In that single word—no—I heard a trace of Scotland and his skin has the weathered nature of someone from that far-away country. Shaped by the cold.
He’s extremely tall. Built like a tank. So much bigger than me, it would be comical if we weren’t strangers, alone. If I hadn’t been taught to be terrified of anyone or anything unfamiliar. But I have—and my feet are growing restless to run. So I get up from the bench and circle around back, putting it between us, my hand pressed to my racing heart.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?”
As soon as I stood, he stopped in his tracks. Now, he holds up his hands, as if showing me he’s no threat. Yeah, sure. He could bulldoze me. “I’m Duncan. I’m here to help you pack up the artwork.”
Oh.
That’s right.
I wasn’t expecting it to happen so soon, but my uncle’s final wish was to have the artwork donated to a gallery in the city. The building and grounds have been left to me. But the artwork has to go. It’s highly valuable and has to be packed with the utmost care by an expert. “Of course,” I say, wetting my lips. “I didn’t…expect you to arrive so fast.”
A rumble sounds off in his thick chest. “Here I am.”
“Yes. There you are,” I say, sounding out of breath. Am I?
Yes, I can’t seem to drag enough into my lungs. Has the temperature risen?
The way he’s watching me, steadily, without blinking, as if trying to read my mind…there’s something intimate about it. Intensely intimate, especially for me, who has never had more than a brief, cursory conversation with another human being.
“Would you like to sit down?” I manage to say, though my throat is parched.
Slowly, Duncan nods.
And we both approach the bench from opposite sides, my neck craning the closer we get until my head is all the way back. I’m like a child looking up at an adult, instead of an eighteen-year-old looking up at a man nearing his forties. Again, I’m struck by the fact that he could squash me like a bug. Oddly, though…I feel confident he won’t. His hands are still up to show me he’s safe, his Adam’s apple stuck mid-bob, eyelids at half-mast. Power at rest.
If I told him to kneel, we would be eye to eye. Would he? Would he…kneel?
I sit down quickly when my sex heats and clenches.
Wicked girl.
Wicked female.
I didn’t even have to go outside into the world to become one. It’s just my character.
“I’m sorry for behaving so strangely,” I say, looking down at the ground where my bare toes press into the grass. “It has been a long day. A long week, really.”
“Yes.” He sits down beside me, hesitantly, as if unsure whether or not the stone will hold someone his size. “I’m sorry for the loss of your uncle.”
“Thank you.” I swallow hard and extend my hand. “I’m Thea.”
He stares at my hand for several beats, his chest rising up and plummeting down. “I’m Duncan,” he rasps, finally slipping his hand around mine, setting off a series of muscle spasms beneath my belly button. At least, I think that’s what they are. I’ve never felt them so deeply before. So anxiously.
“How long do you think it will take you to pack up everything?”
A line moves in his cheek. “Four days. Possibly five.”
“That long?” My pulse is tripping over itself at the idea of being around him for so many hours when he’s causing these drastic plummets and lifts in my belly. “Do you have someone here to help you? Or…is it just going to be the two of us?”
His voice abrades me like sandpaper, his gaze walking up the curve of my calf muscle and resting on my knee. “The two of us.”
In this whole huge, sprawling gallery.
Me and him.
“Oh,” I breathe, wishing I knew more about small talk and how to make it. “Maybe you can tell me about what the outside is like.”
I blurt the suggestion as fast as I can, saying a silent apology to Uncle Gardner. He didn’t like it when I told people that I never leave the gallery or our residence upstairs. I’ve always wanted to know what the world is like outside these walls, though. I remember a lot about it, but with every passing year, my memories start to merge with scenes from movies, until I’m not sure which is real and which I’m weaving together with film.
“Why don’t I just bring you outside?” Duncan suggests, his Scottish accent knitted into his vowels. Why doonah just bring ye outside. “It’s just over that wall.”
“Oh no.” I shake my head, my throat closing in on itself. “No, I won’t go out there.”
“Why not?”
He must know, right? He lives out there. “There are a lot of bad people outside of the gallery. My uncle showed me every day, the things that happen in the news. People planting bombs and stealing identities and murdering members of their own family.”