“I was having weird dreams, too. I thought a glass of wine would help put me back to sleep.” My tone was frostier than I meant for it to be, but old habits were hard to break. It was habit and it was armor.
She shifted her weight a little and again I was reminded of a timid woodland creature always ready to flee from danger. She was so pretty, so delicate, and no one should have had to endure the things this young woman had been through in her short lifetime. Poppy Cruz was only a few years younger than my own twenty-eight, but when her amber eyes assessed me with a knowing that felt ancient, it seemed like she was eons ahead of me in both life and experience. Even though I had been raised by a father who was a tyrant, and had had to put my mother, who loved him and tried to please him right up until her last breath, in the ground before I was old enough to drive. My formative years had been spent trying to live up to standards I could never reach and mourning the loss of a woman I loved and loathed equally.
“You’ve had a lot of sleepless nights since Zeb finished all the work on the house. You seem … unsettled.”
I wanted to roll my eyes in exasperation with myself but held it back. I shouldn’t seem any way to anyone. My cracks were starting to show and that unnerved me to no end.
Was “unsettled” another word for horny enough to climb the walls? Because if so, then yes, I was most definitely unsettled. And ridiculous. I’d never had the mere thought of a man distract me or cost me much-needed shut-eye before. I was supposed to have more restraint than that.
I dumped the broken glass in an extra plastic shopping bag and then tossed it all into the trash. It took a few more minutes to wipe up the wine that was on the floor and that had splattered on the cabinets and bottom of the fridge.
“I guess I got used to living in the chaos of construction. Everything seems so neat and tidy now. So new. I’m sure I’ll get used to it. This is my dream home, what I always wanted. I think maybe the fact I finally have it is still settling in. That’s all.” I had grown up in a home where what I wanted or needed wasn’t permitted, so the fact that I had something that was just mine, that was tangible, solid and real, something that was untouched from the taint of the past still took my breath away when I thought about it.
I made sure everything was back to being spotless and snatched a bottle of water out the fridge before turning back to Poppy, when she quietly said,
“I thought maybe you were missing having Zeb around. He’s kind of hard to ignore.”
He most assuredly was hard to ignore.
Tall, tattooed, and built like a guy who hauled heavy stuff around and swung a hammer like Thor should be, Zeb was impressive to say the least. But it went beyond the work-hardened muscles, low-slung tool belt and the flirty charm he liked to throw around so effortlessly. There was something rock steady and so certain that shined out of his dark green eyes when he looked at the world around him and the people in it. There was an inherent confidence and assuredness that poured off of him when he looked at a person, like he knew without a doubt whatever he was bringing to the table was a thousand times better than anyone else in the room. God, I could hardly handle how hot it was when he smiled and rubbed his hand over his neatly trimmed beard. Especially when that smile and a knowing smirk was directed right at me.
I had never been into beards, and. I always thought I preferred a well-groomed, well-dressed man. A man who looked great in a suit and tie and knew all about expensive cologne and hair product in the proper amounts.