“Come on in and have a seat,” he said a little too loudly, like maybe the beard had muffled his voice as well as his looks. As Uma walked past him, he leaned over his table, grabbed an earmuff-like thing off a hook, and handed it to her. “Put this on. I just need to finish up.”
She pulled the ear protectors over her head and moved to her armchair in the corner while he returned to his hammering.
He worked and she watched, transfixed. Each strike of cold metal to hot was precisely aimed. The vibrations hummed through every cell of her body—the same rhythm she’d come to depend on nightly. Only this time, she felt it from the inside out.
Sparks blossomed in showers of bright gold, a halo for Ivan’s body. He was an alchemist, a god creating worlds.
And his face. Oh, the man’s face. Dark brows drawn low over eyes half-closed against the light, mouth tight, chin and jaw rigid, clamped in stern concentration. Uma couldn’t help but imagine that expression focused on her, that hard body thrumming with excitement above hers. She crossed her legs to alleviate the pressure growing between them.
Why, oh why, did he have to shave it off? She’d been okay before. Puzzled at the faint stirrings of attraction, yes, but willing to put it down to the feelings of coziness and safety he engendered in her.
And then, there was how different he was from Joey.Thatwas it. It rang truest. Back to faulty instincts again. They’d failed Uma so miserably when it came to Joey that she’d wanted to ignore them when it came to this man. She’d wanted to stay away, despite how easy it’d been. He’d gone from scary to trustworthy in less than a week—who was she kidding?In less than a day.
So, maybe her instincts weren’t broken after all, merely slow. Like an arrow on a gauge, they needed time to swerve before settling on a final reading.
“You got more of that moonshine?” she asked, too antsy to just sit there staring.
He didn’t look up when he said, “Yep. Right over on that shelf. You’ll have to rinse your mug from the other night. Pump’s outside. Sorry. No runnin’ water out here.” No running water? Uma’s eyebrows rose at that, but she shrugged. “Got beers in the cooler too, if you’d rather.”
Instead of going for the beer—the easy option—in kind of a show-offy move, which she’d surely regret, she went for the moonshine. As if to show how little she cared about germs and stuff, Uma filled her mug without rinsing it. “You want some?”
“Hell no.” He shook his shoulders in a kind of exaggerated shudder of disgust. “Can’t stand the stuff.”
“Hey!” she laughingly yelled, her voice shakier than she expected.
“I’d take a beer, though.”
She found the cooler and pulled out a bottle but couldn’t find anything to open it with.
“Leave it there. I’ll get it when I’m done.”
With a shrug, Uma left it on the shelf and took her mug back to the armchair, where she curled up and spent several moments trying to relax, looking everywhere but at him. A nearly impossible feat, when he was so big, so verythere. She finally gave up and let herself watch the show, imagining throwing open those big, wooden doors and taking shots of him while he worked, day or night. Light or dark. Hot or cold. Opposites, just like those funky eyes of his. She wanted to capture it all.
It was easy to let the ambiance he created form a surreal cushion around her, calming her and nearly wiping the stupid ad from her mind. She dipped her lips in the drink and kept her eyes on him, sinking heavily into it, the clanging of metal syncopating with her heartbeat, insulating them from the world outside. It was warm and dark, the light orange and intimate.
She was no longer in modern-day Blackwood, shying from the horrors of her life, but caught in some alternate reality, some other time, some place medieval. She pictured him half-naked, chest gleaming in the firelight, muscles bunching with each slam of the hammer, his skin beaded with sweat, pebbled with goose bumps.
Uma came out of her trance to find his hammer still, his eyes on her. Their intensity was palpable even from across the room.
He hung the piece he’d finished working on and untied his apron, making her wish fervently that he wouldn’t stop there. She downed more of the moonshine, craving its intoxication.Unbutton your shirt, she thought, staring hard. Ivan apparently wasn’t a mind reader.
He picked up his beer, popped the top on the edge of a worktable, and came toward her, his nearness strumming her nerves. The crate creaked under his weight just like the last time she’d been there, and she flashed back to that moment, thinking how much could change in so little time. She took another sip and let it relax her further, remembering how she’d been wrung out when he’d rescued her from her car. He, the scary, untouchable next-door neighbor, inviting her in for a slightly weird midnight drink.
Tonight, now…he was a timeless magician whose body bent iron and sparked fire. Or was that the moonshine talking? She swore he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen: hard and sweet looking at the same time.
Tonight, although he’d unveiled another piece of his puzzle, he sat before her a mystery she desperately wanted to solve.
11
“Can’t sleep again?” Ive asked.
Uma replied, “Didn’t even try,” then seemed to remember something, her features tightening. She stood, pulled a wadded-up piece of paper from her pocket, and gave it to him. “Here. Take a look.” More carefully, she sat back down in her chair, and he glanced at the paper.
“What is… Oh.” Understanding dawned as he read it.
“You write that?”
He hesitated before shaking his head.
