She nodded again and looked away from his messed-up eyes—too intense, too weirdly beautiful out here in the bright fall sunlight, where anyone could see.
Maybe he and his wife don’t talk at all, the rogue notion went on.
He hesitated before finally saying, “Good.”
Maybe they spend all their time fucking like bunnies.Where had that come from?Enough.
He looked like he had something else to say, but Uma stopped him. “I’ll let you get back to your family.”
“Oh. Right. You want to—”
“I’d better go.” She nearly wrenched her arm closing the car door, then took off, getting as far from him as she could. Far from those eyes and those thoughts she couldn’t seem to control.
Yet as Uma drove off, watching him shrink in her rearview mirror, rather than give a sigh of relief, her body slumped with something resembling disappointment.
* * *
“Who’s that, Ivey?” Ive’s sister, Jessie, swung her hair over her shoulder in that way she had.
“New neighbor.”
“What’s her story?” Her eyes were bright with curiosity.
“Not sure.”
“Why’d she run away from you like that?” Gabe chimed in, as usual, pinpointing the one thing that had bothered Ive the most.
Whyhadshe run from him? They were in public, after all. It’s not like he was planning on hunting her down and dragging her back to his lair. He’d been with Jessie and Gabe, for Christ’s sake. She had to have noticed Gabe, at least.
“Guess I’m kinda scary lookin’.”
Jessie said, teasingly snide, “You can say that again.”
“You see me enterin’ any beauty contests lately?”
“No, but youcouldmake more of an effort.”
“What? I’m in shape.”
“You’re in shape, Ivey, the way cavemen are. A big, hairy bag of muscles. Not exactly what I’d call comforting.”
He shrugged. The way he looked had never bothered him before. Didn’t seem to matter in Blackwood. People knew him here, knew his story, where he came from, what he did.
What he’d done.
Nobody bothered him. And he liked it that way. But this time, he frowned.
“Like that. Right there.” Jessie pointed. “You make faces like that, and people think you’re out to kick butt. No wonder she ran away when you tried to talk to her.”
“Look, are we done with this? I got work to do.”
“Hey, I know how hard it is for you to stop working long enough to pay us a visit, but the least you can do is sit here for a few minutes and talk. Pretend you’re civilized.” Jessie placed a placating hand on his forearm, and he forced himself to relax.
It was that woman.Again.All four times he’d seen her, he’d gotten antsy. Last night, when he’d glanced up at Ms. Lloyd’s place, he’d spotted her leaning against one of the upstairs windows, looking like a ghost. Or a prisoner. He’d wanted… What? What the hell did he want? To storm the battlements? Save her? Maybe beat the shit out of whoever made her so scared all the time?
Yeah. Probably that. Definitely that.
He was ready to bite Jessie’s head off for pointing out the truth. There was no doubt she’d bite him right back. And the last thing he wanted to do was stir up family trouble. Not here. Not in front of Gabe. Not ever.
