I hadn’t slept at all. In my mind, the man swung from the tree all night. “You live with your grandmother instead of your parents?”
“We escaped from Cuba when I was little. My parents are still there.” Pain. It so often led to avoidance. “Have you always lived in Ivy Springs?”
“No. We moved here when Dad took a job at Cameron College.” I shut the refrigerator door. “But this house has been in my dad’s family for generations.”
“Nice.”
There were a couple of awkward seconds of staring—neither one of us knew where to look—but I could sense Lily trying really hard not to look at my bare chest or tattoos.
Instead of going upstairs for a shirt like a normal person, I reached for the hook magnet on the side of the fridge, grabbed my kiss the cook apron, and slid it over my head.
“Are you kidding me?” Lily’s eyebrows almost met her hairline.
“No. I’m … hungry.” Suddenly desperate to make the apron look somewhat normal, I took a coated cast-iron pan down from the rack over the kitchen island. “As for the apron, I like cooking. I like kissing. I like giving orders. About both.”
I stared at her until she blushed.
“You okay with garlic?” I snagged a bulb from the counter and held it up. A piece of papery-thin skin fluttered to the floor.
“On your breath or in my food?”
Solid comeback.
I grinned. “In case I have enough leftovers for a doggie bag.”
“If ‘doggie bag’ is meant to be an insult, up yours.”
I clicked on the burner under the pan, squeezed a clove of garlic through a press, and then added chopped onions and red peppers from my stash in the fridge. After dropping in a couple of tablespoons of butter, I set the flame to medium.
“Why are you being … well, not nice, but not completely hateful?” Her cheeks were still flushed.
“I’m not good with mornings. I need a full belly to crank up to bad-boy mode.” I looked at her from the corner of my eye. “I wouldn’t stick around for lunch.”
“Not in a million years.” She leaned forward in her seat, tapping her fingers on the table. Working up to something. “Em said that your parents are travelers, just like Michael and her.”
“That’s true.”
“That made me wonder …”
“Wonder what?” I asked.
“I want to know what your ability is.”
“Wow.” I grabbed a spatula and shifted the vegetables in the pan. “Such subtlety. Never would’ve expected it from you.”
“You found out about me by eavesdropping.” She shrugged. “I thought I’d keep it classy and ask.”
I rested my elbows against the kitchen island, ducking my head to avoid the pot rack. “Empathy. Sensing people’s emotions. Mostly of people I know, but even those I don’t—if I touch them.”
an attached to the gun came into view next.
“We don’t take to thieves here.” He leaned the gun against the trunk of the tree as he took the rope and tied it tightly, working it into the grooves of the bark. “Not of our livestock or our women.”
“I didn’t touch your wife.”
The sound of the shotgun pump echoed across the empty landscape. Lily’s shoulders jerked at the sound.
“I didn’t, and I’m not a thief. I thought it was my horse, I thought …” Desperation tainted the excuse. Sweat beaded on the thief’s forehead.