Page 35 of The Complete Truth Duet
“Thirty-seven,” I answered.
Her back shot straight, her head tipped back, and she aimed those dark-blue eyes, the ones that I feared would be my undoing, up at me. With two simple words, you would have thought I’d given her the world.
Her mouth split, revealing a brilliant, white smile that crushed my chest.
“He speaks,” she teased.
“Occasionally.” I turned my attention back to the ceiling fan.
“Thirty-seven, huh? Well, you don’t look that old.”
“She lies,” I mocked.
She giggled, soft and sweet, like I was learning everything about Cora was. She went back to trying to scrub the finish off the countertop. “So you know how to rip out walls, fix pipes, and hang ceiling fans. There has to be a job market for that out there? I get Drew. He’s fresh out of jail, and he was tight with Manuel, but why are you here?”
“To work.”
“You owe Manuel any favors?”
“No.”
“Does he have any dirt on you?”
“No.”
“On the run from a woman?”
My chest locked up tight. She had no fucking idea.
“No,” I semi-lied.
“Have you ever been to rehab? If so, for what drugs? Or was it alcohol? Any twelve-step programs in your past?”
“No. No. No. And No.”
She remained eerily quiet as I twisted the last screw in. When my peripheral vision told me it was safe, I glanced to see what had suddenly bought me the silence.
She had her head stuck inside the fridge. After a loud sniff, she shuddered and her long blond curls shook. “Holy shit. I think that milk was produced by the very first cow God created.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to hide my smile. It did not help my case when she was cute.
Without warning—thus without giving me time to prepare—she peeked over her shoulder and caught me looking.
“Are you smiling?”
So, apparently, biting my cheek didn’t help.
I forced my lips flat. “No.”
She crinkled her nose.
So. Fucking. Cute.
“Holy shit, the ever-stoic Penn Walker has facial muscles!”
I’ll be damned if I didn’t smile again.
She gasped, dramatically bringing her hand to her chest. “Dear Lord, he gives me an encore.”
I chuffed. “Jesus, you really are crazy.” Desperate for an escape—and a way to hide my growing grin—I shoved the screwdriver into my pocket, my head down like a moron, and turned away… “Fuck!” I boomed, my elbow landing hard on the floor.
The screwdriver stabbed through my pocket and into my thigh, causing a blast of pain to radiate through my entire lower body.
“Oh my God!” She jogged over and dropped into a squat beside me.
I pushed up onto my good elbow and grumbled, “I’m fine.”
“Did you slip?”
No, I was gawking at you and forgot I was standing four rungs up on a ladder.
“Yeah,” I replied instead of sharing that fun little tidbit.
She used the fingers of her gloves to pull them off. “Are you okay?”
With her that close? Not even a little bit. “Course.”
Cora was all kinds of beautiful. Any man with two eyes could recognize that from across a football field. But, with only inches between us, she was a different kind of beautiful.
She was real.
Not a job.
Not a plan.
She was just…
“Penn, roll over. Let me look at your leg. Shit, you’re bleeding.” She angled her body forward until she was all I could see.
I should have closed my eyes. Done the whole one-in-one-out thing.
I should have focused on the past. I’d been all too good at fixating on that for the last four years.
Instead, I stared.
Faint pink painted the skin beneath a light peppering of freckles on her cheeks. She had this tiny mole just below her bottom lip. Being that she was a woman, she probably hated it. And for that assumption alone, I fucking loved it.
A soft floral scent ever so slightly tainted by bleach wafted off her. It was a cheap store-brand lotion. I’d seen it in her bathroom once. But, on Cora, it was better than any high-price perfume I’d ever smelled.
Her silky, blond curls trailed over my forearm, causing the hollow ache in my chest to travel below the belt.
And when she looked up at me, her blue eyes sparkled in a way that made me wonder how spectacular they would look fluttering shut as I drove inside—
“Take your pants off,” she ordered.
“Excuse me?” I scrambled away, the damn screwdriver stabbing me all over again. Rolling to the side, I dug the bastard from my pocket and dropped it to the floor.
“I can’t see anything with your pants on.”
Wincing, I tried to stand. “You can see more than enough.”
In a real stinger to the ego, she grabbed my arm and helped me to my feet. “Stop being a baby. I’ve seen men’s underwear before.”
“Not mine,” I defended.
Bringing a hand to her mouth, she tried to hide her humor. It was useless in muffling her laugh.
“I’m serious,” I told her. “I’m not taking my damn pants off.”
