by Em Petrova
She threw him a cheerful wave and he released an animalistic growl in response.
Chapter Two
The minute the big, hairy, grumpy mountain man walked out of the clearing, Livvy grabbed her camera and snapped a half dozen shots depicting life as Ryan Stone was living it, without human contact.
An ax with the blade hone to a gleaming sharpness. A group of chicken feathers tied with a string, their purpose unknown.
The neatly-stacked wood photographed from the side, showing the edges lined up in the anal way Stone did things. Whether that was his personality or a trait stemming from the Marines was anyone’s guess.
Also, she discovered where he hung the hides of animals he trapped. She had to admit there was a sort of beauty to living rough. After being in third-world countries much of her career, she understood the need to hunt for food and homesteading was no different. Ryan needed a protein source and well, she did too now that she was on the mountain.
Her power bars tucked in the zipper pocket of her backpack weren’t going to cut it for long. She hadn’t given consideration to the burden she’d become by showing up here. She only thought to find him and…
Kiss him.
She crinkled her nose. With all that fur covering his face, she wouldn’t even be able to locate his mouth.
She threw a glance at the fire, which looked as if it would burn for hours now that Ryan had tossed the logs on. One of the things she couldn’t ignore was how capable he was. Back in Afghanistan, she’d believed his badass vibes came from fighting for his life, the guy on his six and the freedom of his countrymen. But now she understood that was just part of Ryan Stone’s makeup.
He hadn’t invited her to go inside his cabin, but he hadn’t told her to keep out either. She figured out how to open the door, which had a series of bars that served as crisscrossing latches. The design insanely clever, lending her a closer peek into his mind.
When she pressed the door open, the first thing she caught was the scent of wood. But that was as far as the freshness went. The small space was cramped with traps, what appeared to be handmade wooden boxes, and smelly laundry.
She breathed shallowly as she passed the makeshift sink with a dirty pot coated in something greasy and burned on. Ryan’s coat hung over a table along with some socks that looked grossly stiff.
“Oh God.” How did he live here? It was clear he spent most of his time outdoors, and no wonder. The small place was a dumping ground. The neat man she’d praised when looking at the wood pile was not the same guy who tossed his dirty socks on the table.
The place seemed segmented into areas to do chores in, not really live. His traps and hunting equipment must take great importance, so she understood that, but couldn’t he at least build a gun rack or something?
She walked farther into the cabin. The floorboards were caked in mud and a single cupboard hung crooked on the wall. She cocked her head to the angle of the cupboard, just slightly off vertical. Didn’t that drive him crazy?
Where the man sleep? She imagined him curling up under a pine somewhere, but that couldn’t be right.
Near the back of the cabin, near a woodstove, was a big shelf built into the corner, the only indication it was his bed was a thin foam mattress and a couple fleece blankets.
After experiencing his cabin in a state of what looked to her eyes as chaotic, she was half shocked to find that his lingering manly scent over-rode everything, lighting up her senses and activating muscle-memory of a brief touch just a short year ago. It was enough to overcome her confusion about what she thought she knew about Ryan Stone and the evidence laid out in such stark relief inside the cabin.
After all, he was a man. Alone. And housekeeping wasn’t really his thing.
She pushed out a sigh and took off her camera slung around her neck. Well, if he was hunting to feed her, the least she could do was tidy up.
It seemed smartest to begin at the back and work her way to the front. He didn’t seem to have the basic cleaning supplies—broom, mop, pail. But she had enough experience with people who didn’t have access to a Sam’s Club to know a few tricks.
Outside, she’d seen a rake. It would serve in scraping some of the muck off the floor. She grabbed it along with a bucket full of small sticks and wood shavings. She dumped those onto the table for lack of a better place and filled the pail with water.
The cold water seemed to come from some icy glacier hidden deep inside the mountain. In seconds, her hands were numb and red from cold. She wasn’t a wilting flower, though.
She took his blanket outside and shook the dust off it. Then she realized it could use a good airing and draped it over the wood pile. After a few minutes of running the rake over the floor and dislodging the worst of the mud clumps from Ryan’s boots, it dawned on her that she should try to do his laundry and get it dried before nightfall.
After a bit of investigating outside, she realized he had running water. Shocking, since he apparently didn’t own a comb. But the system was surprisingly high-tech if not genius, with pipes collecting water from downspouts from the roof as well as a ground spring, running it through a series of charcoal filters and delivering enough back pressure to shoot it into the cabin.
It wasn’t hot water, but it wasn’t toting buckets from the spring either.
Dropping everything, she filled the basin with water and rummaged around until she found a bar of soap that looked surprisingly genteel compared to the man who’d use it.
She sniffed it, expecting rendered bear fat. But it smelled like milk and honey compressed into a sleek golden bar.
She grabbed all the laundry he had strewn around the place and dumped the garments into the basin to soak. Scrubbing clothes was laborious work but something she’d been doing for years and come to welcome. Usually it meant sitting by a stream with ladies from a village, trying to bridge the language gap while working.
