“Sorry,” I say, catching myself too late.
“Won’t see me around here again. I can assure you.”
“But I haven’t asked you to assure me,” I say, forehead creasing.
His eyes dart back to the house, something behind them I can’t read. Then, he lifts a thick, black brow. “Name?”
I swallow hard. “Eliza Wakefield. And yours?”
“Kael Guthrie.”
“No Guthries around these parts. At least not that I’ve ever heard of,” I say before I can catch myself. The words come out nervous and silly, like I have to fill the silence.
His eyes shift back to my face. “Only one Guthrie left. Best that way.”
That’s when I realize he’s waiting for me to invite him in. “Please,” I say, stepping forward. As I pass him—closer than I mean to—a shiver runs the length of my spine, sharp enough to steal my breath.
An odd feeling. An unprecedented one that settles lower than it should.
He grinds his teeth hard. Like he feels it, too… and hates it.
My cheeks heat. God help me.
No, Eliza. My mother’s words fill my head.Any man who knows Mags is off-limits. Not worth the time or the pain.
But this thing shuttling back and forth between us isn’t asking permission.
My throat tightens, air snagging in my chest.
“Can I get you something? Tea or lemonade?”
“Tea,” he says, taking the seat at the kitchen table I motion toward. He’s too big for the furniture. Too big for the room.
His cerulean eyes pierce the space, not seeing. Remembering.
“You’ve been here before, maybe?” I ask, not sure where secrecy ends and begins with him.
He nods once, face hard as granite.
“Not much of a talker?” I say, opening the fridge and pulling out a glass pitcher filled with brown liquid, ice, and thick slices of lemon.
He grunts.
“Do you take sugar with your tea?”
The question awakens something behind his eyes that I can’t read. They meet mine, his expression dull and far away. “Used to work this land once. Long time ago.”
I set the glass already sweating in the heat of the day in front of him. Then, a sugar bowl and spoon next to it, just in case. He eyes them suspiciously.
“You don’t look familiar,” I counter, a tally of recent ranch hands shuttling through my mind.
“Before your time.”
“When my family was larger?”
“Yup.” He takes a sip, swallowing loudly. “Just as I remember.”
“The tea?”
