My face reddened and my gaze darted around, worried for an audience. There was none, of course.
“Why are you here?” I called out, less a shout and more a confused inquiry.
“Chop the wood. What look like?” he called back in the same tone, mocking me.
Shaking my head, I huffed and puffed and that was about it. I looked like an angry cartoon bull as my breath left little white clouds with every put out exhalation.
“It looks like you’re crazy and running around with an axe,” I muttered petulantly. I felt like I was in Bizarro World. Why was he here?!
“Least not out here with feet stuffed in fluffed animals,” he shot back. His hearing was insane.
Eyes narrowing on the side of the house he’d disappeared around, I wiggled my sock covered feet in my totally cool and not stuffed fluffed, whatever, animals I’d shoved my feet in, adorable plushness. “Fuck off,” I grumbled in my slipper friends’ defense.
A loud, raucous laugh issued from the vicinity of the wood pile. Of course he heard that.
“Grumpy,” he laughingly croaked out.
Whatever. That’s rich coming from Captain Grump.
A knock at the front door had me frowning, popping back inside, closing the back door shut behind me, to quietly make my way to the door.
If it was Elm, come to explain himself, he’d best be coming back later. I didn’t have it in me to go another round on that merry go round right now.
Cautiously having a peek through the peep hole, I scowled when the empty front porch was all that was there to greet me.
Slipping my front door open, I popped my head out to peer around outside.
An overdone tsking behind me had me screaming, slamming my front door shut and whirling around to watch Cy as he made himself right at home, traipsing right into my living room and dumping a bundle of wood next to the wood stove.
“Can I fucking help you?” I snapped.
Cy paused as he stacked wood neatly in the wood bin. “Give min-nut to think ‘bout it.”
“I’ll give you two, one to scramble for the door while I grab the shotgun, two to get in your overcompensator and getlost before you have a chance to figure out if I’m as good a shot as my daddy claimed,” I growled.
Instead of getting mad or huffy or puffing up in a flair of dramatics, he smiled, just as he had over by my car not so very long ago.
In my head I felt like I was back over by my car again, our bodies close, his scent so thick in the air I felt like I was drowning in it, our mouths closing in for a kiss.
But he was still across the room, hadn’t moved an inch, that sexy smile on his face, blue eyes flashing as he eyed me.
Rumbling something at me in his weird growl-speaking whatever that was, was the thing that snapped me out of it.
“You know I don’t understand your grumble rumblings.” My hand lifted and I waved it off.
Cy’s chest began to rumble as his head cocked. His gaze sharpened as he watched my exposed skin prickle and a shiver wracked my frame.
“I’m cold,” I lied. Lifting my chin, I gave a loud sniff. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“No look like what?” Cy rumbled again, longer, louder than the last.
Swallowing thickly as heat began to pool low in my belly, my mouth suddenly felt so dry I scrambled towards the kitchen for a glass of water. “You know what I mean!”
Leaning over the faucet, gulping water faster than the faucet could fill my cup, I shouted, “Thanks for the wood! Let yourself out!”
I knew the moment he was in the kitchen. I felt him, sensed him before I heard him.
Choking on the gulp of water I’d just taken, I whirled around, the half filled glass clutched in my hand, water still running.
