Free Trinity Blue by Eve Silver Page B

couldn’t say why.
    “I have references,” he offered, angling his body so that she’d catch his arm in the door if she decided to slam it, as though he sensed that possibility and wanted to hedge his bets. But he didn’t infringe on her space, didn’t step inside. She caught the faint scents of leather and citrus shaving cream. They lured her to lean a little closer, breathe a little deeper. “I spruced up Mrs. Bailey’s porch last week,” he continued. “And Doc Hamilton had me paint his office the week before that. You can give them a call.”
    “I will. How long have you been in town?”
    “Two weeks.”
    And he’d found work both of those weeks. Interesting. “How long are you planning to stay?”
    His eyes narrowed. “Till the job’s done.”
    For a second, she had the odd thought that he wasn’t referring to a job working for her. He was talking about something else entirely.
    She let her senses reach for him. Not sight or smell, but her inner senses, the ones that allowed her to know things most people didn’t. The air between them crackled, an electric sizzle, but she didn’t get any sense that he was evil and she knew that if he were, she’d spot it. She always spotted it. Though her magic had never fully bloomed, her built-in early warning system had never failed her.
    The fact that her internal alarms were quiet wasn’t exactly a glowing recommendation, but it wasn’t a condemnation, either. So there was no good reason for her to turn him down, and at least two to hire him on: he had references and she desperately needed the help, especially with her knee torn up.
    “Eight tomorrow morning,” she said at last. “If your references check out, you can start then. If not—” she shrugged “—you can head back the way you came, Mr. Alexander.”
    “Daemon,” he said, softly. “Call me Daemon.” He studied her with those clear, lake-blue eyes, and something hot flared in their depths. She felt the lure of that heat, and already regretted her offer. The last thing she needed was a to-die-for handyman hanging around and turning on the charm.
    Either he sensed her preference that he not look at her like he wanted to take a taste, or he had similar thoughts to hers about mixing business with pleasure, because his gaze shuttered and he stepped away.
    “See you at eight.”
    Jen hobbled out onto the porch and watched as he walked to his car and drove away. Even then, she didn’t go back inside. An unpleasant sense of expectation held her in place. The air felt… wrong. Deep inside, restlessness stirred, an edginess that coiled tight and left her feeling that something was trying to crawl to the surface. Her every sense tingled as she looked again to the thick forest that banded the flat field across the road. Despite the sun, warm and bright, a chill slithered through her.
    She couldn’t see anyone, but she knew: there was someone out there, in the woods. Watching.
    o0o
     
    A week later, Daemon was up on a ladder in the parlor when the stumping of Jen’s crutches announced her arrival. The air hummed with an electric charge, a zing of power that ramped up a notch the closer she got. He knew that hum. It heralded magic, and right now it was purring like a stroked cat.
    Which made no sense, because Jen Cassaday wasn’t a sorcerer or a demon or anything in between. She was a human woman... an incredibly attractive one with her long runner’s legs and her pretty brown eyes, her sleek, dark hair that hung to her shoulders in a heavy curtain, and the freckles that dusted across her pert nose. He had an urge to kiss those freckles, to peel her white T-shirt over her head and down her arms and see if they sprinkled her chest and the tops of her breasts. And those thoughts were way off limits.
    He’d taken a job out here to be close to the woods—and the things that lurked in those woods—not to put himself in temptation’s way.
    Jen paused in the doorway, the sun from the front window