“I know you haven’t been... Well, you haven’t been well.”
She could have easily mistaken his tone for concern. But she didn’t actually think Wolf was concerned. She looked at him, hard, and tried to read some emotion behind his eyes. Honestly, she wasn’t sure what was there.
What had she seen before?
Nothing, nothing but a handsome face.
He was funny and sexy, charming when he wanted to be. But there was nothing behind it. It was terrifying. She had seen what she wanted to see, and he was the sort of man created to let a person do just that. To let you fixate on his looks, to let you fixate on that easy manner he could affect. And he was good at hiding whatever was really happening there. So good at hiding himself. All that openness. All that easiness. It wasn’t real.
He wasn’t real.
“Yeah. Maybe I’ll rest. I’ve been working two jobs the whole time. It’s not easy.”
At this point she was just saying that to get rid of him. She didn’t actually want to stand here and have this conversation with him. She wanted an escape. A reprieve.
“I’ll be back come sundown.”
And for a minute, she thought she saw something in his eyes. She remembered then, the sadness she’d seen there. He had feelings. He just buried them so deep it was almost impossible to see them. She wondered if he even felt them most of the time, or if he was adept at hiding them even from himself.
“All right. See you then.”
“See you.”
He walked out then, and left her standing in the cabin. She walked down the hall, toward the bedroom that he had indicated would be hers. It was small. The furniture in it was as old as the rest of the place. That same rough-hewn wooden frame, and a warm blanket that had definitely seen better days.
She turned a circle in the room and looked up and saw a small square painted over in the ceiling. That was definitely an attic access. Okay, maybe she wasn’t going to rest. Maybe she was going to do something. Because why not? Why not get something done. If she was going to stay here for the next little bit, then she might as well turn it into a place she could stand.
You’re Snow White.You moved in with Grumpy and now you’re cleaning his house.
No. She had moved in with The Beast. But there was no enchanted rose to be found. Pretty sure the monster had always been a monster.
She would explore the attic later. She was definitely intrigued. And sure, there were probably spiders or whatever, but she had grown up on a ranch. First in Texas, and then in a converted barn in Oregon.
She wasn’t bothered by any of that.
She walked down the hall, back into the kitchen. And she started to open cupboards. There wasn’t much to speak of. It would’ve been nice if she could have retained a vehicle so that she could maybe find a store. Not that she was incredibly hungry. She dug around and found some basic dry ingredients, which surprised her. Canned tomato sauce, some spices. Beans. She could make something out of that. She could make chili. She opened up the freezer and found some ground beef. She would have been very upset had she gone to a cattle ranch and not been able to find beef.
So that was the first thing. She would get food going. She was angry about the lack of onion, but found dried onion powder and figured it would do. She found a large stockpot shoved into one of the small cabinets, and set about to cooking.
She found a broom, and once the chili was on, she started to sweep. And then she scrubbed. And by the time it was all done, the little kitchen was looking tidier than it probably had in more than a decade. The layers of dirt she had found practically told the story. You could carbon-date it.
She found cornmeal, eggs and oil, and decided to throw together a cornbread, as well. Then she went into the bedroom and looked at the blankets critically. She opened the door to what she assumed was his room, and saw a much larger bed that was... Well, it was a lot nicer. She frowned. And a very mean idea occurred to her. She began to dismantle her small bed, taking the mattress off, and finding it full of dust. Then she grabbed the blanket and took it outside, draping it over the railing and beating it with a stick, watching the dust fly.
She took the mattress out to the porch and did the same thing. After a little more hunting, she found a basic tool set and started to dismantle the bed. Then she went into Wolf’s room, and started to do the same thing. He could have his room. But she was taking his bed. She was pregnant with his child.
She deserved it.
It was a little bit trickier moving Wolf’s bed. It required a lot of assembly, and the song and dance to move the mattress had been epic.
She’d had to scurry from one end to the other, alternately pushing and pulling, the whole way down the hall.
And it was big. It basically went wall to wall in her bedroom. But she didn’t really care. She lay on it for a moment, and was perturbed to discover that it smelled like him. It made her eyes prickle with tears.
She hated that.
She swallowed hard and rolled over onto her side, scooting to the end of the bed, and got up again. Then she looked up at that crawl space. She got back on the bed, standing, and pushed at it. It was essentially painted shut, but she was able to jimmy it to the side, and then she looked around the room. Looking for something to get her a little bit higher.
After feeling around for a moment, she found a ladder, rope and wood slats, and she was able to pull it down. Then she grabbed her cell phone and climbed up into the space, shining the flashlight on the phone into the darkness. It was tiny. She couldn’t stand up. But there were boxes.