“Wait a second. What’s this? Holy shit.”
“What?” he asked.
“It says on this list from the will that Anton has a first edition of War & Peace in here somewhere.”
“Let me see that.”
He took the list from my hands and began to read it. His lips moved with every word and I found myself entranced by their movements. His brow furrowed deeper as the paper dropped from his vision, and I forced my eyes up to his so he wouldn’t catch me staring.
“The only place I can think of that we haven’t dug through yet is the attic,” he said.
“There’s an attic to this place? I only knew there was a basement.”
“Come on. We need to go find this stuff,” he said.
I followed Gray as he maneuvered through the house. I walked down hallways I’d never had occasion to be in before. Most of the work I did for Anton was outside labor. Every once in a while I’d come inside and dust down, but the house didn’t need much more than that. A little sweeping. Some mopping. Washing the windows from time to time.
I saw the string hanging from the ceiling as Gray reached for it.
The attic door creaked and a staircase unfolded. Great. A hot, stuffy attic in ninety-degree heat just as the sun was beginning to set. This would be a fun little scavenger hunt on an empty stomach. And mine was beginning to growl. I hoped and prayed the man in front of me scaling the built-in stairs couldn’t hear it.
How embarrassing would that have been?
The humidity in the attic was stifling. It was hard to breathe. Hard to see. A small light flickered on but didn’t lend much to the room. And the boxes that surrounded us were written on in Russian. Compared to the expanse of the property, the attic was small. It didn’t branch out any farther than the hallway and it was hard for Gray and I to maneuver around one another. Dust flew everywhere and sweat was already trickling down my back. Worse yet, the sweat that glistened against Gray’s skin made my cheeks tint with heat.
It was hard enough keeping my hands off of him. Why the hell did I have to be stuck in a stuffy, small, sweaty attic with him?
“I don’t read Russian, so all we can do it open the boxes and dig through them,” he said.
“You’ve got the list?” I asked.
“In my back pocket, yep. Let’s find the book first, then we’ll go on down the line. Maybe if we dig, it’ll be easier to come back across things.”
“Fine by me.”
Anything to get me out of that attic sooner.
Slowly, we started to find the missing pieces. Sweat dripped off the tip of my nose and my clothes began to cling to my skin. Gray walked past me, his leg brushing my back. He opened up the small window at the other end of the attic to try and get some air flowing, but it wasn’t much use. The air outside wasn’t much cooler than the air in the attic. Especially since hot air rose. We popped open boxes and sneezed with the dust, and soon we were finding the rest of the gifts stuffed at the bottom of all of those boxes.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Grayson freeze. I looked over at him and watched him finger what looked like a photo album. He opened the cover and peeked inside, then quickly shut its contents.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Just some pictures.”
“What are they of?”
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“We can talk about it later. We’ve got too much to do before I head out tomorrow.”
I bit down on the inside of my cheek to keep myself from reacting. I couldn’t show him how disappointed that statement made me. He sounded a little too happy about it. To be leaving this town. To be leaving me.
Turning back to my task, I continued digging through the box as I panted for air.
I got up and walked over to the window, feeling stifled by the confines of the attic. I closed my eyes as the open window caught a breeze. My skin cooled. My forehead stopped sweating. My legs felt their strength returning.
But then I felt something dab against my forehead and my eyes whipped open.