Chapter 17 Clara
SEVENTEEN
CLARA
I examined the half-mangled attempt at a scarf and the ball of yarn that had somehow developed a knotty, vengeful personality. My phone went on the armrest, a tutorial video already queued up and chirping in a soothing British voice about casting on like it was no big deal.
A few minutes in, I was ready to fight her.
The stitches on my needle looked nothing like the neat little row on the screen.
Mine were crooked and tight in some places, sagging and loose in others, like I was drunk and had tried to build a fence out of spaghetti.
The yarn snagged around my fingers, the strand cutting across my palm in a way that made my hand cramp.
Every time I tried to fix one loop, three others went rogue.
Outside, the snow had brightened the whole room.
Light bounced off the drifts and poured through the windows, crisp and cold.
It made the pines at the edge of the property glow dark and sharp.
It made the inside of Wes’s house feel like a snow globe—quiet, contained, full of things swirling that pretended to be still.
Across from me, Wes shifted on the couch.
He’d grabbed a book from the stack on the side table, stretched out, and angled himself toward the corner cushion—the same spot he always claimed, like his body didn’t know how to sit anywhere else.
I pretended not to notice as he settled deeper into the cushions—a long, solid line, ankle propped on his knee, one arm slung along the back like he had no idea what he was doing to the air molecules between us. The spine of the book was already worn, the cover catching a bit of the winter light.
He reached over, picked up a pair of glasses, and slid them on.
Something low and traitorous fluttered in my stomach.
They were plain black frames, nothing flashy, just practical and solid.
On his face, they turned into a whole situation.
They sharpened his eyes, framed his cheekbones, made his mouth look fuller when he frowned at the page.
The whole effect screamed hot professor who growls across the desk and knows exactly what to do with his hands.
Slutty little glasses.
My stomach dipped like I’d missed a step on the stairs. Heat fluttered low in my belly, ridiculous and insistent.
I yanked my attention back to the yarn before he could look up and catch me ogling him like a creep. On my phone, the woman’s soothing voice chirped, “If your tension is uneven, don’t worry, that’s completely normal as you—”
“Why is this so freaking hard?” I hissed at the yarn, stabbing the needle through a loop that might have been correct three steps ago.
A beat passed.
“You’re strangling it,” Wes said, voice low, without looking up from his book.
My head snapped toward him. “Excuse me?”
The corner of his mouth kicked, the closest thing I’d seen to a smile this early in the day. His gaze stayed on the page. “The yarn. You’re pulling it like it owes you money.”
“I am not,” I said automatically, glancing down and realizing he was one hundred percent correct. The yarn was pulled so tight between stitches it looked like a tiny, angry fence.
I glared at it. “Know-it-all.”
Wes made a quiet sound that might have been a laugh and finally lifted his eyes.
It was stupid how much that small shift affected me. One second, he was a guy on a couch. The next, his attention was on me—glasses catching a sliver of light, irises a deep, complicated blue behind them, amusement softening the usual hard line of his mouth.
His gaze dropped to my hands, taking in the needles, the uneven row, the loop of yarn tangled awkwardly around one finger.
“Newfound hobby?” he asked.
“Yes,” I gritted out. “I’m decompressing. Coming offline. Relaxing.”
His brows lifted. “How’s that working out for you?”
“So relaxed.” I huffed and nudged my phone with the back of my knuckles. “The tutorial says this is ‘an easy beginner pattern’ and that anyone can do it. Which is a lie, by the way.”
The corner of his mouth tugged again. “New hobbies take time. You’ll get there.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, even as my chest did that stupid warming thing again. “You’re very confident for someone hiding behind a book.”
His thumb flattened against the page, marking his place. “I’m not hiding.”
“Mm-hmm.” I squinted at the cover. A dragon curled around a sword in the center, flames and storm clouds, and, unless I was mistaken, a woman in armor who had absolutely no business having that much cleavage.
“Is that . . . ?” I leaned forward, trying to make out the title. “Oh my god. Is that the one with the dragon riders and the horny queen?”
A beat of silence.
His jaw ticced. “It has dragons,” he said slowly, like that explained everything.
A bubble of laughter burst out of me before I could stop it. “Wes. That book is, like, ten percent battle scenes and ninety percent very creative use of castle walls.”
A faint flush touched his cheeks. “It was on a list,” he muttered. “Someone at PT said it was good.”
