“Not by you,” she responded, staring down at her ankle with a sense of betrayal. “Though that’s better luck than management.”
“Hey, you’re the one who was armed with—what the hell was that, anyway?”
She was glad the lights were out and that he wouldn’t see her full sheepish expression. “The first thing I could find.”
“Which was?” He asked, lifting his fingers to the side of his head and rubbing, his silhouette powerful in the dark, so she longed to see more of him, to see all of him.
“A rolling pin.”
She put all her weight on one leg and hopped to the door, flicking on the light switch then spinning around. It was a mistake.
In the dark, she’d been intimately aware of his strength, power and muscular frame, but she’d been able to imagine that perhaps he had two noses or four chins, instead of the man who stood across the laundry from her, hands on hips, looking completely regal and devastatingly handsome. If there was a more perfect specimen of masculinity, she’d yet to see it. There was no single feature that stood out, rather, each of them was noteworthy, from piercing dark eyes to long, curling lashes, a straight, patrician nose, high cheekbones, a square jaw, wide mouth, a confident brow and thick, lush hair that made her fingertips tingle with an ache to reach out and feel it.
She pressed her back against the wall—a mistake, for it reminded her of how connected their bodies had been.
“Ah. That would be this.” He reached down and scooped up the offending object, his shirt separating from the waistband of his pants to reveal an inch of tanned skin so her temperature spiked.
“I was baking,” she muttered.
“At one in the morning?”
“Better than skulking about outside someone’s house,” she responded. “How bad is it?”
“Not as bad as it would have been if you stood a foot taller.”
She ground her teeth together. She’d never been sensitive about her height. In her line of work, a diminutive stature was an advantage, but she didn’t appreciate him pointing it out.
“I wasn’t expecting to be woken by an intruder in the middle of the night. If I’d had a little more notice, I could have worked out a better attack plan.”
“Then I’m grateful you had no notice.”
“What are you doing here, anyway?”
He turned away, reaching for her crutches, but not before she saw the tightening of his features and recognizing, instinctively, that she’d landed on something sensitive, something he was hesitant to discuss.
“The same thing you are, I imagine,” he drawled, as he moved towards her, a glint in his eyes that unpicked something deep in her soul.
“And what’s that?” The question emerged breathlessly.
“Escaping for a while.”
She pressed her teeth into her lower lip. “From what?”
He shook his head. “Too many questions, little thief,” he growled, a little too close for people who barely knew each other and at the same time, nowhere nearly close enough. Her throat shifted as she swallowed, eyes pinned to his, with the strangest feeling she was tilting off the edge of the earth.
“You broke into my house—well, my bolthole, at least—don’t you think I have a right to ask?”
“Absolutely, but I do not have any obligation to answer.”
She glowered at him with surprise. “That’s completely unfair.”
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you? Life’s not fair.”
“I’m licking my wounds in a cabin on the edge of the world. What do you think?”
His grin surprised her, caught her completely off guard. She blinked up at him, frowning.
“So?” She said, after a moment.