Perhaps not the most eloquent of similes, but the whole thing wasn’t overly eloquent.

It had been desperate and dirty on his part, and she had fallen apart in his arms, and when it was over, he had known that one of two things was going to happen next.

He either had to leave immediately or he was going to strip them both naked and finish what he’d started.

As he held her, trembling, his face still scant inches away from the most intimate part of her, he had known that she wasn’t ready for all that.

And frankly, he wasn’t sure he was, either.

Things had gone further than he’d meant them to, and caution had been set the hell on fire.

He walked into the house and through the entryway, kicking boots to the side. Rose’s and Logan’s, already sitting there. “You’re meddling.” He heard his friend’s voice coming from the dining room.

Rose and Logan were sitting at the table, each one with a beer. Rose was examining Logan with a bright kind of keenness that they all feared Rose turning on them.

The youngest of all the kids, Rose was irrepressible. And the meddler.

She meant well, but she tended to jump into things with both feet. Lead with her heart, followed up with her mouth, and as far as he could tell, her brain was typically somewhere well behind those other two things.

“I’m not meddling. I’m just...prying. And saying that I think if I’m right, you should go for it.”

“If you’re right about what?” Ryder asked.

Logan looked up from where he was sitting and gave Ryder a world-weary expression.

“She thinks that I have a thing for Sammy. And that I ought to ask her out.”

The back of Ryder’s neck lit on fire. “All right. Are you suggesting that he help her with her pregnancy scheme?”

“I’m just saying that if he likes her he needs to get in there, because he’s going to have to stop her from doing that.”

“When did I give you the impression that I liked her?” Logan asked.

“I just thought that you might. And, the two of you would be a great couple.”

“What do you know about couples?” Ryder asked.

Given the conversation he’d had with Logan about Sammy only recently, he knew that Logan didn’t have any kind of interest in her. His friend thought that Ryder was in love with her.

Difficult to think about now.

He walked into the kitchen and jerked the fridge open, pulling out his own bottle of beer.

“You’re very serious,” Rose said. “Sammy might lighten you up a little bit. Anyway, she’s pretty, and you both live here...”

“I’m good, Rose, thank you,” Logan said.

“I just thought that you might...”

“I don’t,” Logan said, looking up from the table and meeting Ryder’s eyes again.

Rose turned around. “I think he’s being ridiculous.”

“Well, he clearly thinks you are being ridiculous.”

“He usually does. I’m not really bothered by that.”