knees—which was a shame. She’d have liked to see his thighs. Ruth loved thighs.
But she’d satisfy herself with what she could see, which was plenty. His golden skin glistened with tiny drops of water. They decorated his broad shoulders, his thick arms and solid torso, sliding over his tattoos. She rather liked those tattoos.
She’d thought about getting one herself, only the sound of the machine made her eyes blur. Clearly, Evan had no such problem, because the ink covering his arms adorned his chest, too—and those little drops of water gleamed over it all. Ruth imagined chasing the trails of moisture with her tongue.
Then Evan cleared his throat, and she snatched her gaze away.
For the first time, she focused on his face. Oh, dear. He was watching her with an expression she couldn’t decipher, his brows raised.
“You done?” he asked, his voice low.
“Quite,” she clipped out, absolutely mortified. She thrust the dish and comics forward, and promptly hit him in the stomach.
He didn’t even wince. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” I’m dying of embarrassment.
Laughter laced his voice as he asked, “Is there something on my chest?”
Ruth ground her teeth. “Actually, there is nothing on your chest.”
“Oh, I see. Is that why you’re blushing?”
“I am not blushing,” she gritted out. She was, but he had no way of knowing. Did he? “If you want to answer your door half-naked, that’s fine by me. Town Jezebel, remember?”
“Yeah, I don’t know about that.” He folded his arms, leaning lazily against the doorframe. His posture was always so perfect that this new position seemed dangerously calculated. “Are you retired?” he asked. “Reformed, perhaps? It’s just, you never seem to leave the house. So how are you—”
“I do leave the house,” she snapped. “I leave the house every Sunday.”
“Church?” he enquired mildly.
She glowered. “Sunday dinner. At my mother’s.”
“Ah,” he said. “Sunday dinner with your mother. How scandalous.”
“Will you take your bloody dish?”
He looked down at her—or rather, at the Pyrex dish she was waving. He seemed bigger than he had before, maybe because there were no clothes to hide the raw power of all that muscle. Ruth wasn’t sure; she just knew the sight of him was making her mouth weirdly dry and her knees worryingly weak.
Beneath that thick, dirty-blonde beard, his lips curled into a slow smile. “Did you like the lasagne?”
“Yes,” she ground out.
“And you’re bringing me more comics, I see.”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to know what I thought of the first ones?”
That brought her up short. Did she want to know?
Maybe. It hadn’t occurred to her that he’d have any opinion to offer—which was ridiculous. Of course he’d have an opinion. Everyone had opinions.
But no-one ever seemed to have an opinion on the things she cared about—aside from, “That’s stupid”. The only people in this town who wanted to debate comics were the kids at the local library, and Ruth hadn’t volunteered there since… well. Since before.
But there was no use thinking about that now.
She studied Evan’s soft smile, the clear, bright blue of his eyes. He was basically an overgrown Cub Scout with unreasonable muscle definition. He wouldn’t be cruel to her, would he?
Probably, her mind said.
She ignored it. “Okay.”
He stepped back, opening the door completely, and said, “Come in.”
Oh. Oh. She hadn’t expected that.
Ruth couldn’t back down, and she couldn’t show weakness. Especially not her weakness, the sort that other people didn’t understand. If she said, Oh, I thought you were suggesting that we talk in the future, and I planned to prepare for that interaction in advance because I have to plan most conversations very carefully so that I don’t freak other people out… Well, he’d probably be freaked out.
So she walked into his flat and tried not to jump as he shut the door behind them.
Evan led her into a living room that was the mirror image of her own—but much tidier and better decorated. He said, “Hang on; I’ll be back in a second.” Then he disappeared down the hall, hopefully to get dressed.
Because as much as she enjoyed staring at his near-nudity, it wouldn’t help her a bit when it came to decent conversation.
Ruth put the dish and the comics down on his low, glass coffee table, staring at the flat screen TV mounted on the wall. She didn’t have a TV. She only ever watched Netflix on her laptop.
For the first time in a while, she realised how strange she must seem.
This was one of the many, many reasons she didn’t talk to other people. Why she