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His arm tightened around my back before his hand found my waist and nudged me away. He averted his gaze to the yard as he took a step back. “Send me the address, and I’ll meet you there tomorrow at five.”
Clapping my hands together, I went back to the swing and scooped up my keys.
“Wait a minute,” he said, carrying his glass back into the house and returning thirty seconds later with a key in his hand. “You’ll need this to get in during the day.”
When Reed put the silver house key in the palm of my hand, a buzz of awareness rippled through me. Now one of his secrets was mine as well. A mellow warmth seeped right into my bones.
I quickly slid the key onto my keyring and looked up to find him examining me closely. He often wore this expression when he looked at me, full of intense scrutiny and a deeper emotion akin to compassion. Or admiration?
Yes, he was my brother’s best friend and he’d treated me like his little sister all my life, but that wasn’t what I felt when he looked at me this way. And I definitely had zero sisterly feelings for him.
Seeming to catch himself, he cleared his throat and took a step back. “I’ll see you tomorrow at five.”
“Tomorrow,” I agreed with a smile then turned and hopped down his porch steps.
As the last sliver of sunlight slipped behind the trees, I felt the thrilling weight of Reed’s gaze hot and heavy on me as I walked away.
Chapter Three
~REED~
To sayI’d been distracted today was an understatement. I’d missed my Wednesday morning meeting with Hale and his other foreman Bernard. We always had a mid-week morning check-in on our jobs since we each led our own crews. But I’d totally spaced today.
Wonder why.
Hale didn’t call me on it, but he did give me the side-eye when I was only half listening to him go over the inventory coming in for the residential job I was in charge of this month. I was unfocused, but there was no way to snap out of it. Not when I knew I’d be seeing her today.
Shoving my truck into park in the plaza right next to Anna’s car, I then jogged across the street, pulse jackhammering hard. The front windows were still covered in blinds, the logo for Romero Brothers Insurance still embossed on the glass door. I pushed the door open to the sound of loud banging and Billie Eilish playing on blast. I smiled till I rounded the corner and saw her.
Sweaty and her threadbare pink T-shirt sticking to her torso, she was bended over and swinging a sledgehammer at a partition wall. Her short denim cut-offs rode so high I nearly choked on my tongue. I had to close my eyes and count to ten so my dick wouldn’t be a giant bulge in my jeans by the time she noticed me.
Snap!
I lunged forward as the half-wall collapsed with Anna on top of it, unable to stop her momentum.
“You okay?” I plucked her up by the waist with one arm and took the sledgehammer from her with the other hand. I scowled at the fact she hadn’t even been wearing gloves, which was dangerous for demo work
“Oh!” Her eyes widened as she looked over her shoulder and wrapped her fingers around my forearm, seeming to hold me there rather than push me away.
Realizing I had her crushed back against my chest for no reason other than to reassure myself she hadn’t been injured, I reluctantly let her go.
Her hair pulled back in a ponytail as usual, she tucked some stray locks of dirty-blonde hair behind her ears. She blinked nervously then walked over to her phone where it was playing through a Bluetooth speaker and tapped it off.
Wiping away the divine sensation of having her body pressed to mine for even a fleeting few seconds, I turned to the space. “Wow.”
“Yeah,” she laughed, “I know it looks bad, but I’ve got a dumpster in the back alley till Friday.”
“Did you not think I’d come?”
“I knew you would,” she said evenly, “but I want to do my part. I don’t want you to do all the work.”
Tracking back down her mostly bare, sweaty body, I then forced myself to look away and around the room. She’d managed to get two partition walls down on her own. One cubicle office.
“Give me the sledgehammer.” I removed my work shirt, wearing a tight undershirt beneath, and pulled the work gloves on that I’d stuffed in my back pocket.
She handed the sledgehammer over, her eyes averted, the tips of her ears pink.
The tension that had always lived between us sizzled brighter without the buffer of her family in the room. We were rarely alone together. If so, it was me grabbing a beer out of her parents’ fridge while she bustled around the kitchen. Or during holiday gatherings, when we’d accidentally bump into each other in the hallway if I went to the bathroom. Us working together—alone—on a secret project was new. Brand new.
