There were a man’s size fourteen boots in her kitchen. Ruby frowned, dang near gnawed her bottom lip off, and tried to calm her flipping stomach. Well, to be honest, there were a man’s size fourteen boots and a pair of gigantic, beaten up Wranglers, bent at the knee. And a pair of legs inside those Wranglers. Hell. There was a whole damn man in her kitchen. But half of him was underneath her kitchen sink.

After her meeting, she’d run a few quick errands and then headed down to the waterfall. Where nothing happened, as usual. Except today she’d stayed about two hours later than she usually stayed. She didn’t like to be in the woods after dark, and she usually wasn’t. But she’d known that Ansel was going to be doing those repairs after he was done with the workday and she wanted to be good and sure he was gone when she got back.

But he wasn’t. Gone, that is. He was there. On his back on her kitchen floor.

Even if she hadn’t seen him, she would have been able to smell him. Cedar and evening air and clean sweat. The man sure had presence.

Ruby stood, frozen, at the entrance to her kitchen, completely unsure of what to do next. Any of the easiness she’d begun to feel a touch of that morning was completely gone. She felt even more off-kilter than she used to, years ago, when he’d done the renovations to the house. Because back then, Griff was around. Back then, Ansel wasn’t the first other person to be in her house in a year. She’d gotten used to the dead quiet, the chronic, aching loneliness. Having someone else in the house, especially someone like Ansel Keto, made her feel like there wasn’t enough air for the both of them.

“Hey,” he said in that tight-jawed, gravelly way. He must have spotted her feet. She expected him to slide out from under the sink, but he just kept working.

“Hey,” she echoed, sliding off her flats and kicking them back toward the front door. Her bag she tossed onto the bench that ran along the kitchen wall. Her hands fussed with her dress. “I didn’t think you’d still be here.”

She wasn’t sure if that sounded rude or not, but she couldn’t take it back now.

“Work ran a little long.” Intentionally. He’d killed time at Arla’s so that he could make sure he’d be at Ruby’s when she was there. Maybe catch himself a dinner invitation. But man, he’d paid dearly for that little maneuver. Arla Weaver, sensing that he was stalling for time, took it to mean something quite different than he did. That woman was strong. He’d had to use both hands to pry her legs from around his waist and her arms from around his neck.

He figured it was worth it, though, now that he could see Ruby’s bare feet, her red toenails bright against the faded blue tile of her kitchen floor.

“Alright.” Her feet shifted and Ansel, with his refined shifter senses, could hear her heart rate pick up. She was nervous. Years ago, when he’d first developed a crush on her, he would have taken it as his cue to leave. He didn’t want to make her uncomfortable. But now, he thought he might stick around a little. See if he couldn’t figure out exactly which way he was making her nervous.

“Can I ask you something?” He fiddled with the leaky pipe, almost done fixing it.

“Sure.”

“How is it that you can cook without even being home?” She had something stewing in the slow cooker on the counter that had been percolating all day, and the scent had been making his stomach grumble for the last hour as he’d fixed the lightbulb and the sink.

She let out a light, surprised little laugh and he watched her feet move toward the counter. He heard her lift the lid and then set it back down. “It’s just the crock pot. It’s how I usually make dinner. I throw things in in the morning so it’s all ready by the time I get home.”

“Well,” he said, sliding out from under the sink and wiping his hands on a rag. “Whatever it is, you sure know how to drive a man crazy.”

Her cheeks went that rosy red he liked so much and she slid herself back toward the counter as Ansel sat up. He leaned one elbow on each knee. He figured he couldn’t intimidate her if he was sitting at her feet. But still, there was that heart rate of hers, each beat racing the next.

She took a deep breath, her eyes on his boots, and said something he knew she was saying only out of sheer politeness. “Would you like some? It’s chicken stew. I’m sure you’re hungry after a long day.”

“Yes,” he said immediately. “I would love some.”

She nodded once and then turned toward the cabinet, pulling out a Tupperware. Ansel deflated. She wasn’t inviting him to dinner, she was gonna send him on his way with some food. He knew it was a jerk move, but he decided to press on her politeness a bit more. “Mind if I borrow a fork, too? I’m so hungry I’m just gonna eat it in the truck on the way home.”

“Oh.” She paused. Her hand trembled once. And then she put the Tupperware back in the cabinet. “You might as well just eat here then.”

Ding ding ding! Ansel restrained the urge to take a bow. He’d just wrangled himself a dinner invite.

She had to cross the kitchen to get the proper plates and as she went he held a hand out to her. She paused, standing in front of him, before she realized he was asking for a hand off of the ground.

