Unbound: (InterMix)

by Cara McKenna

  She goggled at him. “You’ve got coffee?”

  “I do. It’s not exactly fresh, but it’s real. I usually treat myself to a cup after I’ve bagged a deer or finished one of the year’s big chores. But I think your tree-hunting success could count.”

  “I won’t say no to coffee.” They began the hike back up the hill. “I nearly bought a little travel press, but it wound up being one of the things I decided I’d better live without, to save weight. But tea isn’t nearly as motivating when it comes to bribing yourself out of a sleeping bag on a cold morning.”

  He smiled at that, gaze on the ground a few paces ahead of them.

  She watched his body, so at ease in this place, as assured and at home as those eyes were edgy. That now familiar curiosity settled warm and low in her belly, darkening her admiration.

  There’s a lovable person hiding somewhere inside you, Rob Rush.

  And I’m going to make his acquaintance if it’s the last thing I do.

  Chapter Five

  When they reached the yard, Rob stowed the archery equipment in his shed. He shooed the dog back outside, but before he could padlock the big double doors together, Merry asked, “What else is in there?”

  He gestured for her to enter. It was the size of small garage, and Merry crossed the threshold to peer into the orderly shadows. Most of it was taken up by a Land Rover. Not a shiny one like a soccer mom would use to shuttle the kids. A good fifteen years old, she guessed, crusted with dried mud, grass mummified between the tire treads.

  “I suppose you would need one of those, to stock up on supplies.” She looked around, finding no other surprises—lots of firewood, garden tools, bins and buckets.

  “Nope,” she said, shutting the door for him. “No pile of dead hikers.”

  “Oh dear.” He slipped the lock through its latch. “Have I let you down? Has my creepy loner cachet taken a nosedive?”

  “You can make it up to me with that coffee.”

  “Save that assumption for after you’ve tasted it.”

  He led her back into the cottage, and they pushed off their boots inside the rear door.

  Merry took a seat at the little kitchen table, thinking there was no more intriguing creature on earth than this strange man, making her coffee in his wool socks.

  So much for this crush being a side effect of the crypto or head injury. She was perfectly conscious and rested now, and, if anything, her attraction had gotten worse.

  You really ought to reserve those feelings until you know what on earth sent this man fleeing civilized society to play Davy Crockett.

  True. And with Rob more candid this afternoon than she’d yet seen him, it seemed their coffee date might be the perfect opportunity to do some gentle prying.

  Once the fire was stoked and the kettle filled, they moved the table and its chair to the den area, and Merry took the rocker.

  “So,” she said, drawing her knees to her chest.

  “So?”

  “I’ve met Rob the weird survivalist loner. And Rob the secret archer. And Rob the nice guy who’s making me coffee, and who slept on his floor so I could steal his bed.”

  Ever hopeless with compliments, he turned his attention to his hands.

  “What was Rob from back in England like?”

  He frowned. “Sort of a miserable git.”

  “Being a businessman didn’t suit you, I take it?”

  “I can’t say it did. Though I was good at it, at least to start.”

  “You said you had a few businesses. What kinds?”

  He wiggled a pair of fingers and met her gaze. “Two bars. I opened them with my best mate from university.”

  “Oh, okay. I was trying to picture you in a boardroom or someplace, but that makes a little more sense. What sort of bars? Trendy?”

  “The first was your typical British corner pub—already established. We bought it when the owner retired, kept it pretty much as it had been, plus basic improvements to get some younger clientele in the door.” He spoke mainly to the window, with only an occasional glance at Merry. “It did well. We used the first couple years’ profits to open a second one. Emphasis on the cocktails and a bunch of upscale starters. My mate’s pet project, bit posh for my taste. He was onto something, though—that one did even better than the pub.”

  “Sounds like an awfully social pursuit, for a man who’s exiled himself to the top of a lonely Scottish hill.”

  “I, um . . .” He stared off at the mountains, blue eyes somber in the cool, waning light. “I was going through the motions, I think. Playing at being whoever that man was. The one who opened those places.”

  She nodded. She’d done the same—played the part of the chatty, happy, chubby girl, the nonthreatening life of the party who’d always lend you a shoulder to cry on, posed no danger of boyfriend-theft.

  “I think lots of us spend our twenties trying on personas,” she offered.

  Rob’s brows rose, and he met her eyes squarely.

  “I know I got myself jammed in a rut, trying to be everybody’s best friend,” she said. “Trying to make everyone happy. By the time I was thirty I was like, Jesus. If I’d charged these people for all the therapy I doled out, I’d be a millionaire by now.”

  He smiled.

  “And the thing is . . .” Her eyes narrowed as she made the discovery. “I bet they didn’t even want to be happy. I bet they just wanted an audience for their misery.”

  “Speaking as a former barman, I can tell you that’s an exceedingly sure bet.”

  The kettle began its low wail, and Rob rose to make the coffee. Merry watched as he spooned grounds into a mesh filter and started the first cup.

  “Sugar?” he asked, looking up quick enough to catch her staring.

  “No, just black. Thanks.”

