She glanced at me over her shoulder, unaware of the physical reaction I was experiencing to the damn flowers. "Bees love alyssum. But Tessa tends to overwater them when she's bored. I'll tell her to back off." She stood, brushing off her cherry blossom printed dress and smiling mildly. "No public transportation, right? Are you sure it's alright to drive me all over the place for errands?"
That scent was filling every one of my senses, drowning me in desire I hadn't expected to grapple with. It was dumbing me down, numbing my thoughts like lidocaine to my brain. I hadto snap out of it. I stepped back a few paces, trying to play it off nonchalantly. "Well, I am the one who insisted we get an A/C unit."Yes, that's good, Frost. Those are words. You sound coherent."The mault is fine." I paused, frowning. Evie snorted, and I hurriedly corrected my phrase. "The fault is mine."
"Enjoying happy hour too much?" she teased, throwing my own taunt back in my face.
I deserved that. "You almost sounded worldly just there." I unlocked my vintage Targa with a fob—mymodifiedTarga, more accurately—and opened the driver's side door. "Although, unless you've been in a nunnery for the last ten years, I can't imagine why you wouldn't know what happy hour is."
Evie sat in the passenger's seat, and as she turned to buckle her seatbelt, I was accosted by the fresh, alluring alyssum scent again. I either needed to lick every inch of her or dunk her in a bath with scentless dish soap because this was going to drive me insane. She smoothed her skirt again, and that time, I took the gesture to mean I'd made her uncomfortable.
"I was homeschooled. And I guess when I went to college for a couple years, the happy hour thing never came up. I never drank, and my friends didn't exactly need half-priced drinks when every other party had kegs of beer."
I didn't bother to ask why she didn't drink. No one needed to defend their choices to me, especially when it came to addictive substances. But the sheltered life aspect of her existence was strangely intriguing. "Homeschooled, huh? By your Nan?"
"Yes, by Nan until I was in high school and then I did it by computer. I really liked it," she added, like she was already getting defensive. "Nan is really smart."
I thought back to what her grandmother had been reading and barely managed to keep from laughing. "It sounds… idyllic."
She clicked her tongue, folding her arms and giving me a pointed look as I drove slowly down the long driveway. "I knowit's weird; you don't have to pretend it's not. I suppose you went to a private school or something?"
I shook my head. "Public school with the rest of the peasants." She laughed softly and I added, "And then the Army. I finished an accelerated medical school program with them—they were short on field doctors. It wasn't until I was discharged that I completed a surgical residency with Wells and our other fellow doctors."
"Sounds like you stayed busy," she observed, her hazel eyes far too observant.
Busy was one way to put it. I'd lived two lives. One full of anxiety and violence and death, the other, a vapid, desperate attempt to outrun the first. "I'm happy with where I ended up," was all I said.
Evie nodded thoughtfully, staring at the road as I turned onto the main highway. "I suppose, in the end, that's all that matters."
We stopped at one of my cell phone carrier's stores, and I instructed Evie to stay in the locked car while I ran inside to buy myself a new phone. The employee was overly attentive, uncomfortably helpful, and sensed that I was in a hurry. She took me for a ride with suggested upgrades, and half an hour later I had the latest model, a case I didn't need, and more screen protectors than I could possibly use in the phone's lifetime.
Evie glanced at the phone as I got back into the car, and her eyebrows lifted at the chrome red finish. "Fancy."
"I think I might have paid for that chick's mortgage in commission wages," I grinned back.
All handyman jokes aside, I really hadn't installed any kind of air conditioning units, so I took us to the nearest home improvement store. I had researched a few units before we left, and beyond that… YouTube would have to do. We parked between two enormous pickup trucks, and then I used my new phone to look up the aisle where we could find air conditioningunits. Evie followed along beside me, pushing a cart and remaining quiet as she watched people walking past us. Her eyebrows were pulled together with what looked like a mixture of curiosity and timidity. She really didn't get out much, did she?
She looked oddly out of place in the enormous, warehouse-style store with her swishy, long dress and puffed sleeves. Her long, wavy hair looked browner than honey without the sunlight kissing her highlights, and I could tell for the first time that her nose and cheeks were sunburnt under the freckles. My steps faltered, and I almost tripped over my own shoes. She was arresting. If I wasn't careful, I could stare at her so hard that I'd run into a metal shelf.
Evie turned a questioning look my way, and I evened out my gait and looked ahead. "You have casement-style windows on your first floor, so we might have to install it on the top floor where you have a more traditional, double-hung window." She didn’t need to know any of this, but my brain was stuck on she-smells-like-flowers and I was desperate to reroute it.
"Sure," she replied, rightly gauging that that had been a stupid thing to bring up.
We found the right aisle, and while I studied the air conditioning units, comparing them to the ones on my phone, Evie meandered slowly down the aisle. I glanced at her briefly. "Don't wander too far."
She scoffed softly. "We're in broad daylight."
Lots of terrible things had happened in broad daylight. Daylight didn't mean shit to people who wanted something desperately enough. I chose a unit, hefted it into the wide cart, and with my mind still on possible threats, I gestured for Evie to follow me. "I have a few other things I want to get."
"Like what?" She skipped to keep up with me.
"Deterrents," I said grimly.
A line formed between her light eyebrows. "Deterrents."
"Stay close." We made our way to the outdoor lighting section, and I threw ten motion-activated lights into the basket along with the largest, heavy-duty flashlight they sold. Evie's eyes tracked what I was doing with obvious interest. She wasn't one to think out loud, so I said, "Motion-activated lights will cause anyone coming to your property to at least pause. I'll grab some trail cams, too, until we can get a real security system set up."
She pointed to the flashlight that was longer than my forearm. "And that?"
I made a swinging motion. "Hurts like a son of a bitch."
