“What do they say about all this?” I ask curiously.

“Brian is fully on board,” Lexi says, and I can hear the affection in her voice. “He’s chosen to believe what my mom told me on her deathbed, that she had not been with anyone else and I was definitely Brian Brannon’s child.”

“What about Gray?” I ask, and I’m mildly surprised by the slight harshness in my tone. Gray and I don’t see eye to eye and I’m poised to take offense at what Lexi might tell me, especially when I saw the way Gray treated her in the locker room.

Lexi lets out a sigh. “She’s a tougher nut to crack. She has moments when I think she’s cool with everything, then she’ll turn right around and remind me that nothing’s been proven yet.”

“A DNA test?” I ask.

“We sent it off about a week ago,” she says lightly. “Hopefully the results will be back end of next week.”

“She didn’t treat you very nicely in the locker room the other day,” I observe just as my nav system advises me I’ll need to take a right in five hundred feet. At the speed we’re going, that could take awhile.

“I know,” Lexi says with resignation. “And it got worse when we went up to her office. She point-blank asked me if I was after them for money.”

“What the fuck?” I practically bark, and Lexi’s head snaps my way. “She actually thought that’s what you were after?”

Lexi doesn’t respond, and after a few moments of silence, I risk a quick glance at her. She’s staring at me with her head tilted to the side, as if I’m a great mystery.

“What?” I ask as I look back to the road.

“It’s just…” she says with a little hesitation. “Why would you jump to my defense? You don’t know me any better than Gray does. It could be a legitimate concern.”

“No way,” I say adamantly. “You’re not like that. And that was uncalled for…for her to attack you like that for no reason.”

“How do you know?” she presses me. “How could you possibly know?”

I throw out the first thing that comes to mind. “Because you didn’t fall all over yourself to go out with me. You don’t have ulterior motives.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” she says dismissively. “I could have been using reverse psychology on you to make you think I wasn’t all that interested, just to lure you and your riches and fame.”

I snicker at her quick wit and I don’t give that scenario any credence.

“So lay it on me, Roman,” Lexi says even more seriously. “How can you even defend me when you don’t know anything about my character?”

Damn, she’s persistent.

I like that too. Admire it actually, so I decide to be truthful.

I blow out a breath and lay it all out. “Because you’re a woman who plays a ukulele in a coffee shop for tips and I’ve never seen anyone happier in their existence.”

It’s as fucking simple as that.

Lexi gasps softly, but I don’t turn to look at her.

And damn if my chest aches just a little when she says quietly, “I’m glad someone sees me for what I am.”

Chapter 10

Lexi

The minute Roman coasts to a stop in Georgia’s driveway, right in front of her double-car garage, I make my final decision. Turning to him in the seat as he shifts into park, I ask, “Want to come up and eat dinner? I made Jim Kaczmarek’s chili and put it in the Crock Pot before I left for work this morning.”

Roman’s eyes drift up to the apartment above the garage where I live, then turns his gaze to me. “Jim Kaczmarek’s chili?”

I shrug. “No clue who he is. That’s just the name of the recipe I found online, but I chose it because it called for a bottle of beer and a lot of cumin. It’s pretty spicy.”

His lips curve upward and he admits, “Well…the traffic out there is pretty bad, and I’ve got to drive all the way over onto the north side of the city.”

“Could take you hours in this weather,” I say, pointing out the obvious.

“And eventually everyone will get off the street, so it will be safer for me to go once it’s cleared, but that could take hours. Are you prepared for me to be up there with you all alone in that tiny apartment for hours?”

I cock an eyebrow at him and put on my haughtiest voice. “I’m not sleeping with you.”

“You said before you weren’t sure about it,” he counters.

“Well, okay…I’m not sure about it. But I thought we’d just start with chili, if you’re interested.”

“Oh, I’m interested all right,” he says as he reaches a hand out to turn the ignition off, and I smile at the deliberate innuendo he’s taunting me with.

“You are so bad,” I say with a laugh as I open the passenger door.

A wave of freezing sleet immediately pelts me and I scramble out the door, but not before I hear him mutter, “You have no idea.”

Roman meets me at the front of his SUV and grabs my hand, and we make a dash to the wooden staircase with two short flights that leads up to my apartment door. He pushes me before him, and because the steps are covered in ice and even more sleet, his hands come to my hips as he carefully guides me up. I grab my keys and unlock the front door, flipping on the light switch that’s wired to my table lamps as we enter.

The apartment smells wonderful—thank you Jim Kaczmarek, whoever you are—and I shrug out of my coat, tossing it onto the couch to my immediate right.

“Take your coat off and get comfortable,” I tell Roman.

I glance at him as I bend over to unlace my Dr. Martens—this time shoes rather than boots—and toe them off. Roman does a casual perusal of the little apartment Georgia rents to me.

She originally had it built for her son after he dropped out of college. Sadly, Craig Mack fell far short of Georgia’s expectations for her only son, seemingly preferring to spend time in his room playing video games rather than attend classes at North Carolina State where he had been accepted into their school of engineering. He was incredibly bright, but lacked motivation or ambition, something that puzzles me greatly, as his mother has both of those qualities in abundance.