“Can’t do that if I don’t look at it first.”
“I’ve looked at it. I’ve been looking at it for the last day and a half.” In disgust, she threw down the torque wrench and stepped away, knowing that if she kept at it any longer in her present state of mind, she might just use the wrench to take apart the rest of it and chuck it all. “Be my guest.”
“Thanks, don’t mind if I do.” Kevin rolled up his sleeves.
For the first time since he’d arrived in Hades, he felt useful. And at home.
“Try it.”
Just coming out of the house with a glass of iced coffee for Kevin—all that she could manage to scrounge up on short notice in the way of a sociable beverage—June stopped dead in her tracks.
Not because of his short instruction, given as he waved at the tractor, but because in the time that it had taken her to go inside and try to locate something other than the two bottles of beer in her refrigerator to offer him, Kevin had finally surrendered to the heat and stripped off his damp shirt.
She’d already noticed, albeit somewhat unwillingly, how the material had clung to his body. But the difference between her speculation and reality was the difference between a Monet and a six-year-old’s crayon rendition of a lake. The man’s torso looked as if Michelangelo had studied it before creating his statue of David.
Kevin’s chest was sculpted, tanned and gleaming. She pressed her lips together to make sure her mouth wasn’t hanging open.
How did a man who, until very recently, ran a cab company and spent most of his time in enclosures of one sort or another come off looking like a model in search of a product to push? In Kevin’s present state, he could have sold argyle socks to Australian Aborigine tribesmen in the wild.
Kevin looked in her direction, a quizzical expression on his face and she realized that she’d all but solidified in place. Allowing the sizzling effect of his appearance to penetrate further, she thawed out immediately.
Clearing her throat as she rejoined the animated world, June looked at the tractor skeptically, trying very hard to focus her thoughts on the piece of machinery and not the man holding the wrench.
It wasn’t easy.
Tractor, think tractor. She stared at the antiquated machine that had been housed in the barn for the better part of a decade and a half. Overhauling it, she’d gotten it to work several times, but never for long and on this last effort, it had completely given up the ghost no matter what she tried.
June chewed on her lower lip. He’d been working on the tractor for the better part of three hours. Granted, he seemed to have gotten all the pieces back to where they belonged or, at least, off the ground, but that was no proof that he’d done any better a job than she had in all of her previous recent attempts to get the engine to run again.
She took a few steps forward. “What did you do?” she wanted to know.
Since she was holding the glass out, Kevin assumed the iced coffee was intended for him. He took the glass from her.
“Just try it,” he urged again, then took a long, long sip, grateful for the cold liquid. He rubbed the glass along his brow. Sweat poured off him. “If it works, then I’ll explain what I did. Otherwise, there’s no point.”
Move, think, talk, she instructed herself sternly when she realized she’d suddenly become glued into place again. Do anything but stare at him. He’s just a man. Lots of H2O, skin, hair, fat cells, that’s all.
But somehow, whoever had created Kevin Quintano had found a magical combination that took mere flesh and fashioned it into something temptingly delectable.
Shivers threatened to run up and down her spine, embarrassing her.
June looked away. She had to get a grip on herself and these strange thoughts that insisted on leaping around in her head. Who cared what he looked like? Could he fix her tractor? should have been the only thing on her mind.
Taking her keys out of her hip pocket, June got up on the tractor, frowned dubiously at the machine and inserted the key in the ignition. She turned it and, after a sputter, the engine coughed into life, where it remained until she turned it off.
“I did that the last time,” she told Kevin loftily, determined not to be impressed. “It didn’t turn over again.”
Kevin indicated the ignition. “Go ahead and try it again, then.”
Try it again. She was getting to hate that phrase. She didn’t know why, but it made her feel inept. Especially when she turned the key and the engine turned over again, this time without emitting either a sputter or a cough.
June sat in the tractor seat, letting the machine vibrate beneath her, a stallion wanting nothing more than to be set free.
Was Kevin like that?
Her eyes widened as her silent question sank in. God, where had that come from?
She wondered if she could be suffering from some sort of heat stroke. That had to be it. It was an inordinately hot day for the region. But she’d spent less time out in the sun than he had.
A mosquito buzzed around her neck and she slapped it away, relieved for the simple diversion.
“All right,” she said, getting off. “Now will you tell me what you did to it?” She fixed him with an almost exasperated look. “Or is this just a matter of the laying on of hands and healing the damn thing?”
She sounded awfully impatient for a woman who’d just had an important piece of machinery repaired. “No healing, no laying.” He laughed, pleased with his own effort.
Prolonging the moment, Kevin set the drained glass down against the back of the barn. He wasn’t ordinarily given to drama of any kind; that was exclusively Lily’s department. But the moment seemed to beg for it. Especially in view of June’s temperamental behavior. She needed to learn to mellow out a little.
“But you’re going to keep it a secret.” She frowned at him. This was so typical of a male.
He looked at her innocently, wondering what kind of people she was accustomed to dealing with. Had they treated her like an anomaly of nature because of her skills, or like a younger sibling who always insisted on doing what they did?
“Why would I do that?”
She blew out a breath, knowing she was being short-tempered. But given the situation, as well as the weather, it was hard not to. She thought of the walls she’d run up against.
“I don’t know, men are very territorial when it comes to sharing what they know, thinking that the puny female mind isn’t capable of absorbing those kinds of technical details.”
He studied June for a moment before answering. Temper made her features sharper. Also more vivid. “I never thought of your mind as puny, or particularly female for that matter.”
“I don’t know whether to take offense or be flattered.”
He made it easy for her. “No offense intended,” he told her.
Then, before she could say anything else, he launched into a detailed explanation of what he’d attempted to do and had obviously succeeded in accomplishing. He noted that, as she listened, a grudging admiration entered June’s eyes.
“No big mystery, really,” he concluded. “Sometimes the simplest details are the ones that are overlooked.”
Turning from her, he reached for the shirt he’d left slung over a nail on the fence that served as a makeshift corral. He’d