Ryan Conroe was being Googled before he was even all the way out of earshot. Trina and I squinted over the screen in the open-air hallway and poured over the only social media page we had access to—his LinkedIn. The information available there—undergraduate History degree at Southern Methodist University, law degree at the University of Texas at Austin, graduated Magna Cum Laude, a few prestigious firm jobs, publications in various law journals—wasn’t particularly helpful. He worked a lot and he was super smart. That was obvious.

There wasn’t much on his Wikipedia page either. Interestingly, he seemed to be related to Ian Conroe, the original drummer of Axial Tilt, one of my all-time favorite bands. They’d recently gotten back together and broken up within one week. I’d been seriously bummed, but that was the music business for you, I suppose. It’s got more twists than Game of Thrones.

“How old do you think he is?” Trina whispered to me. She’d correctly interpreted my wide-eyed stuttering and inability to act normal for the instant crush it was. She was always game to cheer me on. Instead of being worried about the likely loss of all my worldly possessions, I just wanted to know about the guy my dad had sent to babysit me. Trina was my enabler. And Ryan Conroe was quickly proving to be my drug.

Every time he looked at me, I felt like I might drown in his eyes. I felt like I might want to. Had I ever seen a color of blue that deep before? I hadn’t known that a blue so vivid existed, except maybe in an artist’s dreams. Between the arresting eyes, a strong-jawed face that was totally wasted on doing anything other than being an action movie star, and a tall, broad-shouldered body, I was in complete and total swoon-mode.

“Well, if he graduated at twenty-two from undergrad and then from law school at twenty-five, he’d be thirty-two or thirty-three,” I replied dreamily, wondering if I was doing the math right. He could be older than that, but it was hard to gauge a man’s age in a suit. It was a nice suit, too. Certainly not off the rack. Probably entirely custom if the knowledge of fancy menswear I’d received via osmosis from my father was any indication. It made Ryan’s butt look good. Phenomenal actually. He probably thought I was a stupid, spoiled little rich girl, but at least I could enjoy looking at his ass… um, assets when I was too dumbstruck to look at his face. Even if both were about ten years too old for me.

“I actually turned twenty-nine last week,” a deep, amused voice replied. We both turned—me in embarrassment and Trina in a fit of giggles. “I skipped a couple grades here and there.” Ryan cocked a confident eyebrow at me when I elbowed Trina to stop laughing at my openmouthed, red flounder-face. “Any other questions?”

My face felt like it was going to ignite from blushing so brightly. I hadn’t realized a blush could physically ache. It could. And it wasn’t the only part of my anatomy aching for Ryan at the moment.

I continued to gape at him.

To burn for him.

He probably thinks I’m a total moron. A poor little rich girl who can’t do anything on her own. Calling daddy to bail her out at the first sign of trouble. God, he’s probably right.

Attraction had rendered me mute and insecurity kept me that way. I found myself staring blankly at his blue pocket square and wishing I could melt into floor. Unfortunately, I remained solid instead of dissolving into an embarrassed puddle. The moments ticked by in excruciating quiet.

“What’s gonna happen now?” Trina asked after the silence had a chance to become properly awkward. My mouth was still hanging open. I wasn’t usually the least bit shy, but Ryan seemed to have rendered me entirely speechless. Thank god Trina was around to pick up the slack tonight. If Ryan thought I had no filter, he was in for a surprise when it came to her. A lack of social awareness was kind-of Trina’s thing. “What will happen to all our stuff? I’ve got shoes in there that I like.”

Ryan shrugged. His handsome face took on a look of steely annoyance. “I’ve called an electrician and a plumber. The slumlord who owns this building is worse than useless. Obviously, neither of you can stay here tonight.” He looked between Trina and me. “As for your stuff… I don’t know. Do either of you have renter’s insurance?”

Well that’s not a good sign.

Trina nodded. “I do.”

I shook my head when his attention turned to me.

“Are you sure?” he asked. His face conveyed that I was in deep shit.

“Yep,” I managed to choke out. Monosyllables weren’t much but they were better than nothing.

Ryan looked confused as to why I’d be living in such a dump and not having so basic a thing as renter’s insurance when my father was a rich, hot-shot lawyer. I decided not to enlighten him. Even if I wanted to tell him, I wasn’t sure my vocal chords would cooperate at the moment.

I wasn’t always a helpless little rich girl, I thought at him instead. The rich part is actually a fairly recent development. Not so long ago, I was just a helpless little middle-class girl.

“I need to make a few phone calls,” he said, glancing down at an incoming notification from his phone and looking distracted. “You two don’t mind sharing a hotel room tonight, do you? It’s South by Southwest, so all the hotels are pretty booked.”

“I’ve actually got somewhere to stay tonight,” Trina said. Her coffee brown eyes turned mischievous. “In fact, I should probably be going…” She frowned at Ryan. “I do need to grab something in there real fast that I forgot. I’ll be quick. Hold on.”

I stared at her retreating back in disbelief. She was going to abandon me here alone? With him? This guy I couldn’t even string two words together in front of? I stared daggers at her receding figure. Bitch.

Ryan nodded distantly at me. “It’ll just be a moment, Rosie,” he told me while we waited for Trina to return from inside the apartment. “Do you mind if I answer a couple of emails really quick before we go? I want to make sure the plumber gets out here tonight.”

I shook my head. Impossibly, my blush deepened. At this point I probably looked just like Violet from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Trina smirked and slipped something in my purse on her return. I looked down to see that she’d grabbed the vibrator she’d given me as a birthday present that morning in my bag. I snapped it closed and stared at her with wide eyes. It was embarrassing enough that she thought I needed a damn vibrator in the first place. Apparently my perpetually single status was ‘unnatural’ and I needed ‘relief’. The most frustrating part of it was that she wasn’t wrong. Ryan was fiddling with is phone, oblivious, thankfully, that he looked like walking relief to me.

Then he looked up at me, freezing me to my spot with his gaze. I held my breath. “I need to make one call, and then I’ll get you sorted out for the night, Rosie. Let’s see if we can’t salvage what’s left of your birthday.”

Trina giggled at his choice of words and winked at me as she rounded the corner and left. She’d abandoned me to my blushing, stammering fate. Rationally, I knew that I was hearing what I wanted to hear, and Ryan wasn’t flirting with me, but still…

Yes please. If anyone could sort me out for the night, I’d very much like it to be Ryan Conroe. I deserved one birthday wish to come true, didn’t I?