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There’s something thrilling about him winding it around my wrist. I glance up, but he’s unbothered. He takes multiple measurements and scrawls them across a piece of brown paper. His handwriting is neat and he’s left handed, so he writes from above. The veins on the back of his hand shift and I squeeze my thighs together.
His gaze flicks over me. “Alright, redbird?”
I nod, biting my lip. His eyes drop and linger on my mouth, and I feel like I’m in a spotlight. Nervous, I take a sip of warm coffee and cough as the acrid taste fills my mouth.
“That’s strong,” I manage.
His mouth twitches. “I’ll let you teach me how you like it next time.”
“I like a lot of cream and sugar,” I say.
“However you like it is how you’ll have it.”
He takes up his pencil. I watch him put marks on the leather in silence. Occasionally, he uses a clear plastic tool like a ruler to keep the lines clean. I lean my temple against the wall and sip my thick coffee, trying not to grimace.
“What do you like, redbird?” he asks out of nowhere.
I stare at him, unsure what he means. “Like…to do?”
He nods.
“Well, I didn’t have a lot of time for hobbies,” I admit. “But when I was a girl, I loved riding. I had a bay mare my father gave me and he used to let me ride the perimeter of the ranch to check it sometimes.”
“Your father gave you a lot of freedom?”
I shake my head. “My mother died in a car accident a week after I was born. He was pretty scared for me most of the time.”
His head jerks up and his lips part. There’s a long awkward silence and then he clears his throat.
“Sorry for your loss,” he says gruffly.
Did I upset him? He goes right back to tracing leather like his strange reaction never happened.
“Go on,” he says.
“I…um…I went riding a lot. After I got married, my horse died. Just from old age. I asked Clint for another horse, but he said it was a frivolous expense.”
His brow raises, but he stays silent.
“I really liked riding,” I muse. “I used to take my horse up to the mountain ridges behind Stowe Farms in the morning and come back at night. My father gave me a gun for my tenth birthday to protect myself against cougars. And men, probably. He’d let me go out as long as I came back by five.”
His jaw works. “Can’t say I’ll give you that much freedom. But I’ll give you Angel.”
I sit up straighter. “Really?”
“You want her, she’s yours.”
I blink, staring at the firm press of his mouth. I wish he’d joke and smile, but he’s as hard as the packed earth beneath the field grass in summertime.
“What about a gun?” I say daringly.
He turns his head, glancing at me with those winter-blue eyes. “Now what would you do with a gun, redbird?”
I shrug. “Protect myself.”
He goes back to cutting the leather. “You have me. No one will hurt you when you’re under my protection.”
There’s an undercurrent of possessiveness in his voice. I’m not sure if he even realizes it, but I hear it for a second. His shoulders have been tense since I told him how my mother died. I see a glimpse of the man who held me back from running into my burning house.
