Slamming her door shut, she crossed his side of the driveway and walked into the yard, her heels sinking into the soft grass. She grasped the edge of his open gate door. Instead of shutting it, however, and sliding the bolt into place, she hovered there thinking, biting her lip in contemplation.
She sent a glance over her shoulder as though she expected him to appear. Which was unnecessary. She would hear the motor of his bike pulling into their street. He would not magically manifest out of thin air.
Maybe it was the fact that she was home by 2 p.m. and she knew he wouldn’t be home anytime soon.
Maybe it was because he spent hours working in that shed and she simply felt compelled to make sure her neighbor wasn’t running a meth lab next door.
Hey, it could happen. If a well-respected chemistry teacher could turn into a meth cooker, then anyone could.
She snorted and stifled a laugh. Obviously last summer’s marathon of Breaking Bad still left its mark on her.
She tried to tell herself it was just about self-preservation. She was a lawman’s daughter, after all. And she was a social worker. Investigative instinct ran in her blood. The more she knew about him the better. The more she knew about him, the more at ease she would feel. And contrary to what her brothers and dad wanted, she was not selling her house and moving, so she needed to do whatever she could to feel more at ease.
The reality was . . . she just wanted to know what kept him so occupied in the backyard. She wanted to know what made him tick. She wanted to know him.
All that considered, she really didn’t intend to go fully into his yard.
She just wanted a closer glimpse of his workshop. But then she saw that the door to the shop was wide open. Wide open and beckoning to her. An invitation she couldn’t refuse.
With one last glimpse over her shoulder, she scurried across his freshly mowed yard. She noticed he was good about that. His grass never got overgrown and there wasn’t a weed in sight. He took care of his yard and home.
She stopped at the threshold of his shed and peered inside. Something large sat in the middle of the space. She angled her head, trying to make sense of the object in the midst of various machinery and equipment—all things she couldn’t even identify by name. She wasn’t good with knowing about tools and mechanical things.
It was large and made of different-colored metals. She stepped inside and walked around it. It was art. Very modern in sensibility. The central focus was a dog in midleap. There was a striped cat, too, swatting at the dog’s tail. He had used different shades of metal to create the striped effect. It was incredible. Curled at the base was another dog with sleepy, soulful eyes. The legs supporting the piece were several large copper goldfish. It was detailed and amazing. Even abstract, one got a sense of emotion from the expressions on the animals’ faces.
She reached out a hand and brushed it against the warm metal, a breath of awe escaping her.
“What are you doing in here?”
She whirled around with a yelp. North stood there, his big body framed in the hot afternoon sunlight. And speaking of hot . . .
Her face burned at being caught on his property. She felt cornered. The only way out was through him—this big, sexy man who filled her with far too many naughty thoughts.
“I—I—”
“Did you just walk into my backyard?” he asked evenly, that deep voice of his reverberating in the hot, still air of the shed.
She stammered some more. “N-no. The gate was open and then I saw that the shed door was open—”
“So you decided to trespass?” He stepped closer and the air just felt thicker, the space tight, his body bigger.
“I decided to be neighborly and—”
“And take the opportunity to snoop around?”
“No!” Yes. That was it exactly.
They stood there, neither budging. Silence stretched. She gazed uncomfortably into the dark brown pools of his eyes and shifted on her feet. She motioned lamely to the metal sculpture. “You built this.”
He didn’t respond to her noncomment, and that only made her feel all the more lame. Although, he wasn’t indifferent. A muscle feathered along the cheek of his strong jaw.
“It’s amazing,” she added. “Beautiful.”
He turned to stare at what he had created and some of the tension ebbed from his shoulders. “Yeah?”
“Yes. It really is. Is it for . . . you?”
“A veterinary clinic commissioned me to do it.”
He got paid for creating sculptures? For his welding? How many people could say that? And this guy had spent almost half his life in prison, no less.
She shook her head, marveling. He was more . . . so much more than she realized, and then she felt slightly ashamed. She didn’t really know anything about him. That being the case, she shouldn’t have such preconceived notions of who he was. She prided herself on being open-minded. On her job, she’d seen people with all odds stacked against them turn their lives around. Of course, she’d also seen the dregs of humanity just slide lower.
“That’s really . . . impressive,” she said.
He looked back at her, his gaze sharp. “You sound surprised,” he said flatly.