by Kara Braden
She crouched beside him, shoulder-to-knee, and began reloading the magazine. “We can do this in daylight, if you’d actually like to see what you’re hitting,” she offered.
Supporting the rifle with his left hand, he found it natural and comfortable to drop his right hand to brush against her hair, thinking this wasn’t so bad after all. “It’s not fishing, so yes.”
“I’ll also show you how to butcher whatever you hit, so you might want to rethink that,” she threatened with a laugh.
Surprised, he went tense, silently scolding his rusty, unused mind for not having anticipated this facet of Cecily’s lifestyle. Of course she hunted. She was living across the continent from the nearest grocery store. Just days earlier, Ian had watched her butcher live chickens.
Cecily rose, resting a hand on his arm. “Or not,” she said uncertainly. “It’s fine. It’s nothing—I mean, you don’t—”
“No,” Ian interrupted just as uncertainly, wondering how he’d so unexpectedly ended up in this new territory. Preston and Amelia had been the hunters in the family, along with their father.
A few seconds later, she said, “Well, whatever you’re comfortable with.” She gave Ian’s arm a brief squeeze and then ran her hand down to find his. She pressed the loaded magazine to his palm. “Did you want to keep shooting? It’s freezing out.”
Actually, he did—but while he was wearing his overcoat, she was wearing the jacket she threw on when she had to run out to grab more firewood, a battered windbreaker that would do little to keep out the cold. Her fingers were like ice against his palm.
“Let’s go inside,” he said instead.
Her fingers twitched against his hand as she reclaimed the magazine. “All right. One minute,” she said, easing the rifle from his grasp.
She stepped ahead of Ian, raised the weapon, and fired all ten rounds with a quick, precise rhythm, filling the air with the sharp smell of gun smoke. Then she slung the rifle over her shoulder, bent to pick up the ammunition box at her feet, and said, “I’m going to make coffee, if you want some. Or are you going to bed?”
“I probably should,” he admitted as they started toward the house. “It’s late—not that the time matters very much here.” He glanced at her in the faint light bleeding through the kitchen window and wondered if he should suggest she try to sleep. It seemed like she lived on catnaps of two or three hours, which couldn’t be healthy, and for a moment he was tempted to suggest that they share the bed, even just to give her the warmth and safety of someone beside her.
He knew himself, though; he’d been attracted to her since the moment he saw her standing against that little airplane of hers. The last thing he wanted to do was to act on that temptation and make an already-awkward winter even more uncomfortable.
So instead, after they hung up their coats and built up the fires, he wished her good night and went into the bedroom alone. He undressed, wrapped up in her blankets, and lay in the firelit darkness, listening to her moving quietly around the kitchen, and wondered if there was anything he could do to help.
Chapter 5
October 26
A blast of cold wind carried Cecily into the kitchen, cheeks reddened, eyes bright. She grinned at Ian, who’d been at the stove for fifteen minutes, making breakfast. His hair was still damp from his shower. “Morning,” she said breathlessly, going right to the stove.
“Morning to you.” He tried not to stare, but her unguarded happiness had him captivated. In the five nights he had been at the cabin, he hadn’t seen her sleep more than three hours at a time until last night. Perhaps going shooting really had helped her to relax. “You went out early.”
“Jogging.” She grinned at his incredulous expression. “I’ll be stuck doing calisthenics before too long. I don’t mind running in a little snow, but it’ll be measured in feet soon. Then it’s all push-ups and sit-ups.”
“Maybe I’ll join you. I’ve got a list of exercises I’m supposed to do for my back.”
“Which you haven’t been doing since you got here,” she scolded, shaking her head, though she couldn’t hide a tiny smile. “Right. We’ll start that tomorrow.”
Surprised at the reprieve, he asked, “Do we have plans for today?”
“There’s going to be another snowstorm later today or tonight,” she said over the sound of frying bacon. “Think your order’s made it to the post office yet?”
“I should hope so.”
“We’ll fly in today,” Cecily decided. “Mark will keep the Pinelake runway clear, if it’s not too bad, but if it sticks tonight and continues through tomorrow, we’ll have to take the snowmobile and overnight in town.”
Ian considered the gravel runway behind Cecily’s house and the sheer difficulty of keeping it free of snow. “What about on this end?” he asked as he slid the bacon onto a plate.
She shrugged and came over to watch him crack eggs into the pan of bacon grease. “We’ll be fine here. The snow at Pinelake is always worse because of the open air. If it gets that bad at Pinelake, I’ll just leave the plane there until the weather clears, and we’ll take the long way back here.”
“Why?” Ian asked before he could stop himself. “Why do you live like this?”
A hint of tension appeared in Cecily’s shoulders as she left his side and went to the pantry. “I like the quiet,” she said in an absolutely neutral tone. With her back turned, Ian couldn’t watch her facial expression, but he sensed that she was lying.
He could understand that Cecily enjoyed the physical work required to maintain a primitive lifestyle. Just watching her chop wood had made Ian’s back ache in sympathy. He tried to help out where he could, mostly with cooking, but there was no way he could handle any heavier chores—not that his help was needed.
