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“Yup.” I stood behind her and gently touched the side of her arm. “Left hand here,” I said. The top of her head barely brushed my chin. “Right hand here.”
My chest was only an inch or two away from her back, and she glanced briefly over her shoulder up into my face. I couldn’t see her eyes because of the glasses.
“Got the clamp tight?” I asked.
“Mm-hmm.”
I leaned past her and checked it. The bare skin of her shoulder brushed my chest, and she sucked in a quick breath.
I made the mistake of glancing over at Poppy, who watched with wide-eyed interest. When I glowered in her direction, she grinned, redirecting her attention to the cat, who was batting away at a weed.
“When you’ve got the saw lined up, go ahead and squeeze on the handle here, and slowly push it forward.”
She exhaled. “You’ll be right here?”
It was a simple question. And maybe no one else would read into it the things that I would. I didn’t even know Ivy well enough to sift through the deeper meanings of her making sure I was staying close by in case she needed help.
But she was out here, with me and my sister, and she was trying.
I didn’t need her to be something she wasn’t, but I couldn’t handle the idea of her hiding who she really was either.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I promised.
Ivy took a deep breath and pressed down on the trigger for the saw, the loud sharp buzz filling the air. She pushed it forward, and the piece cut neatly in half, leaving a chunk on the ground.
Her hand came off the saw, and the whirring stopped. She blinked down at it, then pushed her sunglasses onto the top of her head.
“That was so easy,” she said.
I smiled. “That mean you’re going to help me build this now?”
She snorted. “Hardly. One cut does not a builder make, and I think you bossing me around all day is the quickest way to drive me mad.”
I held her gaze unflinchingly. “I don’t know about that,” I said. “I think you’d like it just fine, duchess.”
The pulse in the base of her neck fluttered, and then she tore her eyes away, focusing on the framed-out chicken coop. I wondered if she was thinking about my hand around her throat, the first place she’d asked me to touch her body.
She cleared her throat. “Is your mother home today?” she asked.
I didn’t answer right away because I was too busy reciting algebra facts in my head to rid myself of an inconvenient hard-on. “I think so,” I said gruffly. “She’ll be thrilled if you need more food.”
Ivy laughed, a soft, husky sound, and if my sister wasn’t standing four feet away, I was tempted to lick that sound straight out of her mouth into mine.
Maybe asking her to drop the wall was a terrible idea. Because now I wanted to kiss her again. I wanted a lot more than that.
And the wall … the mask … that had been the biggest barrier.
Now it was just Ivy. And me.
And the terribly inconvenient, out-of-control desire I had for her.
“I definitely don’t need more food,” she said. “But I did promise to have a cup of tea with her someday.”
My ribs squeezed. “She’d love that.”
Ivy cleared her throat. “Thank you for showing me that. Maybe I’ll cut some more wood if I get bored later.”
“Plenty of that around here,” I murmured.