Her own jeans, tops and undergarments were nothing compared to scrubbing the dirty clothes of a mountain man. It was quickly growing to be a job she wasn’t willing to take on more than this once. No wonder he didn’t do laundry either.
Somehow, she managed to wring out jeans, shirts, socks, even boxer shorts, giving her a funny quiver in her stomach. She took everything outside and rigged a branch as a clothes line by setting it in the crook of a tree and propping the other end on the big woodpile.
She blew on her cold fingers to warm them and extended them before the fire. The act of washing Ryan’s clothes was strangely intimate, something she’d never thought of herself doing. But she couldn’t say she didn’t feel an immense sense of satisfaction that she’d done it.
And she hoped he’d be pleased too.
She went back inside. The fresh air from leaving the door open was starting to make things smell better. Tackling the few dishes he owned didn’t take long, but the milk and honey soap wasn’t cutting through the burned-on food. She filled the burned pot with water and took it outside to the fire.
Boiling it over the flames had the burned pieces floating to the surface in minutes, and she was able to clean it with ease after that.
Back inside, she dried the dishes and put them away in the crooked cupboard. Then she stacked things in boxes, organizing as she went. Shotgun shells in one, rifle bullets in another. When she located his cache of deodorant, soap and shampoo, she was surprised. Either he went into town sometimes or somebody brought him care packages.
She lined everything up on a wooden ledge set into the wall near his bed. Along with a few candles in jars. He must want some light before he drifted off to sleep, right? After all, he had books.
She plopped down cross-legged on the slightly cleaner floor to examine the titles. A book on trapping techniques, a cookbook on wild game. An old Farmer’s Almanac. And two novels she’d never heard of but seemed to be thrillers.
After stacking them neatly under the bed, she went outside to check on the laundry. Finding the clothes damp, she threw another log on the fire,
hoping the heat would radiate up and dry the clothes faster. She bundled the blanket into her arms and took them back inside to make Ryan’s bed.
She smoothed the blue fleece over the thin mattress and stood back to study her handiwork. Everything was cleaner, neater, comfier.
And where in the hell was she going to sleep?
For a second, her brain ran wild, with visions of a big, slightly more groomed Ryan atop her, his strong, naked body the perfect place to warm her freezing fingers. All. Night. Long.
She shook herself and went back outside, closing the door. In front of the fire, she sat and ate one of the power bars and drank some water she had in a bottle in her pack. She took more photos. Then she went to check on the animals.
By the time he walked back into the clearing, she was sitting on the ground with a goat mouthing at her hair and a chicken in her lap, fast asleep.
* * * * *
“What they hell’re you doin’? That thing’s my food, not a pet.”
Livvy looked up at him, blue eyes wide, her expression making him feel like he’d just murdered a beloved grandma. “She doesn’t need to hear she’s becoming your supper. Besides, didn’t you ever hear it told that happy chickens grow bigger and lay more eggs if you talk to them?” She gently set the chicken aside, and it waddled off, already looking fatter and happier than Ryan had ever seen it.
When Livvy stood up, he almost choked on his tongue. His heart slammed his chest—hard. He dropped his gaze to her chest and the skimpy cotton fabric clinging to her breasts. If his voice didn’t work before, it sure as hell wasn’t now.
“What the hell’re you wearing?”
She glanced down and tugged at her neckline, covering only a millimeter more of her luscious cleavage. “My shirt got wet so I hung it up to dry.” She dusted off her butt with her palms, making him wish he’d thought of doing it for her. Then she sauntered her ripe little ass back to the cabin.
He followed a few feet behind, his cock hard for the second time that day. The first had been when he’d found her on his homestead. Dammit, he had to get her out of here fast.
As soon as he spotted his clothes hanging clean and dry, his lips tightened. He dropped the rabbits he was holding on the ground by the fire and spun on Livvy. “Nobody told you to wash my clothes.”
“Nobody told me to clean your cabin either, but I did.” With a snooty air like a game show host displaying the prizes, she walked to his door and opened it, stepping aside for him to see from the front to the back of the cabin, the view unhindered by traps and other junk sitting around.
“Livvy.” Her name came out as a warning, but she didn’t seem to care.
She pointed to the cupboard. “That’s crooked. Didn’t you notice?”
He almost growled. “Yeah, I noticed.” It had been driving him nuts for months, but he was always too tired to give a damn by the end of the day. Hard work was all he had to keep his mind off his past and if dwelling on his crooked cupboard did the trick, then he was doing well.
Staring at the cleaner, neater interior of his cabin, he had to admit it looked way more comfortable than when he’d left. Irritated, he spun from the open door in time to see Livvy bending over.
That round ass perfect for grabbing and cradling his hips as he buried his cock in her.
He let out a growl.
She threw him a look over her shoulder as she scooped up the rabbits he’d bagged.
“What the hell’re you doing with those?”
“Do you only know one phrase up here? Does the higher altitude mess with your speech center or something? Because that’s the third or fourth time you’ve asked me a similar question. What does it look like I’m doing?” She straightened, rabbits dangling from her fist. “I’m going to clean and cook these.”
“Like hell.” He tore them from her hand and stomped away. It was bad enough she’d washed his gross cabin and smelly clothes. She wasn’t cleaning rabbits too.
