Jill Shalvis: Roughing It With Ryan

When he stepped out of the bathroom, Angel’s voice came from the kitchen. “Your fridge is empty but I found a can of soup. I heated it up for you.”

His fridge wouldn’t be empty if she hadn’t had friends over studying until all hours the night before, but he refrained from pointing that out because, as he walked into the kitchen, she was smiling at him.

As always, the heart he’d never learned to harden caved.

“I know it’s a pain in your butt having your baby sister crash at your place,” she said softly, watching him sit at the table and pull the bowl of soup closer. “But Russ and Rafe are such pigs I can’t handle their place.”

Their brothers were pigs, so he nodded and started eating. He was starving. But soup wasn’t going to cut it, so he could only hope something more substantial still existed in his cupboards. Anything.

“Lana’s place will be ready by the weekend, and I’ll move in with her.”

Ryan put down his spoon, and looked at his baby sister. She wasn’t really a baby anymore at eighteen but as he’d practically raised her, it was a tough image to dispel. The baby sister he’d taught to read, slug a baseball out of the park and drive a car in between the dotted lines was going to move in with Lana, a fast, big-mouthed girl whose behavior made his jaw feel too tight. “I thought Lana had a live-in boyfriend,” he said carefully when what he really wanted to say was “no way.”

“She kicked him out.”

Much as he wanted his own space back, including his clean towels, he wouldn’t be able to sleep if he thought Lana’s no-good boyfriend was around. “Promise?”

“Promise.” From behind, Angel wrapped her arms around him and pressed her cheek to his. “You’re cute when you’re worried. I love you, Ryan.”

He groaned. “Oh no, the I-love-you card. What do you need?”

She laughed in delight. “Nothing. For a change. Absolutely nothing.”

Ryan crossed his arms, taking a stand with the only child/woman who’d ever bested him. “Nothing really? Or nothing, I don’t want to tell you yet?”

“Nothing really.” Her smile was indulgent. “You worry too much about us.”

Sheer habit. Their parents had been little more than kids themselves when they’d had Ryan. “A blessed accident” his mother had called him. It had taken years for them to get established, which was why his three siblings hadn’t started to come along until he’d been thirteen.

His parents had been deliriously happy with their late-in-life family, until they’d been killed in a car accident seven years ago. That had left twenty-five-year-old Ryan to raise an eleven-year-old Angel and twin twelve-year-old boys, Russ and Rafe. A nightmare by any standards.

“We’re not lost little kids anymore, okay?” Angel said. “You can ease up on the overprotective thing.”

He probably could, but raising all three of his siblings from teenagers, by some miracle getting each of them through those years without any unplanned pregnancies or drug addictions, he still felt…tense.

Kissing his cheek, Angel leaned over and grabbed the check he’d left for her on the table. “Thanks for my tuition and book money.”

He shoveled in some more soup and grunted. God, he was tired. It was so bad his eyes were closing right there on the spot.

“Oh, Ryan, get some sleep tonight. No hot date, okay?” She patted the top of his head. “Unlike last night, I might add.”

Last night he’d been at college, same as she, only on the other side of the campus, where he’d been feverishly attempting to finish the landscape architectural degree that would get him out of the tree business once and for all. Not that he had explained that to Angel or his brothers, which is why they believed him to be some sort of sex fiend who dated one woman or another three nights a week.

He could have told them the truth. After putting his life on hold for so long to take care of them, they’d understand and support him.

But for once, he wanted to do something alone, not by Alondo committee. As much as he loved his siblings, he didn’t need their advice about courses, academic life or any other topic they considered them selves experts on. Plus there was the added bonus…if they believed him to be a wild man, they’d stop trying to set him up on disastrous blind dates. So far the plan had worked like a charm. “No hot date,” he murmured. No class. Just his bed. Alone.

Heaven.

And it was that. So much so that when he finally crawled under his sheets, practically whimpering with gratitude, he was out before his head hit the pillow.

And stayed out until he woke with a jerk when the phone rang at one o’clock in the damn morning.

Sorely tempted to ignore it, he stared at the offending receiver. Sleep was trying to tug him back under, but it could be Russ or Rafe, in some sort of trouble. Or worse, Angel, in need of his help. “Better be good,” he said in lieu of a greeting.

“Ryan?”

Not Russ, not Rafe. Not Angel.

“Ryan, it’s Taylor Wellington.”

And not the police or hospital, thank you God, just Taylor, the woman with the nightmare oak trees.

He’d been surprised, and quite honestly disappointed, when she hadn’t seen the urgency of her own situation. After all, she’d called him, greeted him in an outfit that cost more than his truck, then turned her nose up at his price to take down the trees, which had been damn reasonable, if he said so himself.

“Taylor…is everything all right?”

“No. Remember that tree you warned me about?”

“Which one?”

“All of them, but most importantly the one on the east side of the building. It just fell on my roof and through the loft apartment’s bedroom. I really need you to clear it. Now.”

That particular tree had been at least one hundred years old, massive and severely damaged from the last few Santa Ana winds. The sheer size of the thing had worried Ryan, with good reason apparently. “At least the apartment is empty.”

“ Was empty. Tonight it has my new roommate in it, Suzanne, the woman you saw me interviewing today.”

The image of Suzanne flashed through Ryan’s mind-long, wavy, dark-red hair, a lush, generously curved body beneath a flowing sundress. Crystals hanging from her ears, and the biggest, greenest, most expressive eyes he’d ever seen.

There’d been awareness in those eyes, an awareness he might have been interested in, if his life could handle one more interest. Now dread filled him. “Is she-”

“She’s okay, but the way the tree fell, it’s blocking her way out.”

“I’m on my way,” he promised and hung up the phone, only to immediately lift it again to wake up his crew, made up of Rafe and Russ, his two younger, very groggy twin brothers. At least they’d been in their apartment, alone and available, he thought with relief, racing for his truck. Old habits were hard to break, which meant he still felt like mom, dad, boss and older brother all at the same time-too many hats for any one person.

He lost five minutes stopping at his office, but if he was going to be pulling a tree off a building, he needed the big rig from the yard there.

As he switched trucks, rain slashed through his clothes, aided by a vicious wind that wouldn’t help him tonight.

She’s okay, Taylor had said, but the devastating possibilities made him go as fast as he dared. South Village was deserted, unusual for the trendy streets, even at this hour. The storm had sent everyone scampering home.

When he finally pulled up in front of the building, his stomach tightened. The huge old oak had indeed hit the roof. And as Taylor had said, just the far east corner, which was both good and bad. Good, because the main structure and all three floors were intact. Bad, because the crash impacted the loft apartment, specifically the bedroom, where according to Taylor, Suzanne was at this very moment. The window was gone, blown out, as well as the entire left half of the front wall, where the tree protruded obscenely.