Read Yours to Hold: Ribbon Ridge Book Two for Free Online

get that.” Kyle bent and tried to retrieve her purse.
    She slapped his hand away. “Don’t touch it. Just leave me alone.”
    “Hey, I’m sorry.” He sounded genuinely concerned.
    She glanced at him and saw that he also looked genuinely concerned.
    “I didn’t mean to spook you. I just wanted to talk. Lurking in the dark was maybe not my best move. I’ve been waiting like forty minutes, so I sat over there.” He gestured to a bench tucked against the side of the building, completely out of range of the light. Perfect place for a stalker to lie in wait.
    “I need to point that out to security,” she muttered, picking up her purse and slinging it over her shoulder.
    “What?” he asked.
    “You’re lucky I didn’t bring my laptop tonight. If I’d dropped that and it had broken, you’d be buying me a new one.”
    “I absolutely would. Is there a chance you broke anything in your purse that I ought to replace? A tube of lipstick perhaps? Or a bottle of hand sanitizer?”
    She looked at him quizzically, not sure what to make of his questions. “Aren’t those usually plastic?”
    “Plastic can break.” His eyes narrowed slightly again—with concern, like before. “Are you sure you’re all right? I feel really terrible about scaring you.”
    “I’m fine.” Her hands were still a little quivery, but she wasn’t going to tell him that.
    He gave her a long, assessing look. “Okay. So can I buy you a drink or something?”
    “Hell no!” He had the nerve to ask her out after scaring the shit out of her?
    His eyes narrowed once more, but this time with some other emotion. Irritation maybe. “Not on a date or anything . . . social. I want to talk to you about my brother. I told you I wanted your help.”
    “And I told you—via Stacy—that I have nothing to tell you.”
    “Maybe you think that, but if you could just spend fifteen minutes answering some questions. We can sit in your car, if you like.”
    Like she’d invite him into her car as if they were on some teenage make-out date? She envisioned sitting in the backseat with him, the windows steamed, their lips locked, his hand creeping up her thigh . . .
    Damn, where had that come from?
    Her overactive, undersexed imagination that found him totally hot; wasn’t it obvious?
    “I’m not sitting in my car with you.” She turned to go and realized she didn’t have her keys. She bent over and scanned the pavement. “I dropped my keys.”
    “Let me help you find them.”
    She cast him a dubious glance. “I don’t think I want any of your ‘help.’ ”
    He joined her in searching anyway. “Hey, I already apologized. A lot. I’m really, really sorry.”
    She widened her search area. “Do you stalk lots of women?”
    “Nope, you’re my first. Usually it’s the other way around.”
    She nearly laughed but reminded herself she couldn’t get cozy with this guy.
    “I don’t see them,” he said.
    “Me neither.”
    “Maybe they’re in your purse?”
    Maybe. She’d thought they were in her hand, but it was possible she’d dropped them into her purse, which was a bottomless pit. She could dump it out, but then he’d see what a mess it was—five million receipts, twelve pens, three tubes of lip balm, perhaps even Jimmy Hoffa.
    She went to the light and opened her purse as wide as she could. “You keep looking on the ground,” she said as she rifled through the pockets of the abyss of her handbag. After a few minutes, she gave up. She couldn’t see, feel, or hear them anywhere. “They have to be on the ground somewhere.”
    “Did you leave them upstairs?” he asked.
    “No, I had them in my hand.” Her finger had already been poised on the unlock button on the fob.
    He stopped his search, setting his hands low on his hips. “Are you sure?”
    “You’re going to second-guess me after scaring me senseless? You really are a class-A jerk.” She pulled her phone from the front pocket of her purse and punched in her password.
    “What