And yet, while Cecily was obviously practiced at some aspects of her lifestyle, in others, she was terribly unprepared for living in isolation. While wandering the grounds on his second day there, Ian had found a weed-choked, dead garden. Somewhat embarrassed, she had explained that she’d tried to grow her own vegetables for three years before deciding that she had no talent at gardening. Instead, she stocked canned vegetables and bartered with Mags, whose garden was small but significantly more successful.
But the reality was that Cecily really was a social creature, as she proved not two hours later in the so-called “village” of Pinelake. Everyone there liked her, and she seemed genuinely friendly in return. Ian had dealt with recluses in the past. He’d watched them attempt to function when forced into a social situation, with varying degrees of success, and Cecily bore none of the same traits. In fact, her only behavior that was at all unusual was a soldier’s sense of awareness. As they walked through town, Ian watched her mark the location of every person or vehicle or animal on the street, saw the way she noted windows and doors, observed how she glanced to the side as they passed each corner.
She reminded him of Preston, actually.
***
Between Ian and the clothes he’d purchased, Cecily had only a few kilos of leeway for supplies. Before they’d even left the house, she’d decided there was no point in being practical about restocking. She wouldn’t have the available weight allowance for the plane to carry even one bulk sack of rice. So while Ian tried on his new clothes in the bathroom at the general store, Cecily browsed the aisles and tried to remember the last time she’d indulged in any sort of luxury purchase. Her memory came up empty. For years, she’d focused on survival and challenging herself to live with less, not more.
She thought about Ian, who came from Manhattan, and about having Mags over for dinner on Sunday night. She considered a bottle of wine, but she didn’t know good wine from bad. Besides, Pinelake’s stock of alcohol tended toward the cheap and plentiful, a temptation she’d managed to ignore on all levels, though she did keep a single bottle of whiskey at the cabin. Ingestible alcohol was too useful no
t to have on hand in emergencies.
Instead, she wandered over to the baking aisle, thinking of her disastrous attempts at making desserts or casseroles. She’d finally concluded that it was impossible to actually bake anything using the woodstove with its variable temperatures and random cool spots. But she could improvise, she thought, eyeing the supply of crackers. Graham crackers and the last two bags of marshmallows were a good start, and there was more than enough chocolate stocked by the cash register. She picked up a bag of milk as well, recalling Ian’s opinion about powdered creamer.
After she paid, everything went into the small rucksack she’d brought with her, and she went outside to check the weather. The snow was just light enough that it’d be safe to land back home, she guessed.
Ian joined her a few minutes later. He still wore his long, sweeping overcoat, though he’d changed his slacks for blue jeans and his shoes for heavy-treaded hiking boots. Over one arm, he carried a down parka with a fur-edged hood, and he had a blue and black rucksack slung over the other shoulder.
Cecily grinned. “Going to tell your brother you’ve gone native?” she asked, heading out into the street. She turned toward the airfield, looking forward to being back home.
Ian took the phone out of his coat pocket. He went to turn it on but then hesitated. “I won’t get a signal here, will I?”
She gestured for him to put the phone away. “No, but he wanted me to call him next time I was in town. Figured you might want to talk to him.”
Ian’s huff was amused. “He wants you to report on me.”
She couldn’t help but ask, “Do you two get along all right?”
“Very well, actually—well enough that he knows how difficult I can be,” he admitted with a wry smile.
Thinking of some of the soldiers she’d dealt with in the past, Cecily said, “You’re easy enough to handle.”
“In that case, I should try harder.”
***
“How’re you doing?” Preston asked, his voice made thin and crackly by the quality of the connection.
A knot of tension in Ian’s chest eased at the sound of his brother’s voice. They didn’t see each other very often, due to work, but they spoke frequently, and he hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed Preston.
“Very remote,” he said, glancing around the mismatched little office. Pinelake Airfield was run out of the trailer where the airfield manager lived. Ian felt a pang of nostalgia, remembering the early days of Samaritan International Security, when Preston had run the business out of a warehouse in Virginia.
“How’s your back?”
“Hurts like hell, but that’s to be expected. And yes, before you ask, I’m only taking ibuprofen.”
Preston sighed. “Sorry. You know—”
“I know,” Ian interrupted.
“How’s Knight doing? You’re not being a pain in the ass, are you?”
Ian smiled. “She’s not exactly prepared for having a houseguest, you know. Did you even ask where she lives?”
The pause told Ian everything he needed to know. “We didn’t have many choices if you weren’t going to stay at the clinic.”
“She lives in a one-bedroom cabin half the size of Dad’s old hunting lodge.”
“Oh. Well, shit,” Preston said guiltily. “She never said anything.”
“She wouldn’t.” Ian glanced at the doorway and thought about the thin trailer walls. He wanted to ask Preston for details about what had happened to Cecily, but he couldn’t risk her overhearing. Instead, he said, “It’s all fine. She’s sleeping on the couch. But we owe her for this, Preston.”
Preston exhaled thoughtfully. “I’ll try and figure out a way to make it up to her, but…it’s complicated.”
“So it seems,” Ian hinted.
Refusing to take the bait, Preston said, “Give her my regards, will you?”
