“You’re still dressed for work,” she said, stating the obvious. He’d left the gun and badge in his house, though.
“Town council meeting tonight,” he said as he turned sideways to get past her. He carried an old-fashioned wooden toolbox in weathered gray. A hammer and a neatly organized set of wrenches lay on the top shelf, other tools stored in the compartment underneath. His broad shoulder brushed hers as he managed to avoid hitting her knees with the toolbox.
Every cell in her body lit up, and heat bloomed on her cheekbones. His gaze, normally so controlled, flicked down just enough to let her know he saw the blush. Silence. The air between them heated.
“I’ll just . . .” he said with a tilt of his head to the bathroom.
“Of course,” she replied, and stepped to the side to let him down the hall.
Her experience with Marissa Brooks and Adam Collins a few weeks after she had arrived taught her about small-town values, and gossip. After a tragic accident in high school, Adam Collins left town to join the Marine Corps. He returned to Walkers Ford a distinguished veteran and rekindled his relationship with Marissa, setting off a firestorm of gossip. Alana couldn’t just start up a torrid affair with a small-town chief of police. Yet she wondered how to tell him in no uncertain terms that she wanted to go to bed with him and stay there until she couldn’t remember her own name, preferably without sounding like a shameless tart.
A sophisticated woman would know how to go about this. Freddie could probably do it while polishing the paper for an international conference on human trafficking that Alana had researched and outlined for her two weeks ago. But Alana wasn’t Freddie, or her mother, or her stepfather, the former senator Peter Wentworth. In a family characterized by brilliance, wit, and a talent for far-reaching policy development, Alana was quiet, observant, content with the background. Just stand still and smile, her mother used to say with resignation. You have such a pretty smile. So her pretty smile graced the walls and corners, first of school dances and mixers, then college parties, then cocktail parties and receptions when she went to work for the Wentworth Foundation.
But not even time spent on the edge of the limelight matched the long, heated moments when Lucas Ridgeway gave her his full attention.
“It’s a budget meeting,” he said as he set down the toolbox. He shrugged out of his suit jacket and draped it over the linen closet’s doorknob.
“Oh. Of course.” Mayor Mitch Turner had asked her to update the former library director’s proposal to renovate and upgrade the town’s library, presumably to round out the town’s annual budget meeting.
The tiny, rose-pink bathroom was barely large enough for her to dry off after a shower. Lucas could brace one shoulder against the wall and rest his palm on the mirror opposite, something he’d done the day the pipe draining the shower cracked and leaked peach-scented water into the basement. He’d been cursing steadily and quite prolifically under his breath then, but not tonight.
He yanked the stopper free and peered into the drain. “It’s clogged.”
“I could use a drain cleaner.”
“It’ll eat right through the pipes,” he replied. “They’re seventy years old. Some weekend soon I’ll replace the drain line and the P-trap. Maybe that will help. In the meantime . . .”
He handed her the flashlight, then stretched out on his back and wedged his torso into the cabinet under the sink. One hand fumbled in the toolbox. He lifted his head to better see, banged his forehead on the cabinet, and grunted.
“Sorry,” Alana said hastily, and shone the light on the offending pipes.
It took only minutes to clear the pipe, then reattach the stopper to the drain lever, each stage punctuated by curt instructions given by the big male maneuvering in the small room. He twisted, his legs pushing against the opposite wall so his knee pressed into her shoulder.
“Do you wash your hair in the sink?” he asked.
“No,” she said, pulling a handful forward to consider it. It was thick and poker-straight, cut in a bob that swung just below her jawline. Its only redeeming characteristic was the natural, pale blond color. Freddie bemoaned her regular appointments with Chicago’s best hair salon to maintain the same shade. “There’s just a lot of it.”
“I can see that,” he said to the interior of the cabinet. His dress shirt pulled free from his pants, revealing the waistband of his dark blue boxers. A thin line of hair ran from his navel into the waistband. Muscles flexed as he tightened the joint, and with each moment the scent of male skin and laundry soap permeated the air.