“Very mature,” I mutter.
“I thought a little pop of color would liven up your workflow,” she says, her voice dripping with satisfaction.
“Right. That’s it,” I growl, taking a step toward her.
She doesn’t flinch. Instead, she stands her ground, her chin lifting defiantly as she looks up at me. We are standing barely a foot apart in the dusty, half-finished kitchen, the frantic plucking of the banjo still echoing from the dining room.
Up close, I can smell that vanilla soap of hers cutting through the sawdust. My heart does a strange, sudden kick against my ribs, one that has absolutely nothing to do with anger.
“You’re a menace, you know that?” I whisper.
“And you’re a tyrant,” she whispers back, though her breath catches slightly, her gaze flickering down to my mouth for a fraction of a second before snapping back to my eyes.
“I’m the tyrant you hired,” I remind her, leaning just an inch closer.
“Only because the other contractors in town had even worse taste in podcasts,” she fires back, though the edge in her voice has completely melted.
