Maybe I could ... No.
Or, how about ... Nuh-uh.
I conjure an image of him in my mind, the scowl in place, the muscle in his jaw ticking beneath the layer of scruff on his face, the way his fingers flexed on the steering wheel and the rigidity in his body. He is the poster child for the grumpy,broody male role. Mr. Darcy would appear as affable and genial as Charles Bingley if he were standing next to Levi Redding.
I’ve always had a theory about Mr. Darcy’s aloof and unapproachable demeanor—that he wasn’t really snobbish or arrogant at all, but that, in actuality, he contended with social anxiety. That his refusal to dance at the ball was merely a defense mechanism and way to cope in an uncomfortable environment among people he didn’t know well. He in fact later admitted to Elizabeth Bennet that he struggled to converse easily with people with whom he wasn’t well acquainted.
Would my Darcy theory hold up with Levi as well? Could his grumpy exterior be his first line of defense against social anxiety?
I tap the lid of the pen at the corner of my lips and think. What can I do to put him at ease? Maybe if I shoulder even more of the conversation and not let any awkward pauses happen, that will help him to be more comfortable. I can be extra extroverted if I need to be and if that’s what he needs me to be. I’ll just fill up the silence with idle chitchat so he doesn’t have to mentally strain himself on my account.
I add the plan to the journal, then close the cover with a satisfied smile. That should do it. I gather my purse and the laundry basket of clean clothes that’s my wardrobe for the foreseeable future and exit the bathroom. After depositing the clothes and purse into my borrowed room, I head back toward the main part of the house, following the smells of Mexican spices wafting in the air. My stomach rumbles, reminding me that the PB&J I’d had for lunch right before the mayor showed up for his photo shoot wasn’t all that filling.
“Something smells good,” I say as I stand beside the kitchen island.
Levi stirs ground beef in a skillet, sets down the wooden spoon, then turns toward me. At the first glimpse he gets, his nostrils flare and his fingers flex before curling into his palmsat his sides. “What are you wearing?” he growls, enunciating each word in his low timbre like it physically pains him.
LikeIphysically pain him.
I look down. What does he mean, what am I wearing? He’s the one who shoved the basket of clothes at me. “It’s one of your sister’s dresses.” I wave my hand down my front in a sort ofyou have eyes,can’t you see for yourself?motion.
He must have missed the sarcasm in my gesture and instead takes my hand wave as some sort of command to get a good look. His gaze moves over me in such a way that a chill runs from the top of my head down along my spine, sending a convulsion of awareness down each of my vertebras like a Slinky descending a flight of stairs. I’m covered up more than a granny in a muumuu in this thing, the hem hitting the backs of my knees, sleeves down to my wrists, and the collar buttoned all the way up to the base of my throat, but the intensity in Levi’s eyes makes it seem as if I had the audacity to come to the kitchen in some lacy negligee fit for a honeymoon suite.
“It was in the basket,” I say in defense and barely resist the urge to clutch at the collar to double-check that I did, in fact, don a could-never-be-considered-sexy oversized flannel dress that hangs on my body because the belt that goes with it that would give me a hint of a waistline wasn’t in the basket too.
Levi’s Adam’s apple bobs. He hasn’t taken a single step toward me, but it feels like the distance between us is shrinking by the second. As if every deep breath of oxygen he inhales into that barrel of a chest of his is making the room smaller and him bigger.
My skin flushes, and a prickling of realization begins to dawn at the corners of my brain. “This isn’t your sister’s dress, is it?” I ask in a quiet voice.
He shakes his head.
Dagnabbit. “I’m wearing your shirt, aren’t I?”
He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to. The quicksand that has become my stomach is telling me I’m right.
Because of course not only do I have to smell like this man—which must be as unsettling to him as it is to me—but now the shirt that has covered him so many times in the past is hugging every part of me, and when you think about it, that’s way too intimate a thing for two almost-complete strangers. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I’ll find something else to wear.”
“Don’t.” He stops my trajectory back to the bedroom with the single word. “I said you could wear anything in the basket. It’s fine.”
The firm, almost angry set of his brow by no means conveys the message ofeverything is hunky-dory.I don’t careone bit.Tension makes the air heavy, and I’m weighing the pros and cons of retreating and finding something else, anything else, in that blasted basket, or staying right here because, as he said, it’s fine, and I should take him at his word.
I really wishThe Price Is Righthost would appear and show me what’s behind door number three right now.
Levi jerks back toward the stove, picks up the wooden spoon off the counter, and attacks the ground beef in the skillet like he’s afraid the cow wasn’t really all the way dead yet and he’s determined to finish the bovine off himself.
“So,” I say warily, “that smells good.”
I’m talking to the solid wall of his back. He doesn’t give any indication that he even heard me, but considering he’s less than five feet away and hasn’t shown any previous signs of being on the cusp of deafness, I’m going to assume he knows I’m talking to him.
This good deed of single-handedly keeping a conversation in motion is going to be harder than I thought.
“Some kind of Mexican food, I’m guessing.”
“Tacos,” he begrudgingly answers.
“Oh, I love tacos.”
He spares me a look over his shoulder that I’m interpreting as something along the lines ofeveryone loves tacos. Which, of course, is a truth universally acknowledged, so silly me for pointing it out.
