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“Yes,” she answers, sounding slightly defeated. “Apparently this is a lot harder when it’s minus a thousand out.”
She sets the screwdriver down, climbs down from the ladder and blows hot air on her red hands. Without thinking about it, I take off my gloves and take her left hand in mine, rubbing it and blowing on it. Then I put my mitt on it and do the same to her other hand.
“Worst. Jerk. Ever,” she says.
“Hey, a guy can’t be good at everything.”
“What if you had to play a bad guy in a movie?”
“I could totally do it.”
“I’m beginning to doubt that.”
Picking up the screwdriver, I say, “All right, enough playing around. It’s time for a man to take over.”
Allie bursts out laughing. “Much better.”
“I can’t believe I broke it,” I tell her. “Who knew there was such a thing as too much torque?”
When she doesn’t answer, I say, “Everyone. Everyone knows it’s possible to use too much torque, right?”
“Not everyone,” she says. “Just … most people.”
We both laugh, and when we’re done, I let out a groan of regret. We’re finally back inside the building and are both stripping off our coats and stepping out of our boots. If I were here with anyone else, there is no way I’d find this even remotely sexy, but with her, it’s different. All she did was take off her parka, and my mind just kept on going, imagining her pulling her shirt over her head and tossing it on the floor. Her curly brown hair is wilder than ever when she takes off her beanie and her mascara has transferred from her eyelashes to her skin, but she still looks beautiful to me.
She glances up at me. “It’s not really broken. It’s just … temporarily out of service. But the good thing is we learned something valuable.”
“Not to let me touch the tools?”
“That too. But more importantly, that we shouldn’t do maintenance in these weather conditions.”
Her cell phone pings and she digs it out of the pocket of her parka. “Crap.”
“What’s wrong?”
“That’s a message from Glen. The state troopers closed the road, which means they’re stuck in Redding and we’re stuck … here.”
Try not to smile. Do not smile, jackass. “Oh, that’s … inconvenient.”
She bites her lip. “Yup.”
She types something back and gets an immediate response. “They won’t have it cleared until tomorrow morning at the earliest.”
“So, we’re stranded for the night?” I ask, my body humming with possibilities.
We lock eyes and the tension between us builds. “Yeah. Good thing we packed overnight bags.”
“That was smart thinking,” I say, my gaze flicking down to her full lips. “Since we’ll be here overnight.”
She clears her throat, then says, “Yes, it’ll give us a lot of extra time in the observatory room. We’ll be able to make so much progress.”
She gives me the most bland smile possible, clearly trying to douse the flames between us, but honestly, it’s not working because all I can do is imagine pressing her up against the lockers behind her and picking up exactly where we left off in that opera house.
Instagram Reel: Hollywood Dish with Ferris Biltmore
The video opens to show Ferris sitting on a lounge chair in his backyard, dressed in a parka and beanie. He sighs wistfully. “Hey, bitches! Finally, some news from my love, my heart, my world, Hudson Finch. And no, he hasn’t decided to switch teams and declare his undying love for me. But he did something almost as good. He posted a hot, hot, HOT vid of himself doing some manly work on a massive satellite thingy they use to hunt for aliens. Check it out here.”
Footage of Hudson standing on a ladder, holding a screwdriver, starts up. “Hello from Black Creek, California, where an early spring storm has hit. I’m here to learn all about the mechanical side of radio telescopes. I’m trying my hand at changing out something called a diaphragm pump. It’s basically a part used to keep the telescope from overheating, although we’re in no danger of that today.” The camera zooms in on the pump, then back to Hudson’s smiling face. “Anyway, back to it for this guy so we can get out of the cold. I’ll catch you later!”