Damn, she looked so pretty. So pretty he wanted to pick her like a flower. Press his nose into the length of her neck, really just get lost in that scent of hers. She stood there, her dress swirling around her knees, her feet bare, and that little, adorably perplexed look on her face as she stared down at his extended hand.

Slowly, she slipped both her small, soft hands over his one extended hand. She slid one into his palm, and the other over the back. Ansel bit back a slew of curse words. It was the first time they’d touched hands since he’d introduced himself as her new carpenter. Her touch both inflamed and instantly soothed him. He felt, in that first, incendiary moment of contact, more like a wild animal than he did when he was in his grizzly form. He fought the urge to give her a good tug, send her tumbling down into his lap where he could lap her up like a bowl of milk.

Ruby shifted her weight back and tugged, trying to lift him up, but it was like tugging on the side of a house. The dang thing was not going to budge. He smiled at her feeble attempt and on the second one, used his own strength to drag himself up. Ruby was a little surprised when he actually pulled down on her. A little harder than she might have thought. But he was a big man and she was a little woman; what was rough for her was probably downright gentle for him.

When he came to stand fully, it was closer than he’d ever stood to her before and Ruby could feel the heat kicking off of his monstrously large body. She was eye level with his pecs, which were pretty much straining against the confines of his shirt. Again, she caught sight of just the edge of whatever tattoo he had on his chest and for the first time, curiosity burned over it.

And that was just the right word, because suddenly, she felt like she was burning right up. There was a heat coming from him and strangely enough, there was a heat coming from her as well. She felt as if a furnace had kicked on inside of her. “It’s… it’s warm in here,” she stuttered. “Mind if we eat on the porch?”

“Not at all. I’m just gonna wash up real quick.”

He disappeared into the bathroom and Ruby quickly scanned her brain, wondering if she’d left any of her delicates out to dry. She had a washing machine and dryer in the back mudroom, but she didn’t like to put her nicer things through that. It was with a sinking heart that she realized that she most likely had left one of her bras over the shower rod. Oh well.

She pulled out bowls for the stew and served it up, setting two glasses of iced tea and a hunk of bread she’d made the other day onto a big tray.

“I’ll take that,” he said from the doorway of the kitchen. He strode in and took the tray, and Ruby followed him out to the porch. She noticed that the collar of his shirt was wet and so was his hair. She was oddly touched by the thought that he’d washed up so thoroughly, even smoothing his hair back with water just to sit down for dinner. He really was such a polite man, which was an almost strange contrast to his sheer size, his all-consuming presence.

She didn’t have a porch swing, so Ansel set the tray of food down on the top step and settled himself halfway down, letting his long legs trail down the stairs. He felt a drop of water from his hair slide down the tense line of his back and he was grateful for the coolness of it. He felt like he was about to burst into flames. From her nearness and from the memory of that little red scrap of something girly she’d had over her shower rod. He had no earthly clue why women did that with their unmentionables, and prior to today, he hadn’t really cared. But three minutes ago, he’d had to splash cold water all over his damn head just to keep from staring at it.

Bra or underwear? he wondered to himself as his pants became uncomfortably tight. He forced the thought away when he realized that she’d spoken and he hadn’t heard it.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” He chugged half his glass of iced tea in one go.

She passed him a bowl of food, broke the hunk of bread in half and stuffed it in on top of the stew. “I said thank you, for everything you did for me today. I know we’re pretending like there’s some sort of exchange here, but it really was generous of you to help me out so much.”

Ansel frowned as he took his first few bites. “Ruby. It’s the least I could do. Wow. Goddamn. This is delicious. Holy hell, you gotta give me this recipe.”

She smiled as he shoveled more food into his mouth. “You cook?”

He nodded, his eyes still on his bowl like he thought it might disappear if he gave it the chance. “We all do.”

‘All’ meant him and his siblings, she knew. The Keto family was the subject of a lot of gossip. She didn’t partake in gossip generally, considering she was the source of so much of it these days. But prior to Griff’s disappearance, she’d heard a great deal about them. They were all single, all terribly good-looking, and lived scattered around the hills. One of them, she was pretty sure one of the girls, lived in the city. But the rest had their own cabins. Ansel included.

“Well, I can’t give you the recipe, I’m sorry to say.”

He looked up at her like she’d just dumped his Christmas present into a trash can. “Why’s that?”

She shrugged. “There is no recipe. I just dumped a bunch of stuff into the crockpot this morning.”

He gaped at her for a second before setting his jaw in that way of his. “Alright. We’re gonna reverse engineer it then.” He took a bite, but this time he didn’t wolf it down. “So, chicken obviously. Can or two of stewed tomatoes. Then what’s that? Cumin? Yeah. Touch of cinnamon. Garlic.”

