he didn’t smell as dirty as he looked. He smelled fresh. Like the first scent of the wide outdoors that she’d gotten when she’d climbed out of her car after driving hours and hours and hours from Georgia to Weaver. Vaguely pine-like. Vaguely earthy. Fresh. Breathtaking.
She realized his gaze was slanting over her and blamed her crazy hormones when she felt her face actually start to warm. She’d stopped blushing when she was about ten years old. It had to be her hormones that were causing her to think this man smelled enticing. Same way her hormones had told her she absolutely had to have both sliced pickles and potato chips on the peanut butter sandwich she’d eaten for breakfast. “Well? Are you going to show me or not?”
His eyebrows lifted a little and his jaw canted slightly to one side as he gave his head the faintest of shakes. But regardless of his personal opinion—obviously lacking—where she was concerned, he tapped one long index finger against a knob. “This controls whether the pilot is on or off. I turned it off before I went outside.” He turned it, and a bit of dried blood on his scratched knuckle stood out. “Turn it to where it says Pilot.” He held up the long lighter with his other hand and clicked it on. A small flame burst from the end and he tucked it inside the furnace, angling his messy head a little in front of her so he could see.
He really did have thick hair.
She averted her eyes back to what he was doing.
“Set the flame there,” he continued, “and keep the knob pushed down.” He pulled out the lighter, letting the flame die.
But she could see the small blue flame burning inside the furnace and ferociously kept her gaze on it, even though she could feel him looking at her again. Then he abruptly leaned down and blew out the tiny flame.
“Here.” He held out the lighter. “You wanted to learn, right?”
She nodded and took the lighter, careful not to touch his greasy fingers.
His lips twisted, as if he noticed. But all he said was, “Don’t be afraid. You’ll never know unless you try.”
She hesitantly pressed the knob where he indicated, clicked the lighter and set the flame where he had.
“That’s it. Give it about a minute, then let up on the knob.” She did as he said and he showed her that the pilot remained lit. “Thermocouple sensed the flame, which triggered the gas valve, and hello, heat. Turn the knob from Pilot to On … you see?” He waited until she nodded and then he put the panel back in place. “You oughta be good to go.”
He pushed to his feet, walked to the other side of the room and held his hand over the register for a moment. “It’s coming.” His gaze passed from her face to her newly hung paintings then back to her again.
She’d straightened, too. There was no question that he didn’t appreciate her modern artwork. It was as plain on his face as his amusement, and her temper glowed warm all over again. “I assume your employer will send a bill.” It wasn’t a question. “I’d have given you a tip if I hadn’t had to wait eight hours for you to show up.”
Derek Clay managed to keep from grinning outright as he looked at Sydney Forrest, the sister of his cousin’s husband.
He’d come by the place to check on her as a courtesy, since he lived closest to the out-of-the-way cabin that she’d moved herself and her ugly paintings into a few days ago. And while he was genuinely concerned that she’d been living without heat, he wasn’t all that interested in the woman herself.
Definitely a looker. But he knew from Jake that she liked living in the fast lane. Along with that, she was snooty. And undoubtedly high-maintenance coming from the moneyed background that she had. None of these qualities was high on his list of attractive attributes in a woman, no matter how good she looked.
“I’m sure they’ll appreciate the prompt payment,” he offered, then stuck out his hand. “I’m Derek, by the way.”
She eyed his hand—which admittedly had a smear of grease on the back of it and had since he’d been wrangling with an ancient tractor engine inside which his mom’s latest cat had decided to have her kittens—with clear distaste. But then she seemed to swallow hard and stuck her slender hand briefly into his. “Sydney Forrest,” she offered.
“I know. You’re Jake’s sis.”
Her fine, dark eyebrows drew together over a narrow nose that tilted up just a bit at the end, saving her oval face from being too classically pretty. “You know my brother?”
Her tone implied that anyone of his ilk couldn’t possibly, and despite his efforts, his ornery grin cracked through. “‘Fraid so, Syd.” He couldn’t help laying on the hick, given her obviously appalled reaction. “You and me? We’re practically kin seein’ how your brother’s hitched to my cousin.”
He didn’t think her ivory face could get any whiter, but it did. “You’re … related to J.D.?” Her rosy lips spread in a thin smile that wasn’t reflected at all in her dark blue eyes.
“Yup. Derek Clay. So some might even call you and me kissin’ cousins,” he added, because she obviously was not going to see the humor in any of this.
Still, something about the situation left him feeling itchy and irritated because—snooty or not—she was pretty damn beautiful.
Her eyes were a deep, dark blue and now, as a steely glint came into them, they iced over. They reminded him of black ice.
“You could have just told me who you were.” Her voice was cold as a witch’s behind, but the cadence of her words nevertheless had an almost hypnotic molasses-smooth sway.
“You maybe could have waited three seconds for me to do so before jumping on that high horse of assumptions you ride,” he returned blandly. “Don’t worry your pretty head any, though. I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“You can tell whomever you like.” Her vaguely pointy chin was set. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“No, ma’am,” Derek agreed. She was no more in the right or wrong than he was, when it came down to it. Still, her snooty attitude wouldn’t get her anywhere in Weaver, even though she was Jake’s sister and thereby connected to the Clay family, which was generally well thought of in the community. “I guess you haven’t.”
And since she was connected to the Clays—to him—he pushed aside his general irritation with himself and her and reminded himself of the way he was raised.
He looked past her sweater-bundled shoulder into the cabin’s interior. “Watch that pilot light,” he warned. “If the thermocouple is failing, it’ll go out again no matter how careful you are. And don’t wait an entire day to ask for help when you need it.”
She crossed her arms and managed to look down her narrow, turned-up, sexy nose at him, even though she stood about a head shorter than his six-three. “I did call for help,” she reminded him as if he were dense enough to have somehow missed that point.
“Did you call the number for the Double-C that Jake left you?” He didn’t need to see the chagrin she tried to hide to know that she hadn’t. He’d been at the Double-C since before dawn that day working with his father, Matthew Clay, who ran the family ranch. If Jake’s sister had called, he’d have known about it.
She
