“Are you ready?” I asked in an effort to get Tucker away from my mother.

“Don’t be rude, Mina. Samuel and I were just getting to know one another.”

“No, Mother, it sounded like you were telling embarrassing stories of me playing in my own shit,” I admonished. Tucker chuckled as my mother tutted my response away.

“Language, Mina!” She sighed, as if she was so put out. “Why can’t you be more mindful of the things you say, like Bea is?” I wouldn’t acknowledge the awful tug at my heart over being compared to my perfect sister. It was inevitable. People always compared us. “Night and day, those two,” was one of the phrases that had been lobbed on us since I could remember. Guess who was the dark, ‘night’ part of that equation, and who was the bright, ‘day’. You’d think the golden blond with the angelic eyes and the tiny stature would be ‘day’, but you’d be wrong. That belonged to the dark haired, curvy, goddess who never cussed and only did one slightly questionable thing in her entire life.

She married her best friend on the day she was supposed to marry her fiancé instead. Yep, I know, it sounds bad, but her fiancé stood her up and left a letter behind telling her he was interested in someone else. Bea’s best friend, Ky, made sure that my sister had a good memory on what was supposed to be her wedding day. It wasn’t legal, but they made it so eventually. Still, people remember that whole fiasco as something cute and tender.

I shrugged off the comparison, yet again, and flung my backpack over my shoulder. Instead of trying to pry Tucker away from my mother, I simply left and waited outside for him. When he finally realized I wasn’t coming back, twenty damn minutes later, he came looking for me.

“Have you been sitting out here on the steps the whole time?”

“Yep, are you finally ready to go?” I asked the question as I stood and brushed any possible dirt from the ass of my jeans. When I glanced up, his eyes were shielded by aviator sunglasses, but the corners of his mouth were dipped down in a frown.

“I was in there this whole time thinking you’d just gone to go get the rest of your things,” he admitted.

“So, you weren’t going to be a gentleman and help me down with my luggage?” I asked in mock outrage.

He actually blushed a little at that. Good to know he could at least be shamed or embarrassed by something he did – or in this case didn’t do. “Sorry, I didn’t think…”

Again, I offered up a halfhearted, apathetic shrug and moved to head toward the Audi parked in front of us. “I’m assuming this is your ride?”

“It is, but seriously, where are the rest of your things? Do you need me to help get it down here?”

I turned and grinned at him. “Nope.” I patted my bag. “This is it for me.”