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“Come over here,” he said. “You hold it up.” And when she did, he marked the edges on the inner part of the cabinet. “How about you hold this one? I’ll drill. Eventually, we’ll switch.”
“All right.” She was still feeling annoyed at his accurate representation of her.
“I’ll start with the high ones.”
She wouldn’t be able to reach them without a ladder, so it was fair. She held the tin, and he held the drill. And she watched his profile as he predrilled a hole, then put the screw into it.
“There we go,” he said, talking to himself. He ran his hand over it, as if he was making sure it was a sound job. Then he turned his attention to the next one. “It’s actually super easy.”
“Now that you said that, I’m going to be afraid that I won’t be able to do it, and then I’ll feel really dumb.”
He chuckled. And she stood up on her tiptoes to get a better look, and it brought her right up next to his face.
She had kissed him. Just the once. At the wedding. And right now, her lips tingled at the memory. She looked at him. Really looked at him. At his dark brown hair, shot through with one or two strands of silver, some lighter caramel colors in there. A rich mahogany. How had she ever looked at his hair and just seen brown?
And she looked at his face. Really looked. His skin was rough in parts, from where it had been touched by the fire. But he was there. Those strong features evident.
And where he had been changed...
She looked at him and saw strength.
She wanted to touch him.
And maybe she did like pretty boys. Or shehad.
But right now the memory of them was soft, smooth and far too easy.
His lips twitched, and the groove next to the corner of his mouth deepened. And as the sunlight filtered in from the window up above, it bathed him in glory. And she wondered how she’d ever seen anything but...him.
He wasn’t a good-looking man with scars obscuring his face. He was a good-looking man, scars and all.
Strong and capable, and every part of him added to that beauty.
Gus McCloud was handsome. And maybe you had to stop a minute and look at him to see it. Maybe you had to be strong enough to take in that kind of handsome. The kind that spoke of pain and struggle and everything else.
He was still him. He hadn’t changed. But maybe over the last few weeks she had. And now she felt...like her eyes were open. Like she could see him for real.
“Alaina,” he said, handing her the drill. “Your turn.”
“Oh.”
And she lifted it as he positioned the tin on the lower cabinet, standing behind her, his chest at her back, the heat radiating off of his body, his left hand pressed to one side of the cabinet, his right to the other. She was closed in, and she could smell him. His skin, the day’s work. The soap that he used.
It was...heady and intimate and lovely in a way she hadn’t quite known this sort of closeness could be.
“Okay,” she said. “Like this?”
She hadn’t really needed to ask. It wasn’t that hard, after all. But she felt slightly fuzzy-headed, and when he answered with a yes, she turned to look at him, and their faces were close again.
It wouldn’t take much. To close that distance. To press her mouth to his.
So she turned back and pushed the drill into the cabinet, then screwed the screw. Tight.
“Got it,” she said.
And he took a step back, no longer needing to hold the punched tin.
They finished the rest quickly, and by the time they were done, her heart was finally done beating erratically. She didn’t know what had just happened to her. Why everything felt like it had been turned upside down, and right all at once.
