I shifted my weight, skin tingling. “Oh.”
Tipping his head to the wall, he folded his arms over his chest. “This town is the oldest in the state. This house is probably over a century old, yes?”
“One hundred and eight years,” I told him, nodding.
“Old towns have old shit. The man you hired was probably local, which means he knows this house. That also means he sees this shit as a lost cause because you live here alone and he made the judgment that you probably couldn’t afford the price he would charge—overcharge—for parts and labor.”
I flinched, my jaw going slack. “He—he—”
“Generators are easy to install, and if you intend on staying here for a while, you’ll need one to compete with the storms. And the winters.”
“Last winter wasn’t bad,” I noted. “I made it out just fine.”
He clicked his tongue and looked at the fireplace. “Did you sleep down here when the temperature dropped to below freezing?”
Once.
During the ice storm from hell in January.
“I do if I have to,” I confessed.
“You shouldn’t have to sleep on the floor because some fuck of a bastard is too lazy to do what he was hired to fucking do,” he said, his voice growing harder with every word. “I’ll be back tomorrow to take a look at your breaker panel. Then we can go from there.”
“That’s not necessary,” I began, but he stepped up to me, took my chin between his fingers, and my skin began to burn.
“If it concerns you and your safety, it absolutely is,” he murmured roughly. Then he blinked and dropped his hand, leaving behind an ache. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“Please don’t apologize for that,” I cut him off.
He jerked. “I shouldn’t have touched you without your permission. I’m sorry.” After a few moments of thick silence, he asked, “You going to be okay here for the night, or do I need to get you a hotel room?”
I tripped over my words. “A-a what? A hotel room?”
He nodded.
“I don’t have the energy to pack a bag.”
“Right,” he muttered, giving me a small smile. It didn’t reach his eyes, and I highly doubted there was a shred of meaning behind it. “So you’re okay here?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to sleep with all eighty-six of those candles burning?”
I moved back and painfully watched as he did the same. “No,” I answered, my voice laced with confusion. “That’s a huge fire hazard. Why on earth would I do that?”
He nodded. “I was just checking. Make sure you blow them all out before heading upstairs, yeah? This house is too beautiful to be burned down.”
I was too stunned by his words to move.He thought my house was beautiful?
Our eyes met, and he tipped his head to me as he stepped back into the foyer. “Good night, Angel.”
Chapter Eight
Angel
Ash Doss stole my car.
After he left last night, I pictured him walking to his truck and leaving peacefully. But no. The big bear of a man I couldn’tget out of my head had taken it upon himself to tow my car out of the ditch and take it to the local car shop. How did I know this?
