AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The man seemed amused. “I will. You can stay and watch, if you like.”
I bristled. “No, thanks. I’m… very busy. With an important work project of my own.”
He pursed his mouth. “What do you do?”
“I… would rather not discuss my work.” Was that my voice sounding so prim?
He smiled. “A woman of mystery.”
I balked. “I like my privacy.”
Sawyer inclined his head. “Understood. Sorry to pull you away from your important work project.”
I was nodding again. “I should get back to it.”
“Okay. Don’t let me keep you.”
At this point, the heroine in one of my books would’ve made a dramatic exit that left her adversary marveling at her wit and intellect or athletic prowess. I turned and marched back to the bicycle, mounted awkwardly, wobbled, and pedaled away.
July 7, Sunday
MY ENCOUNTER with Sawyer King was still pinging at me the next morning when his pickup rolled by the house toward the cemetery. I felt like an idiot for misinterpreting his good deed, and for overreacting when he asked about my vocation.
So I’d decided to take him a peace offering of fresh chicken eggs.
I was afraid the eggs wouldn’t survive the bike ride over the rutted road, so I walked the short distance, with a little basket under my arm, feeling like Laura Ingalls Wilder. When I reached the metal gate I’d unlocked a few hours earlier, I almost turned back. Sawyer was erecting a tall wooden tripod over the pieces of the monolithic monument he’d been working on yesterday, which now lay in three pieces on a blue tarp. He was shirtless and his muscled back was shiny with sweat. The faded jeans he wore rode low on his hips. The moisture evaporated from my mouth.
This was a bad idea.
I turned to go, but I stepped on a twig and when it snapped it sounded to my ears like a gunshot.
He turned around and just as I feared, his front was as moist as his back. Except with a light matting of dark hair that had fallen out of trend in wake of manscaping tools and Instagram posing.
But I confess I prefer the natural look.
“Hey,” he said with a wave.
“Hi,” I said.
He stepped away from the wood contraption and reached for a T-shirt hanging on a wheelbarrow. I know he was trying to be respectful, but stretching high to don the shirt and pull it over his shoulders pushed the PG-13 exposure into R-rated territory.
I squeezed my eyes closed.
“You okay?”
I opened my eyes, then rubbed at one of them. “Forgot my sunglasses.”
“You should get a hat.”
“A hat?”
He gave a little shrug. “You look like a hat person.”
My lips parted. I owned at least fifty hats, but I couldn’t bring myself to wear them in public.
“What’s in the basket?”
“Hm?”
