And he knew his brother and sister were enamored of the small town. But in spite of the fact that he’d met a lot of nice people, the town itself did seem a little too sleepy for him—too slow and quiet, just like his grandmother had said.
But whether he liked Northbridge or not, he, Wyatt and Marti had always shared the responsibility of their grandmother. When she’d run away from Mary Pat to come here, he and his brother and sister had agreed that if Northbridge was where Theresa wanted to be, Northbridge was where she should be—even if it meant they had to rotate being here with her.
Of course with both Wyatt and Marti married to locals now, there was talk of them relocating permanently. If that happened, Ry thought he could hold down the fort in Missoula where Home-Max was headquartered. Then he wouldn’t have to spend much time in Northbridge. But for now, here he was, taking his turn at helping with Theresa.
And not excited by the prospect of being basically sequestered in the Montana outback—as he thought of the small town.
It wasn’t that Northbridge was a bad place—from what little he’d seen, it had plenty of charm. But it was a small town and any small town had its limitations. And Ry didn’t like limitations.
He liked—he thrived on—activity and choices and always having more options for things to do than he had time to do them. Slow and quiet? That was the last thing he wanted.
In fact, he’d meant it when he’d assured Marti and Wyatt before they’d left this morning that he was glad to take over all they’d passed along for him to do. Because even if they had had to pile it on, he would always rather have too much on his plate than not enough.
But he definitely had a full plate for this round.
Along with keeping his grandmother company, there was the new Home-Max they were opening in Northbridge. They’d purchased a series of neighboring storefronts on Main Street that needed some work before they could house the new store, and overseeing the final stages of that was on his to-do list.
He also needed to inventory stock as it was delivered, and organize the beginning of the actual setup of the store.
