know Jonathan Bear,” Levi said.
That surprised her. “Do you?”
“I’m a couple years older than him, but we both grew up on the same side of the tracks here in town. You know, the wrong side.”
“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t realize.”
Dimly, she had been aware, on some level, that Levi was from here, but he had left so long ago, and he was so far outside of her own peer group that she would never have known him.
If he was older than Jonathan Bear, then he was possibly a good thirteen years her senior.
That made her feel small and silly for that instant response she’d had to him earlier.
She was basically a child to him.
But then, she was basically a child to most of the men in her life, so why should this be any different?
And she didn’t even know why it was bothering her.
She often designed buildings for old men. And in the beginning, it had been difficult getting them to take her seriously, but the more pieces that had been written about her, the more those men had marveled at the talent she had for her age, and the more she was able to walk into a room with all of those accolades clearly visible behind her as she went.
She was still a little bit bothered that her age was such a big deal, but if it helped...then she would take it. Because she couldn’t do anything about the fact that she looked like she might still be in college.
She tried—tried—to affect a sophisticated appearance, but half the time she felt like she was playing dress-up in a much fancier woman’s clothes.
“Clandestine architecture project?” he asked, the corner of his lips working up into a smile. And until that moment, she realized she had not been fully convinced his mouth could do that.
“Something like that.”
“Let me ask you this,” he said. “Why do you want to take the job?”
“Well, it’s like you said. I—I feel like I’m an important piece of the business. And believe me, I wouldn’t be where I am without Isaiah and Joshua. They’re brilliant. But I want to be able to make my own choices. Maybe I want to take on this project. Especially now that you’ve said...everything about needing it to be the opposite of a prison cell. I’m inspired to do it. I love this location. I want to build this house without Isaiah hovering over me.”
Levi chuckled, low and gravelly. “So he wouldn’t approve of me?”
“Not at all.”
“I am innocent,” he said. His mouth worked upward again. “Or I should say, I’m not guilty. Whether or not I’m an entirely innocent person is another story. But I didn’t do anything to my wife.”
“Your ex-wife?”
“Nearly. Everything should be finalized in the next couple of days. She’s not contesting anything. Mostly because she doesn’t want to end up in prison. I have impressed upon her how unpleasant that experience was. She has no desire to see for herself.”
“Oh, of course you’re still married to her. Because everybody thought—”
“That she was dead. You don’t have to divorce a dead person.”
“Let me ask you something,” she said, doing her best to meet his gaze, ignoring the quivering sensation she felt in her belly. “Do I have reason to be afraid of you?”
The grin that spread over his face was slow, calculated. “Well, I would say that depends.”
He shouldn’t toy with her. It wasn’t nice. But then, he wasn’t nice. He hadn’t been, not even before his stint in prison. But the time there had taken anything soft inside of him and hardened it. Until his insides were a minefield of sharpened obsidian. Black, stone-cold, honed into a razor.
The man he’d been before might not have done anything to provoke the pretty little woman in front of him. But he could barely remember that man. That man had been an idiot. That man had married Alicia, had convinced himself he could have a happy life, when he had never seen any kind of happiness come from marriage, not all through his childhood. So why had he thought he could have more? Could have something else?
“Depends on what?” she asked, looking up at him, those wide brown eyes striking him square in the chest...and lower, when they made contact with his.
She was so very pretty.
So very young, too.
Her pale, heart-shaped face, those soft-looking pink lips and her riot of brown curls—it all appealed to him in an instant, visceral way.
No real mystery, he supposed. He hadn’t touched a woman in more than five years.
This one was contraband. She had a use, but it wouldn’t be that one.
Hell, no.
He was a hard bastard, no mistake. But he wasn’t a criminal.
He didn’t belong with the rapists and murderers he’d been locked away with for all those years, and sometimes the only thing that had kept him going in those subhuman conditions—where he’d been called every name in the book, subjected to threats that would make most men weep with fear in their beds—was the knowledge that he didn’t belong there.
That he wasn’t one of them.
Hell, that was about the only thing that had kept him from hunting down Alicia when he’d been released.
He wasn’t a murderer. He wasn’t a monster.
He wouldn’t let Alicia make him one.
“Depends on what scares you,” he said.
She firmed those full lips into a thin, ungenerous line, and perhaps that reaction should have turned his thoughts in a different direction.
Instead he thought about what it might take to coax those lips back to softness. To fullness. And just how much riper they might become if he was to kiss them. To take the lower one between his teeth and bite.
He really wasn’t fit for company. At least not delicate, female company.
Sadly, it was delicate female company that seemed appealing.
He needed to go to a bar and find a woman more like him. Harder. Closer to his age.
Someone who could stand five years of pent-up sexual energy pounded into her body.
The sweet little architect he had hired was not that woman.
If her brothers had any idea she was meeting with him they would get out their pitchforks. If they had any idea what he was thinking now, they would get out their shotguns.
And he couldn’t blame them.
“Spiders. Do you have spiders up your sleeves?”
“No spiders,” he said.
“The dark?”
“Well, honey, I can tell you for a fact that I have a little bit of that I carry around with me.”
“I guess as long as we stay in the light it should be okay.”
He was tempted to toy with her. He didn’t know if she was being intentionally flirtatious. But there was something so open, so innocent, about her expression that he doubted it.
“I’m going to go sketch,” she said. “Now that I’ve seen the place, and you’ve sent over all the meaningful information, I should be able to come up with an initial draft. And then I can send it over to you.”
“Sounds good,” he said.