Page 8 of Working for Keeps

I don’t think.

I lunge, boots skidding, and get my forearm across the small of her back before her spine hits the iron frame, her weight coming into me hard enough to take my wind.

“Got you.”

And then she’s against me, her heart going hard against my ribs through the silk, and three years of pretense goes out into the oily air of the factory floor.

Vera doesn’t pull back. Her hands grip my shoulders, her nails in the damp cotton of my henley like the floor will swallow her if she lets go.

Her breath is hot on my throat.

“I told you to watch your step down here.”

My hands are filthy. There’s black grease across the white silk of her shoulder where I’m holding her, but I don’t move my hand.

“Did you twist something?” It comes out sharper than I mean it to.

“My ankle.” Her eyes don’t leave mine. “It caught on the line.”

I go down on one knee with my arm locked around her hips, bracing her against my thigh to take the weight off the foot, and I take her ankle in my hand.

She’s in flats tonight, the skin above her heel bare.

My hand is stained with the grit of this valley. Her skin is warm enough to burn straight through the calluses.

I slide my thumb over the tendon, checking for swelling, and Vera makes a sound, her head falls back as her fingers tighten in my hair.

“Mick… please.”

“Does it hurt here?” I press my thumb a fraction deeper and trace a slow circle, letting her feel the friction of my hand.

“No.” Her eyes open, dark and heavy. “It doesn’t hurt. It just… it’s burning.”

“That’s not the ankle, Vera.”

I stand, lifting her with me, and my hand doesn’t leave her leg but slides up her calf, over her knee, and settles on her hip as I crowd her back against the steel framing of the line until she has to tilt her head all the way back.

The plant is dark and cold and the six inches between us is the only warm thing in the building.

“You shouldn’t have come down here tonight,” I say, my eyes on her mouth.

“I had to.” Her hands close on my chest, her fingers curling into the shirt. “I had to see it. I had to see you.”

“Then look,” I say, and close the distance.

Five

Vera

Idon’t know how long it goes on.

I know my back is against the cold steel of the assembly line and that my hands, which came up to push him away, are fisted in his henley instead. I know his palm is still slick with hydraulic fluid and that he is putting the whole filthy day of his hands onto the white silk of my blouse.

I also know I have never in my life wanted anything less than I want him to stop.

Mick doesn’t kiss like a man negotiating.

He never did.