“Of course. I’ve got sporadic Internet, so email me. Otherwise, there’s no phone at the cabin, so I’ll call you when we next fly to town.”
“Fly?”
Ian rolled his eyes. “There’s no road to her cabin. She has to use a plane or a quad to get to civilization, and let’s not talk about what the quad did to my back. Did you at all research where you were sending me?”
“Damn. I’m sorry, Ian.”
“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. It’s…nice,” Ian said, and it was only partially a lie. The quiet was a good change from his usual hectic routine, but it all too easily crossed the line into too quiet.
Then he recalled his brief look through the general store, which served not only as a grocery and supply store but also as a pawnbroker’s. There’d been an old, scratched-up guitar hanging on the wall, gathering dust. Ian hadn’t played in years, but at the moment, he had nothing better to do.
“Look, I’m going to run. Email me and let me know civilization still exists, will you?” Ian asked more cheerfully.
“You got it. Take care of yourself.”
“You, too.” Ian hung up and went out into what passed for a lounge.
Cecily and Mark were sitting at a small table, chatting. When she looked up and smiled at Ian, he was momentarily struck by how pretty she really was. Her self-confidence showed in her eyes and her smile—a self-confidence that came not from political power, money, or social connections, as with most of the women he knew back in Manhattan, but from being a survivor.
“Ready to go?” she asked, standing up.
Ian returned her smile, hoping that she liked music—and that he recalled his old skill. “Actually, can we run back to the store? If you think we have room in the plane, there’s something I’d like to buy.”
***
Back at the cabin, Ian followed Cecily into the kitchen, carrying a battered guitar wrapped in a quilt. “I’ll drop this in the living room, and then I can start on dinner, if you’d like,” he offered.
Cecily nodded, thinking she could get used to sharing cooking duties. “That’d be great, thanks. I’ll go get the plane settled.”
From the living room, Ian called, “Mind if I use the Internet? I need to refresh my memory on how to acclimate the guitar to the cabin. I know you have to let it rest when you transport it—new humidity and temperature—but I don’t remember what to do with the strings.”
“Go ahead.” She hurried back out to the plane, surprised at how comfortable she’d become, having Ian here. He did his part around the house and didn’t get in her way. And, she admitted to herself as she climbed into the pilot’s seat, he was definitely nice to look at.
She steered the plane up to the hangar and got out to open the door. The snow had died off again, leaving the night sky obscured with thick, low-hanging clouds that were a comfort. The clear, infinite night sky reminded her too much of the desert—of a forced march at gunpoint through the pitch-black streets of a ruined city, heading deep into enemy territory.
She opened the hangar, absently thinking she’d need to clean and grease the rails for the doors; she was falling behind on her chores. Maybe tomorrow, she thought as she got back into the plane. Then she changed her mind. Tomorrow, she’d take Ian out for a proper shooting lesson. If nothing else, she wanted him competent with firearms. The last thing she needed was a city boy shooting himself because he’d decided to play with the gun she always carried.
Once she stowed the plane in the hangar, she did her final check quickly, wanting to get back inside. She hurried across the yard, boots crunching in the snow, and stopped to pick up some firewood. In the kitchen, she dropped the wood on the rack by the stove and asked, “No problems with it? Sometimes the connection gets sketchy when the weather turns.”
“It’s fine, thanks.”
Nodding to herself, she picked up the grocery bags and went to put everything away. She tossed one bag of marshmallows onto the counter and put the second bag in the
pantry.
“Marshmallows?” Ian asked from the living room archway.
She looked back around the pantry door and grinned at his puzzled expression. “Mags is coming for dinner Sunday night. I can’t bake worth a damn in this stove, but anyone can make s’mores.”
Startled, Ian laughed. He intercepted her when she brought a box of graham crackers to the counter. “God, I haven’t had s’mores in…must be fifteen years or more.”
“Good memories for you, I hope.” She fished a few bars of chocolate out of the bag and set most of them down on the counter by the marshmallows. One, she offered to Ian.
His engaging smile softened as he took the chocolate bar. “What’s this for?”
“For being such a good sport about living like this. For a city boy,” she teased, trying to encourage that smile to stay.
He laughed, but instead of his usual bright, sharp laugh, the sound was low and soft. “You’re the one who’s been a good sport about having me for a houseguest,” he said, his blue eyes fixed to hers. In the dim light of the lamp over the sink, his eyes were very dark. Captivating. “How can I make it up to you?”
For a few endless seconds, Cecily forgot all about her reservations, caught up in the unexpected pleasure of a game she hadn’t played for years. Ian was gorgeous and intelligent and kind and, against all odds, apparently interested.
But when Ian’s free hand brushed against her right hip, too close to her gun, she twisted away violently enough that she bumped into the stove, rattling the kettle—not because she didn’t want that touch, but because she did.
Her tension should’ve been Ian’s cue to back off, but he didn’t. He stepped closer, looking down at Cecily with almost predatory interest. “You don’t think I’ll hurt you,” he said speculatively, and though the phrasing was ominous, it didn’t come out as a threat. He studied her face as he spoke softly, curiously. “You’re not in a relationship.”