He’d barely gotten one ready to cook when she was standing there taking the meat from him. With her standing so close, smelling of sweet female with a hint of his own milk and honey soap, his cock was rock-hard again.
His reach was long. He could snag her around the waist, pull her down on his thighs and resume what they’d started that night before they’d gotten blown up.
He tried for a deep, steady breath but that only made things worse, her scent swirling through his head and landing somewhere around his groin.
Not to mention all that red hair. What he wouldn’t give to wrap it around his fist and—
She eyed him with half a smile on her beautiful face. “If you’re not going to tell me off, I’ll just start cooking this.”
“I was gonna boil it,” he grumbled. His manners were worse than he thought. Too much time out of civilization.
“Boil it?” She shook her head, and damn if her hair didn’t trail back and forth over those full breasts, still barely clinging to the flimsy tank top she wore. “It will be like eating a boot if you boil it.”
“Yeah, but it’s protein.”
“Fine—do it your way.” She extended the meat toward him.
He met her gaze and then let his slide away. “No, you go on. We’ll see what you can do.”
She made a noise that told him she wasn’t rising to his challenge. She took the meat back to the fire and a minute later the rich scents of roasting meat reached him.
He could barely manage to skin the rest of the rabbits. He even nicked his fingertip with his knife, he was so distracted. Why did she have to show up here now?
As if there was a better time. He didn’t want her here at all.
Except it was nice having someone to work for. Hunting to feed her had given him more drive than he had for himself. When he returned from around the side of the cabin after cleaning the rest of the rabbits, she had the first one on a makeshift spit over the flames.
He stopped. “How the hell’d you do that?”
She glanced up from the sizzling meat. “Oh, you can say different things. You’re like the Ryan Stone action figure. Pull a string and he says things like ‘What the hell’re you doing?’ and ‘How the hell are you going to manage that?’ along with well-loved favorites like grunts and growls.”
A low rumble came from his throat unbidden, and she cocked a brow. Fuck, she was right. He was poor company. But he’d always known that—it was why he’d come up the mountain in the first place.
Begrudgingly, he went into the cabin—surprised again to find it clean—and located a bowl to put the meat he’d cut into strips. He poured some salt and other seasonings on the strips to smoke them into jerky.
The last bit of his jerky stash had been polished off by the tough puppy jaws of Freckles.
Damn, he actually missed the stupid dog and he was still kicking himself for it. He’d let himself get attached and as soon as he had, the animal had up and left. Livvy would do the same, but if he grew attached to her, it would run a hundred times deeper.
Like balls-deep.
She watched him season the meat and begin to hang it on a wood frame he’d made for this use. “Smart thinking. Save it for later.”
He nodded.
“Where’d you learn how to do that?” He lifted his jaw toward the spit she seemed to have engineered in a minute’s time.
She lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “It’s amazing the things you learn around other peoples. I can make anything out of nothing. Been taught by African mothers and tribal elders. Afghanistan women are good teachers too. And I’ve been all over the Orient. I can roast a mean fish dinner with leeks and rice.”
He wasn’t going to admit his stomach growled at that menu. He’d been living too long on wild game cooked to the toughness of the boot Livvy had mentioned and a few wild things from a half-ass garden. He had to do something better this spring.
She was staring at his hand.
His jaw clenched on any reply he’d been about to make, and he blatantly caught her gaze
and held it. Then he lifted his hand and showed her the thumb, first and middle fingers, letting her get a good look.
She shifted her gaze away and said nothing, though she was paler.
Great, now his stomach was knotted in that familiar way it did at night when he woke with bad dreams.
Which had him thinking on where they’d sleep tonight and straight forward to the kiss they’d almost shared so long ago.
Back in another world. Another lifetime.
He wasn’t the same Ryan Stone.
He eyed her. Seated on the stool before the spit, tending the meat by turning it occasionally so it cooked evenly, she was the same beautiful photojournalist he’d known a year ago. Slightly thinner and maybe a little tougher.
Though she’d always been tough, she’d held her own against the teasing of the Marines she photographed. Able to not only speak to a hard-ass general but sweet-talk him into giving her his good side for a portrait.
Her camera wasn’t slung around her neck as usual, and he wondered if she’d stowed it away in her backpack. He felt like a cad for threatening to smash it. The camera was an extension of her, and he’d seen some of her work. She trapped moments in time and transformed what you thought you knew into something deeper, something more. Through a lens, she helped people understand things they might not before looking at her photographs.
“So… the jungle.”
She looked up and directed a loose tendril of blazing red hair behind her ear. “Yeah. Was good while it lasted.”
“Are you well now? This isn’t a lasting disease that keeps coming back on you, is it?” He’d heard of fevers like that.
She shook her head. “All better. Just in time too. I’m assigned to Alaska next month to follow a fishing fleet.”
“Jesus.”
“Do you have a problem with Alaska?” she snapped.
“Do you know how to take a job that isn’t putting your life in peril?”
They stared at each other. For a split second, he thought she’d seen too deeply into what he really meant. That he cared more than he was willing to admit.
