“She seems like a lovely young woman,” she said. “Her mother is a bit high strung, so I wasn’t sure what to expect one-on-one, but Rue is absolutely wonderful.”
“Don’t get attached,” Ethan warned.
His mother raised her brow. “Who said anything about getting attached?”
He managed to avoid saying they were just friends, although guilt over his deception nipped at him. “We haven’t known each other very long.” Translation: he knew almost nothing about her. Penguins. He knew that, and he knew she had an iced coffee addiction and that her mother irritated her.
“We’re just glad to see you out there again. Even if she’s just a friend, she’s a new friend. I think you need a bit of that, and it’s great that she’s involved with the charity.”
His mother’s words were an unexpected balm. Maybe because she voiced what he wanted them all to figure out. He wasn’t broken. He was comfortable where he was. He didn’t need to date to be whole. In fact, the only thing he really needed was for all of them to back off, and maybe now they would. Of Rue, he said, “I think it’s more of a matter of her mother expecting that she is,” he said. “I think she’d be happy to help on her own, but having her mother involved to the extent that she is makes it tough.”
“That’s probably true for a lot of people,” she said. “And on that timely note, I’m going to leave you all to your work.”
“You’re not staying? You went through an awful lot of trouble with this food to drop it off and run.”
“I know it won’t go to waste,” she said. She gave him a quick hug. “Don’t let your brothers give you too hard of a time.”
“You’ve met them,” he said. The implication there was clear. There was no way they wouldn’t give him a hard time.
“One can always hope. And by the way, there’s a chocolate cake in the cabinet. I thought it best to hide it from your brothers. I know it’s your favorite, and I didn’t know how long you’d be busy in the other room.” With that, she left him leaning against the counter and made the rounds, saying good-bye to each of her sons. Before she left, she whispered something in Rue’s ear that had both women looking at him and smiling.
What. Had. He. Done?
He didn’t even see his mom leave. His attention was pegged on his…date. At some point while she and Crosby worked on the floor and Ethan talked to his mom, Sawyer and Liam had stopped pigging out and had taped the trim around the windows and doors. Ethan couldn’t wait for the dull old cream color to disappear behind a coat of bright white. Before the water hose incident earlier that week, this paint had been the most exciting thing in his life. Now he’d gone off and gotten himself a woman, and if he had a chance in hell of pulling this off, he’d have to convince his brothers first. And that wasn’t going to happen if he stayed on the opposite side of the apartment, however brief the distance, while she dug in and laughed with his brothers like they were all old friends.
Easier said than done.
Feeling terribly conspicuous, he walked over and started picking up empty tape rolls. However, he quickly learned theirs wasn’t the kind of conversation one simply eased into. It was the kind of conversation that caused a jaw to drop.
“So you’ve climbed that volcano in Ecuador—what was it called?” Crosby asked her.
“Cotopaxi.”
“And swam with sharks and you dove at the Great Barrier Reef, all in the past few months?” Crosby sounded a bit awestruck, and not without reason. Apparently this woman couldn’t sit still anywhere.
But if Ethan was actually dating her, he’d have known that already.
“Yeah, and she’s been penguin watching in South America.” He threw that in because it made him sound like he knew things about her, but truth be told, he was reeling. He wondered how many passports she’d filled.
“I’m a photographer,” she explained to the flabbergasted brothers. “Right now just as an assistant to a guy who takes photos for catalogs, but I want to work in the field of conservation photography. Most candidates don’t have an impressive portfolio, so being the exception is an easy way to stand out from the crowd.”