Free Seized by Love (Love in Bloom: The Ryders, Book 1): Blue Ryder by Melissa Foster Page A

secret. She couldn’t do this to him, not when everything he did was with her best interests at heart. It wasn’t fair to either of them. She’d make it through this date, and then she’d end it. She couldn’t play with his trust, and she couldn’t reveal the Naked Baker to a guy like Blue, either.
    I hope you appreciate all that I do for you, Maddy .
    She forced a smile, knowing Maddy appreciated everything she was ever given. Her younger sister wasn’t selfish like many teens. She was considerate to a fault, which was one of the reasons Lizzie was willing to put herself out there to give her a leg up in life. It wasn’t Maddy’s fault their parents couldn’t afford college for her, and Lizzie knew how school loans would strap her sister down after college. Thank God for Cooking with Coeds , and in turn, for the Naked Baker .
    “No, it’s okay,” she answered as they walked back to the table. “Did I take that long?”
    “Not that long. The waiter brought our dinner.”
    She had taken a long time. At least she’d seen and heard the very start of the webcast, which meant it was probably playing properly.
    They shared their meal and drank wine while they talked. It was nice being alone with Blue, just as she’d known it would be.
    “I knew you and Maddy were close, but I never realized she called you about dates and stuff. That’s nice,” he said.
    “It is nice. We talk about everything. But you seem just as close with your siblings.” He was so easy to talk to. He listened so intently to her while watching her with those piercing eyes of his, she was unable to resist falling right back into their intimacy. She speared a piece of steak with her fork and fed it to him.
    “Mm. I like this arrangement.” He swallowed the steak and said, “We talk about everything, too. There are lots of us, though, so we tend to be close in pairs, and those pairings vary based on what’s going on in our lives.” He fed her a tomato from the salad and followed the fork with a quick kiss that made it taste a million times better.
    “Pairs?”
    “Yeah. Like when Jake visits, we’ll be close for a few weeks afterward. Then he’ll get busy with his own thing, and then Gage or Duke will have something to talk about, or an issue to work through. It sort of goes in cycles. Big family dynamics, you know.”
    “And what about Trish? Where does she fit in?” Lizzie knew his sister was an actress and that she was close with her family, but she hadn’t met her, and she wondered what it was like growing up with so many brothers.
    “Where doesn’t she fit in?” Blue laughed as they finished eating, then set the plates aside so they could paint. “She weasels her way into everyone’s business, like any sister would, I guess. Nosing around for details on our personal lives.”
    Lizzie picked up a paintbrush and started to paint. “And do you guys do the same to her?”
    “I don’t want to know the details of her personal life. I just want to know she’s safe and happy. When she was in high school, I’m sure we scared off a lot of her dates, but once she went away to college, she pretty much set us straight.” Blue dabbed his brush in blue paint and held it in front of the picture of flowers in a vase that Lizzie was painting. “May I?”
    “Sure.”
    He smoothed out the edges of the vase, then added shading that made the vase look like it was three-dimensional.
    “Trish set us all straight except Duke. Duke is relentless when it comes to being protective. He watches over all of us like it’s his job. I think it’s an eldest thing.”
    “I think I’d agree with that. I was pretty protective of Maddy when she was younger.” And even now, wasn’t she being protective by taking care of Maddy’s tuition so her sister wouldn’t have to? She tucked that thought away, not wanting to think about the webcast or the fact that she’d seen only thirty seconds of it and that there could still be technical issues.
    She