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“Shirt.”

“So this is your private dress code.”

Kell adjusts one cuff with complete confidence. “Yes.”

“I’m glad we’ve established standards.”

He moves toward the mirror near the entry table and adjusts the jacket again. One side of the collar has folded under instead of lying flat.

“Hold still.”

I step closer and reach for the folded edge of the collar. The leather is warm from his body. I straighten it, but one corner has caught against the weave at the base of his neck. My fingertips brush the willow there.

The contact is nothing like skin. The older brown strands are smooth in places and faintly ridged in others, firm beneath my fingers but not rigid. Narrower green growth threads between them, cooler and more supple. One tiny shoot bends under the side of my finger and slowly presses back when I ease away.

I could move my hand. I know I should. The collar is fixed. There is no practical reason to continue touching him.

Instead, I run my fingertips once along the edge I just straightened and let them settle against the living weave beneath it. I’m not pretending this is about his jacket anymore.

Kell’s head turns slightly toward my hand. His eyes drop to where my fingers rest against his neck, then return to my face.

I’ve touched him before. Friday night, my knuckles brushed his waist while I tied that ridiculous scarf around him. I was thinking about knots, coverage, and the fact that a naked man had just formed in my kitchen.

I wasn’t thinking about this when I reached for the jacket, but now the open sides leave his chest only inches from mine. Heat comes off him through my blouse, and when I draw my next breath, my chest nearly brushes his. Kell doesn’t move away. Neither do I. The longer I leave my hand there, the less accidental the touch becomes.

Finally, I lower it. Kell’s gaze follows the movement. “Your fingers got warmer.”

Heat climbs into my face immediately, which is spectacularly unhelpful. “That happens.”

“Why?”

I fold my arms, mostly because my hands need something to do. “You’ll figure it out.”

He’s quiet long enough that I have to face him again. He’s watching me with the same direct concentration he gave the toaster, the paints, and the boots. Except there is nothing uncertain in his expression now. The heat in my face deepens when he says, “I think I am.”

Chapter Eight

Kell

Tuesday evening, I hear Laura’s steps outside and go to the door. Yesterday I opened it before she got her key into the lock. Today I do the same.

Laura is standing on the other side with three shopping bags looped over one arm and a stack of canvases tucked under the other. She stops when she sees me.

Her gaze moves over the black jeans, then up my bare chest. Then back to my face.

Something changes low in my body. A new pressure gathers beneath the jeans.

I look down.

That is new.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi.”

I take the canvases before she can argue. They are all larger than the paint-by-number canvas, but not by much. Six altogether, in a couple of different sizes.

“Mine?”