He proceeded to guess all of the ingredients that she’d included in the stew, though Ruby wouldn’t have remembered half of them if he hadn’t mentioned them.

“Wow,” she lifted her eyebrows, totally impressed. “You’ve got quite the tongue.”

She blushed down to the roots of her hair and Ansel resisted the urge to tease her about the comment. If only she knew how talented his tongue actually was.

He shrugged. “I’ve got great senses.” Understatement of the century. “Good night vision. Good hearing. That kind of thing.”

Ruby nodded, scraping the last spoonful of stew out of her bowl. “So does my brother.”

She froze. She never casually brought up Griff. Not in a year. And it was both painful and relieving to do so now. She still had a few friends in Brooklyn that she kept in touch with, but they were too nervous to bring him up. And almost everyone around here completely avoided her now. There was no one to talk about Griff to, even if she’d wanted to. She glanced up at Ansel to see if the mention of Griff had made him uncomfortable.

“I remember that,” he said easily. “When he’d be here, helping me out with whatever job I was working on, he could always hear your car from way down the road. Know you were coming.”

“Yeah. He’s impossible to sneak up on. I used to try my hardest to surprise him, but he’d always turn around and spook me in the process.”

They both grinned at that. Ruby’s grin fell away first. Her chest cramped. Sometimes she missed her brother so much she couldn’t breathe.

Her breath flooded her lungs as Ansel pressed the back of his hand to the back of hers. An unusual way of touching someone, oddly intimate and impersonal at the same time. “I’m so sorry about Griff, Ruby. I’m so sorry I couldn’t find him.”

Ruby snapped her head up at that; what a strange way to word that. “Were you part of the search parties? I– I don’t remember much about those few weeks.”

He nodded slowly. “I was. My brother and sisters, too. We couldn’t stand by, knowing such a good kid was missing.”

Ruby brusquely brushed at her eyes, but they were dry. They were always dry these days. “It’s nice to hear you say that. ‘Good kid’. Sometimes I feel like people think of him poorly now. It’s like the strange circumstances of his disappearance make them suspicious of him.” And me, she added in her head.

“Nah,” Ansel said as he set his empty bowl aside, reached for his cup of iced tea. “He’s a good kid. Through and through. Getting himself lost doesn’t change that one bit.”

Ruby felt the strangest feeling rise up within her. It was like she was filling and emptying at the exact same moment. Half of her, the half that had spent the last year almost entirely alone, wanted to invite Ansel Keto inside for a cup of evening coffee. The other half of her was completely overwhelmed by his words, his support, his kindness. And that half needed him to get on his way. Immediately.

She blew out a long breath and couldn’t help her shaking hands as she gathered up the dishes.

He rose, taking the tray from her. “I’ll just quickly do these dishes and then be on my way.”

Ruby immediately began to tug the tray from him. “No, no, no. You’re my guest, I’ll do the dishes.” She couldn’t handle the thought of all that man in her tiny kitchen again. She just needed to be alone. Long enough, at least, to get her heart to stop vibrating in her chest.

“You cooked, I clean,” he insisted.

Ruby gave the tray another resolute tug. “Please,” she whispered, giving him just one, desperate peek of those blue eyes. “I’ll do it.”

It was the ‘please’ that got him. She’d used such a small, genuine little tone. Ansel knew that the moment to be pushy was over. She was about one light breeze from scattering in every direction. He knew that she didn’t socialize much, or at all, since Griff’s disappearance. She was probably overwhelmed.

He let go of the tray and instead held open the door for her. “Alright then, Ruby Red.”

She paused, a little half smile on her face. He’d given her a term of endearment. She couldn’t even begin to say how that made her feel. “Alright,” she repeated. “And thank you so much for all the help. It was really, very neighborly.”

Ruby could have kicked herself. Neighborly? Could she have picked a dumber word? First of all, they weren’t neighbors. And second of all, as polite as the man was, he didn’t exactly elicit Mr. Rogers-esque feelings. But what was said was said.

“Anytime,” he said, eyes squinting and jaw clenched below his trim blond beard. Ruby got the feeling that he actually meant it. “Goodnight.”

“Night,” she whispered through the screen door, watching him go.

He took the porch steps two at a time and was out of there in a flash. She couldn’t explain the tug of what she thought might be disappointment. She should only be feeling relief. All she wanted was to be left alone, right? Ruby sighed, locking her front door behind her. She stepped into the kitchen and froze when she saw the wrench on the counter.

Well. She’d have to return it. That was just good manners.