Page 7 of Heat Stroke

She looks at me and smiles. A real smile. Probably the first one she’s ever directed at me.

My stomach jumps. She’s beautiful. She’s sweaty and grimy… like me. Her white shirt is no longer white, but, she doesn’t seem to care. She’s stunning. She swipes at her cheek with the back of her hand as a trickle of sweat trails down its pinkness. It smears sawdust and dirt, but, she’s absolutelybeautiful.

Without even thinking about it, I reach out and use my thumb to rub the smear. She freezes and her breath catches as she stares at me with wide hazel eyes. As I stare back at her, I see them start to turn almost grey. She jerkily swallows as her eyes continue to swirl like the clouds before a heavy summer rainstorm.

The urge to kiss her echoes throughout my head like cheerleaders through a megaphone. I forget where we are. I forget what we’re doing. I forget that she hates me…

My head lower as hers seems to rise and then a loud crash has her jumping back as if I burned her. She wildly looks around as I slowly regain my composure and watch her. Her cheeks turn bright red instead of the flushed pink from the manual labor. She quickly stares at me with a look of complete confusion before turning on her heel and racing to the other end of the mill.

What the hell was that, Blaze?!

Exhaling as I rub the back of my neck, I mutter to myself, “Am I having a heat stroke?!”

Then, shaking it off and tossing a quick look at Wren, I see she’s talking animatedly to some of the guys. Seemingly over whatever craziness those few seconds were, I get back to work to finish pulling my order…

For the rest of the day, she does everything in her power to stay as far away from me as humanly possible while still working in the same space.

Chapter Three

Wren

It’s been twodays since I worked on Blaze’s order with him, back in the mill. I haven’t seen or heard from him since, yet, here I am, in my office, where I should be working on catching up on calls, messages, orders and invoices, thinking about him.

What the hell is wrong with me?

It’s not like I’m expecting to see or hear from him! I don’t want to!

I mean, why would I?!

He must not need anything for the community center build.

I don’t want to see him. It’s just that he’s back… so, I’m waiting for him to attempt to fuck up my life again…

Yes, that’s all it is.

It’s not like I WANT to see him…

That would be absolutely absurd.

Absurd.

As if.

Rolling my eyes at myself, I roll my shoulders and reach up to redo my messy bun. The elastic groans as I try to wrap it around my thick tresses three times before yanking on it to fluff it out a bit. Anything less and it laughs at me as my hair just falls everywhere.

My hair should really be called a mane.

Once it’s off my neck again, I reach for my keyboard and open the Excel document I’m using to track our outstanding invoices. Most are within their allotted payment times, but, I zoom in on the screen as I see one that stands out.

Sighing, I reach for the phone to call one of our oldest customers, a family friend and brilliant cabinet maker. He’s two months overdue on his invoice. I’d be willing to bet he just misplaced it. He’s more concerned about creating beautiful cabinets with wood than keeping up with his bills.

An hour later, I’m finally off the phone. As I suspected, he put the invoice down somewhere and that was that. He ended up telling me about a new style he’s trying out, and then, I talked to his son because he handed off the phone. His son is running the check over this afternoon. He apologized profusely, but it’s not that big of a deal. I knew he was good for the money.

My stomach growls, reminding me that I’ve been here since 8AM and all I’ve had was three cups of coffee. It’s now almost 2PM.

I feel like a good hamburger, so after grabbing my purse from my bottom drawer, I head across the street to the local meat market. Their hamburgers are the best around, and if I hurry, I can get one before the kitchen closes at 2:30.

Stepping outside, the heat slaps me in the face and steals the breath from my lungs. I immediately feel sticky.

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