“Don’t look at me like that, jerk. Your ankle looks like shit. You can’t carry shit. All you would do is get in my way, stumbling around and scaring off dinner.” Surly... her hair wet as if she’d dunked her head in the river to scrub out the dirt he’d found so offensive she curled her lip. “And you snore!”
The fresh caught food was stowed. The young woman stomping forward where she built up the fire, sending hate filled glares at Stephen while she leaned her hair close to the flames—rubbing it between her hands, and fighting to keep her teeth from chattering.
And then she dug in her blade of independence all the deeper. “I left the heat pump syphoning and wasted wood so you might take a cozy shower, pretty boy. So stop staring at me, and get to it. You reek of sick guy and I’m sick of smelling you.”
The prior evening he’d unabashedly and grossly insulted her. He’d screamed in her face horrible things in a language he knew she could not decipher. He’d made her flinch. Now she was all claws and hissing.
Unsure why, Stephen offered, “I should not have said those things.”
If looks could kill, he’d be six feet under and rotting worm food. Black eyes, dark skin, the fine bone structure of something native to this place, all organized in the perfect expression of loathing. “Fuck off.”
Chapter Four
He needed her.
Assassinations, infiltration, warfare, violence, and a lifetime of training would not see him through in her wilds. All she’d warned him of became clearer when Stephen took to the porch, looking for a vantage, or signs of life. For anything. Her house stood on high ground, but there was nothing... not even a line of smoke marking the sky in the direction River claimed civilization waited.
Since telling him to ‘fuck off’ she’d been far less vocal, busy preparing the house for what the swollen, green clouds were bringing. Locking her shutters tight, face surrounded by a well-made fur hood, River asked, “Can you clean a rabbit?”
He could clean a human corpse, break it down into parts too tiny to identify. Rabbits could not be much different. “Yes.”
Pointing at what she’d dragged home, River ordered, “You take care of that while I check the traps I missed.”
Not sure why he said it, Stephen announced, “Lingering outside in this weather with wet hair is unwise.”
“Oh lah-de-dah.” River banged a fist against the shutters, testing their tightness. “So is shaving your head in the arctic.”
A master at pointing out the obvious, Stephen pressed her to be honest. “You are angry with me.”
“I don’t much like you.” She threw him a look. One dripping with honesty. “And there is no need to point out that the feeling is mutual.”
“Then I won’t.”
River chuckled, black eyes shining as if he’d finally succumbed to senseless humor. “When you’re done with the rabbits, you’ll need to bring in wood. See these piles.” She pointed well wrapped hands to stacks on her porch. “One is green, one is seasoned. Don’t mix them. Separate stacks each side of the fireplace. As much as you can manage.”
With an elk rifle across her back, she left him, moving easy and light over the frost in a way he couldn’t with his sprained ankle. She left him and didn’t look back.
***
When she returned with only a few squirrels, her teeth chattering, River opened the door to find she wasn’t losing her mind. The appealing scent in the smoke was rabbit—her houseguest having spit one to roast over the fire.
It smelled good. Really good. And the noise of her stomach made it clear her body approved, desired, starved.
The stranger watched her entry ceremony, the way she kicked her left boot clean before the right, the tell-tale flakes of snow on her shoulders. Watching him watch her, she could have bet good money he was noting that all her movements led with the left. Including her left hand wiping her running nose. But her gun hung from the opposite side. He’d assume she was a novice to wear it so wrongly.
But she’d killed a caribou...
Chopped the best bits from the carcass. Carried it home.
Let him notice all that.
All River cared to notice was the juicy rabbit, not the oversized idiot who’d prepared it.
Her stranger turned the spit, juice dripping to sizzle in the flames.
“Oh my god! Please tell me it’s ready.” Outerwear shed, River grew less interested in heating up than stuffing her face with something she hadn’t ruined on the stove.
“We may eat.”