From the other end of the truck, where he was wrestling a cabinet into place, Powell smirked.“It doesn’t hate you. It’s intimidated.”
“By what? My unreasonable standards?”
“By the way you look at screws like they’ve personally offended you.”
“They have personally offended me,” I shot back. “Half of them stripped themselves out of spite.”
He laughed, a low, easy sound that hit somewhere under my ribs. “Hand it over, Donnegan.”
I passed the drill back over my shoulder without looking. He stepped in behind me to take it, his chest brushing between my shoulder blades for the briefest, most devastating half-second. Heat rolled up my spine like someone had poured warm syrup along it.
Concentrate, I ordered myself.On the truck. On the business. On anything that isn’t the man who kissed you stupid in his kitchen before gently rewriting a decade-old wound.
It would’ve been easier if he didn’t keep being… like this. Helpful. Funny. Steady in all the ways I wasn’t. Infuriatingly observant.
Hot.
God, so hot.
He swapped the dead battery for a fresh one and leaned past me to set it back on the counter. His arm caged me in on one side, his body close enough to mine that the warmth of his breath dragged across my temple.
“Try now,” he said quietly.
I did. The drill roared back to life under my fingers. “Well. At least one of us is fully charged.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, my brain threw up both hands like,Really? That’s what we’re doing now?
Behind me, his breath hitched. Barely. “You trying to kill me today?”
“Not consciously.” I forced my focus back to the screw I was setting. “Subconsciously is a whole other question.”
He didn’t move away. His palm settled lightly at the curve of my hip as I drove the screw home, like he needed some kind of physical tether while I pretended I wasn’t hyper-aware of every place we were touching.
This easy intimacy layered over years of stubborn, intentional distance was surreal. A few weeks ago, we’d barely managed civil conversation. Now I was letting him stand close enough to count my heartbeats.
Now I was… what? Dating him? Testing the waters? Having a prolonged, high-stakes, emotionally fraught flirtation?
My brain, unhelpful as always, whispered:boyfriend.Like that was a normal word to attach to Powell Ferguson and not alive grenade. My fingers stuttered on the trigger, and the screw jerked sideways and stripped out of the metal.
“Dammit,” I muttered.
“You okay?” His voice was a little too gentle.
“Fine,” I said automatically. “Just thinking.”
“Dangerous habit. Want to trade out? I’ll be the muscle, you be the brains?”
“That is already the arrangement.” That earned me a soft huff of a laugh and the brush of his thumb over my hip in a quick, unconscious stroke that made my stomach drop in an entirely not-professional way.
When the last of the outlet covers was finally installed, I rolled my shoulders, trying to shake out the tension wound tight between them. Powell straightened from installing the under-counter lighting, pushing to his feet in a smooth, easy motion that showed off a frankly unfair amount of arm.
He flicked the test switch. Warm light bathed the counter in a soft glow. “That should make opening shift a little better.”
My throat got unexpectedly tight. I could picture the dawn still blue over the square, my first customer of the day, the hiss of the machine, the soft thump of the grinder. For the first time since the fire, it felt… possible again.
“Hey,” he said gently. “Don’t cry. I’ll start feeling smug, and then you’ll have to punch me.”
I swiped at my eyes, scowling. “I am not crying. There’s sawdust in here.”
