keep it up.
So
she gritted her teeth and let him take her hand. It looked small and white
against the tanned expanse of his big and blocky palm. Brick layer’s hands, she
thought for no reason she could imagine. But his fingers were gentle as they
brushed over each scar and nick, learning them as if by Braille.
“You
work hard,” he said.
“I
do,” she said, and admired her tone. Brisk, appropriate, completely unrattled. Which
was great, because her belly was flipping around inside her like a trout. God, when was he going to let go of her hand?
“What’s
this one?” He brushed his thumb along a white scar on the inside of her wrist
and sent her heart trundling into her throat.
“I,
uh, cozied up to a 500 degree oven without an oven mitt.”
“And
this?” He trailed a finger along a thin line crossing the knuckle of her index
finger.
“That
would be my Wusthof.” One dark brow arched into the sunny spill of hair over
his forehead and she said, “My first really nice chef’s knife. It cost the
world, or so I thought at the time. I julienned everything for weeks.”
“Including
yourself?”
“Sadly,
yes. But I still have that knife.”
He
smiled at her, delighted. “You’re a tool girl.”
That
smile, she thought, a little dazed. So easy and sunny and thought-stealing. The
way he focused it on her. She was starting to understand how women
looked at this man and decided, in spite of all the red flags, to take a flier.
“Not
normally, no,” she said, gripping her focus with both hands. “But this is a Wusthof .
A ten incher. It’s a beauty.”
He
just kept smiling at her and Bel wondered if she’d missed something, some
subtext of the conversation that made it her turn to keep talking. It wouldn’t
surprise her. She knew she wasn’t exactly a sophisticate. Getting where she was
had required the kind of 24/7 focus that hadn’t left any time for learning the
art of light flirtation.
Not
that what James did could be called light. The guy laid on the charm the way
the Kate Every Day makeup artists troweled on the foundation. If she was
going to survive this job and get her career back—get her life back—she
was going to have to learn to either shrug it off or convince him to stop
laying it on her in the first place.
Which
reminded her. She ought to at least try to get her hand back.
She gave
it an experimental tug but he held fast, still grinning that sunny grin at her.
The urge to smile back was overpowering.
Cripes,
Bel, she thought. Snap out of it.
“What?”
she asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
He
blinked, then shook his head. “Sorry. You were saying?” His grin went a little
sheepish around the edges. “I kind of lost focus right after you said ten
incher .”
“Oh,
for pity’s sake.” She yanked her hand back.
“What?
I’m a guy.”
“Maybe
you haven’t noticed,” she said. “But that I’m a guy thing? Eventually,
it wears pretty thin. People get tired of it, usually by the time you hit
thirty or so. Then they expect you to get over being a guy so you can be
a man instead.”
“A
man, huh?” His eyes lit with interest and something else Bel couldn’t identify.
But it made her want to step back when he stepped forward.
“Yes,”
she said, though it came out a little breathless. Space. She needed space. She’d
never liked people crowding her, particularly not men. She edged backward only
to discover the cool press of the countertop against the small of her back. “That’s
why I’m here,” she said, a little desperately. “To help you.”
“Help
me what?”
She
couldn’t see him moving forward but every time she looked away then looked back
he was closer. He was stalking her, she realized. The realization sent a hot
thrill arcing into her stomach, a thrill she couldn’t identify, exactly. Panic?
Fear? Anger?
Anticipation?
“Transition,”
she said, firming her voice up with a heroic effort. “From guy to man. And from
what I’ve
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