Skin Heat (10 page)

“Something else, too.” It wasn’t a question, and surprise rippled through her. Already, he read her so well.

Since he’d asked, she wouldn’t lie. “My apartment’s got some plumbing problems, too. So even if Mrs. Popović liked cats, it wouldn’t be an option.”

“Ah.” He finished with the black-and-white fuzzball he was holding, gently put him back beside his “mother,” and lifted his sibling for his turn. His face went distant, as if he were weighing a grave matter.

She couldn’t resist asking, “What’s on your mind?”

After a long silence, he said without looking at her, “Could come to the farm.”

“The kittens, you mean?” Neva began framing a polite refusal. There was no way she could relinquish this burden to him. It wasn’t her way.

You’re determined to be a martyr,
she heard her mother saying.
You and your causes. Why can’t you understand we need you
here
?

But their need came braided together with commitment, obligation, and a hundred thousand rules that would suck the joy out of her life. Okay, so maybe there wasn’t much joy at present, but there had been, once, and there were always little flickers, reminding her of why she loved the work.

His answer astonished her. “All of you. Just ’til they’re eating right and your place is fixed up. Can help with the night care.”

Could he really be offering that? “You understand I’d be there for a month or longer.” She didn’t care to mention how long it might take to get her apartment livable again, the way the younger Popović worked. “They’ll get stronger as they’re older, of course, but—”

“Get that.”

“And you still want us to come?”

“Yeah.”

Some expression crossed his face that kindled warmth she couldn’t let herself feel. The situation was already fraught and she was pretty close to the breaking point. His sweetness might drive her to do something stupid, something irrevocable, and he might not feel free to decline, because she was his boss, and she was a Harper. The two factors combined gave her too much power.

Sleeping at the clinic and taking showers at Julie’s could offer a stopgap; she shouldn’t accept. It was a bad idea. But she could see his wariness, like she might feel she was too good to set foot in his home. Just the fact that he’d offered touched her, and that made up her mind.

“Then we accept gratefully.” Neva tilted her head at the squirming kittens. “I’ll try to keep a lid on all the office gossip at the water cooler.”

She invited him to share the joke with a little grin, and it was obvious when he registered that they only had Julie to worry about, benefit of a small work force. And honestly, Julie would probably encourage her to seduce him and to hell with sexual harassment suits. She was convinced great sex would cheer Neva up. As her friend had said,
If it doesn’t fix your mood, hey, at least you had the great sex.

He nodded. “Can ride together after work.”

“I have my car. I’ll just follow you, if that’s all right.”

“Was hoping you’d drive us.”

That gave her pause. “Where’s your truck?”

“Home.”

Despite herself, Neva laughed softly. It was like trying to get blood from a stone. “But why?”

“Wanted to run.”

Good God.
Was he some kind of fitness buff? She’d known a few people who ran everywhere as part of their fitness regimen, but Zeke hadn’t seemed the type. Not because he wasn’t superbly fit; he was. He was lean and hard in the best possible ways, a whipcord and tensile strength that brought to mind a bow drawn taut. And she really shouldn’t be looking at his chest or his arms, or the way his raw-knuckled hands cradled a kitten. She shouldn’t think about how it would feel if he touched her.

“That’s about eight miles,” she said in disbelief. “Were you going to run that home, too?”

“Sure. But don’t need to now.”

Sixteen miles, plus his normal workday—Neva did
not
know what to make of him. “True enough. Well, I think these three are settled. With any luck, they’ll keep until we get them to your place.”

God, she was going to love sleeping in an actual bed again. Assuming he had a spare room. Even the old farmhouses had at least two bedrooms, one for husband and wife, the other for young’uns. But even a couch would be better than the cot in her office. She was tired of spending all her time at the clinic . . . and she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t inappropriately interested in getting to know him outside work. With an eye toward becoming friends, of course. As his boss, she couldn’t see him any other way.

“Not fancy.”

