“Put these on.” I took a pair of leather gloves from my right pocket and handed them to Abby, then I pulled an identical pair from my opposite pocket.
“They’re too big,” she whispered, tugging the first one over her fingers.
“Make it work.”
A second later, she held up both hands hidden by a comically large pair of gloves, which hung limp over her fingertips by at least an inch. Her hands were tiny. But then, so was the rest of her. She shrugged. “If the police are gone, they’ve probably already tested for fingerprints.”
“Maybe.” I tugged her gloves down as far as they’d go. “But we don’t even know if they know it’s a crime scene yet. So, we take precaution.”
I stepped into the yard and she followed silently while I tried the back door—it was locked—then peered through three grimy windows. They were all locked too, and I saw no evidence from the rooms beyond that anyone was home. Or had been in several days.
The locks on the back door were substantial. I probably could have broken them, but if the police ever came back to the scene, they would see that the locks had been forced rather than picked—a feat beyond human strength. “We’ll have to break a window,” I whispered, peeking carefully around the corner of the house to make sure no one was out front within human hearing range.
Abby grabbed my arm, and I followed her line of sight to see the kitchen window standing open just a fraction of an inch. “What about that one?”
“I can’t fit through.”
“Ican.”
“No.”
“Jace—”
“No.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and lifted one russet eyebrow at me. “You’d really rather break the glass—vandalizing some poor dead guy’s property—than let me climb through a window and open the door for you?”
Damn her and her faultless logic.
“Fine. But don’t touch anything,” I insisted, and she immediately started tugging on the fingers of her right glove. “And leave those on.”
“They inhibit my fine motor skills.”
“That’s my condition. Take it or leave it.”
Abby rolled her eyes. “Fine.” She reached up and slid the glass panel open, then peered through the bottom of the window, gripping the sill in her clown gloves. At five foot nothing, that was the only part she could reach. “I need a boost.”
A boost. There was probably no way to accomplish that without touching her.
My heart pounded as I wrapped my hands around her hips, achingly conscious of each point of contact, and I was suddenly glad I was wearing gloves. After my utter lack of willpower the night before, I wasn’t sure I could trust myself with any more skin-to-skin contact.
Abby glanced at me over her shoulder and her hair brushed my face. “Sometime this month, Jace.”
But that time, I recognized her words for what they were—a distraction fromherrapid pulse. Whatever she was thinking had triggered a physical response she wanted to hide from me, and it was probably a good thing I couldn’t read her mind.
Yet I wanted nothing more in the world than to know what she was thinking and how I fit into that.
My hands clenched around her hips involuntarily, and Abby’s soft gasp nearlybrokeme. That was the sound of unexpected pleasure, and it belonged in a much more intimate time and another place.
A time and place we would never be in together.
God grant me strength…
I lifted her, and got a face full of red curls, and they smelled like sweetened strawberries.
With a nearly silent groan, I realized that from that moment on, I would mentally associate fruit-flavored desserts with the feel of her hips in my hands and her hair against my cheek.
Abby braced herself against the sill, then crawled onto the kitchen counter. “Okay, just give me a sec,” she called as she lowered herself onto the kitchen floor.