“Don’t get me wrong, it is good. I read it in a day. But don’t kid yourself—you’re reading angst and smut disguised as fantasy,” I said, delighted. “I did not have that on my Wes Vaughn bingo card.”
He shifted, the faintest hint of embarrassment slipping under the gruff. “It’s well written.”
“It is.” I nodded solemnly. “Structure. World-building. Penetration.”
He choked on nothing, coughing once. “Jesus, Clara.”
“What?” I tried to look innocent. Failed. “I’m just saying, I wouldn’t have pegged you for a ‘pining warriors and morally gray queens’ kind of guy.”
His gaze snagged mine over the top of the book, something flickering there that hadn’t been there a few weeks ago. “You been thinking about what I’m into lately, Duchess?”
My throat went dry.
The kitchen flashed in my mind—his hand on my cheek, the millimeter of space between our mouths, the way my entire body had leaned toward him on instinct. Heat crept up the back of my neck.
“Absolutely not,” I said lightly, twisting the yarn tighter than I meant to around my finger.
The air between us shifted, going quiet in a different way. Not empty, but dense.
His eyes held mine, the edge of his glasses glinting, that forced neutrality slipping in the corners. He knew what I wasn’t saying. I knew what he wasn’t saying. The almost-kiss pressed against the edges of the room like a secret trying to get out.
My pussy fluttered at the thought of what could have happened.
I glanced back at my lap before I could drown in the look on his face. “So,” I said, wrestling the needles into something that vaguely resembled a stitch. “If you’re going to silently judge my tension, you could at least be useful and tell me what I’m doing wrong.”
“Besides abusing the yarn?” he said with a smirk.
I shot him a look.
His mouth twitched; then he set the book face down on his chest and tipped his head, studying my hands. The focus in his gaze made my pulse jump. It was the same look he probably used on blueprints and beams—calculating, precise, already fixing things in his mind before anyone else saw the problem.
“You have it in a chokehold,” he said. “Loosen your grip.”
One sculpted eyebrow rose higher. “My grip is fine.”
Red splotches crawled up his neck, and he cleared his throat. “You don’t need to white-knuckle it, that’s all. Let it slide a little.”
I snorted softly. “Story of my life.”
He huffed out a laugh that sounded way too close to pleased. “Try wrapping it . . . here.”
He leaned forward, reaching out, and my brain didn’t process anything but the fact that his hand was moving toward mine, that the space between us was going to shrink again, that his fingers were going to be on my skin.
He stopped just short of touching me.
“May I?” he asked.
The simple courtesy shouldn’t have done what it did to me.
My chest tightened. “Yeah,” I said, and my voice came out lower than I meant it to. “Show me.”
His fingers brushed mine as he adjusted the yarn, guiding it more loosely through my grip, knuckles grazing the inside of my wrist. The contact was brief, impersonal if anyone else had been looking. No one else was.
My breath stuck.
His scent cut through the faint clean smell of the house—soap, skin, that woodsy note from earlier.
The memory of him leaning in last night flooded my body with heat, pooling low and insistent.
My nipples tightened under my sweater, traitorous and very aware of the fact that there was a man within touching distance who knew exactly what to do with a woman’s body and had almost done it to mine.
“There,” he murmured, concentrating on the yarn. “Less death grip, more . . . guiding.”
“You’re awfully confident for someone reading about horny queens,” I managed.
His lips twitched. His thumb brushed the side of my finger as he pulled back, slow and unhurried, like he had no idea what he was doing to me.
“Someone’s got to maintain standards around here,” he said. “Can’t have you starting a fight with a sweater.”
The warmth that rolled through me at the teasing was bigger than it had any right to be. Comfortable. Dangerous.
“How the hell do you know how to knit?” I asked, adjusting my grip and trying again.
Wes leaned back against the couch, his book open. “My grandmother taught us—Mary and me—when we were kids.”
Mary was his little sister—Cal’s wife, before the car accident that took her life. He’d never mentioned her before, and a tiny spark ignited inside of me. There was something trusting and reverent about Wes opening up . . . even if it was to casually mention his sister.
“I remember her—your sister. She was older than me, and I remember how pretty she was. She had great hair.” I tried not to look too hard at Wes as I brought up his sister.
His lips pressed together as if he could picture her too.
“You guys were close?” I asked.
Wes nodded, his voice thick. “Yeah. For sure when we were kids. More so when I got back from overseas and she and Cal got together. We did a lot as a unit.”