As her lips lifted in a half smile, mischief lighting her eyes, he almost staggered where he stood. “You’d better be careful throwing that word around. I know of at least three seedy motels within walking distance.” She tilted her head toward the house. “Is everything okay in there?”

The calm way she asked this question, as though the fact that she was jobless and in desperate need of medical attention meant nothing, did little to help the sudden reeling inside Spencer’s head.

“It’s fine,” he said. “He’s fine. Everything is fine.”

His incoherence caused her smile to deepen. Lifting the box out of the way, she patted the step next to her. “That’s good. I gave the ladies a stern lecture about leaving narcotics out and sent them to their rooms to think about what they’ve done.” Her smile dropped as suddenly as it had appeared. “Man, I’m going to miss this place. Is that pathetic?”

Spencer lowered himself to sit, careful not to touch any part of her. Not because he didn’t want to but because he desperately, feverishly did. The air between them pulsated with heat and the crackling of untapped energy, but he refused to stick so much as a toe in it. He’d promised a conversation, so a conversation was exactly what he intended to have.

“How long did you work here?” he asked instead.

“A long time. Almost a decade.” As though unaware of the embargo he’d placed on the space between their bodies, she put a hand on his arm. “I never meant to lie about my job, Spencer. It was wrong of me to let it go on as long as I did, and I meant to tell you, I really did. But when you first assumed I was a doctor…” She lifted her hand away and pressed it to her cheek instead. “In that moment, I’d have said anything to get the better of you. You looked so incredulous, like it would have been more believable if I’d said I hatched from a dinosaur egg.”

It was true. Incredulity was exactly what he’d felt in that moment, but there was more to it than that. He’d also felt admiration for how dedicated she was to her job, seen how much it meant to her—the same amount as his own job meant to him. As far as he could tell, that was still true. She obviously loved this place, and from the way those women had turned to her when things got rough, it was obvious this place loved her back.

“I don’t care what your job is, Ruby. You could scrub toilets, and it wouldn’t make any difference to me.”

“I do scrub toilets,” she responded. “That’s literally in the job description.”