For a hideous, guilt-inducing moment, she thought he was warning her off, telling her he wasn’t a fancy man, and wouldn’t put out. Heat suffused her cheeks. She was already framing a mortified apology when he added, “The farm. Needs work. But it’s cozy.”

“If you could see my apartment, I’m sure you’d think yourself lucky by comparison. I bet you don’t have a foot of water on your floor and a hole in your ceiling. And I remember where you live, the area anyway, and that means your neighbors are squirrels, raccoons, and woodchucks. Mine are drunken Albanians who scream at each other all day and then bang the walls making up all night.”

Okay, so she was exaggerating. Somewhat. But it was so worth it when some of the worry faded from his face, replaced by soft amusement. Could it be . . . yes. Zeke was actually smiling.

“Maybe get some earplugs?”

“I use my earbuds.” At his blank look, she explained, “Headphones for my iPod. They go in your ears, not over them.”

“Uh-huh.”

It seemed weird he hadn’t heard of earbuds, but who was she to judge? Maybe he didn’t follow tech trends. She’d find out more about him when she saw the inside of his house. A forbidden, secret thrill surged through her, as if she’d been invited to some exclusive party. This was better, actually, because she liked Zeke, and she
didn’t
like the ones who would attend such a gala.

She tucked a kitten into her shirt and Zeke did likewise. They’d deliver the other one to Julie to provide the daily required dosage of snuggle time.

“Well, I have patients.” Neva thought she might live through the day after all. “See you at six.”

Zeke watched her
—and tried to seem as if he wasn’t. If he hadn’t managed to get the power back on and clean the place, he never would’ve invited her out here. He felt strange and anxious, but he didn’t regret it. Having Neva here pushed back the loneliness and the feeling of hovering an inch away from some new disaster.

He couldn’t tell what she thought. The walls needed a fresh coat of paint. In the kitchen, the floor was cracked and worn. No new furniture had been bought in years, so it was all faded, stuff his mother had chosen more than twenty years before. The house was pretty small for the plot of land—one bedroom downstairs and two upstairs, along with kitchen, parlor, and a mudroom out back for the laundry.

First thing, they took care of the kittens, who were mewing plaintively again. Afterward, she asked, “Where’s my room?”

“Upstairs.” He led the way, ignoring the empty room downstairs.

Nobody had slept in there since his dad died. Nobody would. That space needed more than a simple cleaning; it might take a young priest and an old priest to get rid of the badness. Kitten box in hand, he nodded at the second door.

“Here, I take it?”

He watched her step inside. It was a plain room with a mattress and box springs on a steel frame, no headboard. The only other piece of furniture was a battered dresser with four drawers. There was a closet, too, but it was empty.

“Gonna start supper,” he muttered, uneasy with how much he liked seeing her in his home.

“I’ll bring the kids to the kitchen. It should be warmer anyway.” She hesitated before asking, “Would it be all right if I left them with you? I need to go home and pack some things . . . I only have work clothes with me. Do you have a washer and dryer?”

“Yeah.” It was the answer to both her questions.

Warmth dawned. She trusted him. Not just with the kittens, but with herself, too. They were going to be alone out here, and it was pretty isolated. He’d make sure he deserved that faith. Somehow he’d keep a lid on his crazy night-prowling, and do whatever it took not to scare her.

Zeke tucked the box in the corner near the fridge. Warm there, but not too much so. He’d planned to make his own favorite dinner to honor the feat of getting things back to normal. Lights on at night, a working radio. It might seem like a small thing to anyone else, but having music to drown out the noises he shouldn’t be able to hear helped a lot. The radio was old, a clunky black thing his dad had bought at Sears in the seventies. But it still worked.

He found a country station and then he went to work on the meal—meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Over the years, he’d become a good cook. If he didn’t want to go hungry, he fixed his own food; it was just that simple. Sid was the only person who’d ever done for him, but she had her own kids. Two of them had moved out of state, just as soon as they could, which meant she now had more time to fuss over him. Only his cousin Amber still lived in Harper Creek, and she showed no signs of wanting to settle down.

