“Well, I just meant... We need to keep this project a secret. Until we’re at least most of the way through. Jonathan Bear will be the one to handle the building. He’s the best. And since you’re right here in Copper Ridge, it would make sense to have him do it.”
“I know Jonathan Bear,” Levi said.
That surprised her. “Do you?”
“I’m a couple years older than him, but we both grew up on the same side of the tracks here in town. You know, the wrong side.”
“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t realize.”
Dimly, she had been aware, on some level, that Levi was from here, but he had left so long ago, and he was so far outside of her own peer group that she would never have known him.
If he was older than Jonathan Bear, then he was possibly a good thirteen years her senior.
That made her feel small and silly for that instant response she’d had to him earlier.
She was basically a child to him.
But then, she was basically a child to most of the men in her life, so why should this be any different?
And she didn’t even know why it was bothering her.
She often designed buildings for old men. And in the beginning, it had been difficult getting them to take her seriously, but the more pieces that had been written about her, the more those men had marveled at the talent she had for her age, and the more she was able to walk into a room with all of those accolades clearly visible behind her as she went.
She was still a little bit bothered that her age was such a big deal, but if it helped...then she would take it. Because she couldn’t do anything about the fact that she looked like she might still be in college.
She tried—tried—to affect a sophisticated appearance, but half the time she felt like she was playing dress-up in a much fancier woman’s clothes.
“Clandestine architecture project?” he asked, the corner of his lips working up into a smile. And until that moment, she realized she had not been fully convinced his mouth could do that.
“Something like that.”
“Let me ask you this,” he said. “Why do you want to take the job?”
“Well, it’s like you said. I—I feel like I’m an important piece of the business. And believe me, I wouldn’t be where I am without Isaiah and Joshua. They’re brilliant. But I want to be able to make my own choices. Maybe I want to take on this project. Especially now that you’ve said...everything about needing it to be the opposite of a prison cell. I’m inspired to do it. I love this location. I want to build this house without Isaiah hovering over me.”
Levi chuckled, low and gravelly. “So he wouldn’t approve of me?”
“Not at all.”
“I am innocent,” he said. His mouth worked upward again. “Or I should say, I’m not guilty. Whether or not I’m an entirely innocent person is another story. But I didn’t do anything to my wife.”
“Your ex-wife?”
“Nearly. Everything should be finalized in the next couple of days. She’s not contesting anything. Mostly because she doesn’t want to end up in prison. I have impressed upon her how unpleasant that experience was. She has no desire to see for herself.”
“Oh, of course you’re still married to her. Because everybody thought—”
“That she was dead. You don’t have to divorce a dead person.”
“Let me ask you something,” she said, doing her best to meet his gaze, ignoring the quivering sensation she felt in her belly. “Do I have reason to be afraid of you?”
The grin that spread over his face was slow, calculated. “Well, I would say that depends.”
Two
He shouldn’t toy with her. It wasn’t nice. But then, he wasn’t nice. He hadn’t been, not even before his stint in prison. But the time there had taken anything soft inside of him and hardened it. Until his insides were a minefield of sharpened obsidian. Black, stone-cold, honed into a razor.
The man he’d been before might not have done anything to provoke the pretty little woman in front of him. But he could barely remember that man. That man had been an idiot. That man had married Alicia, had convinced himself he could have a happy life, when he had never seen any kind of happiness come from marriage, not all through his childhood. So why had he thought he could have more? Could have something else?