The potatoes were cut up and boiling, and he had just slid the meatloaf into the oven when Neva got back. Tension he hadn’t even been aware of eased out of him. Deep down he’d thought maybe she’d taken a look at the place and decided to dump the kittens off on him. His heart had been pretty sure she wouldn’t do that, but the rest of him had been kicked enough not to trust so easily.

“Something smells good.” She had changed out of her scrubs into a pair of faded jeans and an Auburn sweatshirt; Zeke recognized the colors and the school logo, and he remembered she’d gone to school there.

“Thanks. Will be done in about an hour.”

He wasn’t surprised when Neva checked on the kittens. She scooped them out of the box and tucked all three of them into her sweatshirt. Then she started squirming while they tried to get comfortable. Her grin lightened her whole face, and he found it hard not to watch her. Zeke admired everything about her. She’d committed to looking after them, and she didn’t take it lightly. He didn’t know what to make of her. She came from money; she didn’t have to live like she did or drive that old car. Julie had said she was sad, and he could see hints of it in her eyes. It made him wonder what he’d have to do to make her laugh.

“Anything I can do to help?”

In answer, he gave her the spatula and nodded at the beans. “Don’t let ’em scorch.”

He made them with onion and bacon, just like his aunt. This meal wasn’t healthy, but he’d wanted it—to feel like he was home—for longer than he cared to recall. The food in the cell . . .
no
, he wasn’t thinking about that. Horror rose up in him. The longer he was free, the more he worried he might be crazy—that he’d invented the whole thing. How else could he explain the changes, though? And he had some scars they’d left behind as proof, nothing he’d gotten on his own working at the mill and on the farm.

No, it
had
been real. He’d never made up stories or seen things that weren’t there. Even his mother’s crazy hadn’t gone that route. Over the years she just got quieter and sadder until there was nothing left.

“Julie’s mom has a kitchen like this.” Neva gazed around at the scarred cabinets as if what she saw appealed to her. “It has character. Lots of living.”

He guessed that was true. And somehow, having her here balanced out the bad history. Instead of neglect and darkness, the room lit with welcoming light. It didn’t all come from the fixture overhead, either.

Silently he set the grey and white Formica table for two. It had banded metal around the edges, stylish in the forties. For Zeke, it had always been enough that it was sturdy. Things didn’t need to be pretty; they just needed to work. So it was rare for him to find such fascination in a woman who offered both.

“Got Coke, milk, or juice,” he said.

“Juice, please. I left my bag in the hall so you didn’t end up making dinner by yourself, after everything else. If it’s all right, I’ll take it up now.”

Why was she asking him? He stared at her in confusion until he realized she was being polite. He owned the house. She was unsure of her place. He fought down the urge to tell her she could do whatever she wanted—to his house
and
him. For an awful moment, he turned into that untried sixteen-year-old boy again, watching her glide across the emerald lawn he’d just trimmed while his heart went wild in his chest and his hands clenched on the silent mower.

She had been wearing a yellow sundress, he remembered, in some fancy fabric with little holes that showed glimpses of her tan skin. The breeze blew the skirt against her thighs, and he’d had to look away. That summer, he’d thought she was the closest thing to heaven on earth. He’d gone home that night and lay in bed daydreaming about a day where she noticed him working and led him off into the flower garden. He’d spent himself more than once, imagining what she felt and tasted like, imagining the clasp of her legs and the hot welcome of her body.

Neva wasn’t the same girl anymore, and he wasn’t that boy. But he still wanted her with the same awful, hopeless ache. And now she was standing in his kitchen, a little lost and forlorn. That look stirred all kinds of needs, tangled up so he couldn’t separate them.

“No problem,” he got out.

He reduced the heat on the beans. They’d come from a can so they wouldn’t take as long to cook down. It was about time to mash the potatoes; he did it by hand, adding milk and butter and garlic powder. By the time she got back, they were only waiting on the meatloaf, and it should be done soon. His stomach rumbled. It felt like forever since he’d eaten.

“The quilt in my room looks like an antique,” Neva said from the doorway.