  After a couple minutes’ steeping, he knocked the grounds into his trash tub and carried the mugs over. She admired his fingers, wrapped around the handles. Graceful, manly things. They matched the rest of him, that body with its spare breed of muscularity, not a pound of excess. God, she envied people like that. People whose bodies made it look so effortless. Bodies that understood food as fuel, and exercise as a function of their daily lives. For Merry, food was so much more—a foe and a lover and a friend. And exercise—until this trip—had been an obligation grudgingly retrofitted into an otherwise comfortable and sedentary routine.

  Those were the girls she’d been most jealous of, growing up—not just the thin, fashionable ones, but the types who surfed or rock climbed, who lived in such obvious peace with their bodies. Took joy in using their bodies. Mastered them. Merry’s had always felt like a bully. A great, heavy oaf pinning her to the ground, taunting.

  She blew on her steaming coffee and took a taste. “Oh man.”

  “Good?”

  She hazarded another sip. It had nothing on Blue Bottle, to be sure, but it was strong. And after two-plus weeks without a decent fix . . . “This is the most amazing coffee I’ve ever tasted.”

  “Much like your next hot shower will be the most amazing one you’ve ever taken.”

  “No doubt.” She reveled in the next mouthful. “Oh yeah.”

  Rob smirked.

  “I had a cup in each of the villages I’ve stopped in. But that was just watery gas-station-type coffee.” Not like this ambrosia, with its sinful, grimy, coffee-press heartiness. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “You don’t have any secret whiskey squirreled away for celebrations, do you?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t, no.”

  “Oh well. There’s plenty of that waiting for me in Inverness. Coffee’s exotic enough for now. Though if you thought I was chatty and annoying before . . .”

  Rob made a shifty face, one that told her t
hat yes, he had thought that, but felt poorly about it now.

  She laughed. “It’s okay. I know how I am. Any time there’s a silence I immediately start stuffing words into it.”

  “Don’t be offended if I don’t invite you to come deer-stalking, then.”

  “Fine. I’ll stick to tree-stalking. Easier to chase.”

  “The chase is the best part.”

  That gave her pause. Rob struck her as many things, but a bloodthirsty pursuer was not one of them. She wondered if hunting brought a wicked gleam to his eye . . . or if he approached deer with the same measured, anxious steps as he had her. Then she wondered, how might he approach a woman? One he had designs on? Nervous and cagey? Hopefully not. She tried to imagine him making a move on her. Would she even recognize it? Was he making one now?

  “Did you get hit on much, when you were behind a bar?” she asked.

  A lopsided sort of grin, revealing that teeth did indeed live behind those lips, and a nice set at that. “Not especially. Though I’ve never been the sharpest when it comes to picking up on feminine signals.”

  Are you gay? Merry seriously doubted it. She’d been honing her gaydar for thirty-one years, and in the Castro of all places. Gay Mesopotamia. Rob didn’t register even the faintest blip.

  “Women don’t make it easy,” she offered. “Men think they’re smooth, the way they approach girls, but women flirt, like, four levels below the surface of what they’re actually saying or doing.”

  “We don’t stand a chance.”

  When’s the last time you kissed a woman? Months? Years? “I’m not quite as good as my peers with that stuff,” Merry said. “I’m kind of shy around guys.”

  He shot her a dry look, that expression saying, You could have bloody well fooled me.

  “Or I was,” she corrected. A hundred pounds ago. “I’m a late bloomer. This whole walking-across-Scotland thing . . . I wouldn’t have done this last year. I’m trying to find my balls, I guess. You know. Be more adventurous, before I wake up and discover I’m fifty.”

  “I’d say you’re on your way. Three weeks hiking, on your own? That’s farther than most people take themselves.”

  Though not as far as Rob had taken himself. Straight out of polite society. And permanently, it seemed.

  They sipped their coffees in companionable silence for a while. Merry was pleased she could sit with him this way, only the slightest bit tempted to plaster over the peace with chatter. With some people, you could almost guess what they were thinking during these wordless stretches, but not Rob, not now. His face was as placid as a lake on a breezeless day, same as he’d looked during target practice, before his audience had arrived. Still waters. He did seem the type to run deep, and she wondered what thoughts were coursing behind those sad blue eyes.

  After he drained his mug, Rob stood. “I have a few things to tend to.”

  You always do. “Need help?”

  “No. You take it easy. I’ll make dinner in a couple hours. Nap ’til then if you can, if your head’s still hurting . . . Oh.”

  “Oh?”

  “Hang on.” He left her, disappearing into his bedroom, returning a moment later with something black in his hand.

  “You should borrow this, while you’re here.” He held it out—a late-model eBook reader.

  “Oh ho!” Merry made grabby hands at him. “I knew you had books around here somewhere. Though I hadn’t expected this . . .” She pushed the little list button and was rewarded with a library of nearly three hundred titles. “Wow. You’re voracious.”

  Rob smiled at that, turning her insides to butter. He tucked his hands in his pockets. “I’ve probably only read a few dozen so far. But when I came out here, I loaded it with every classic I recognized the name of. All those books we tell ourselves we’ll get around to reading.”

  She scanned the first twenty titles. “Awesome. And how surprisingly tech-savvy of you.”

  “I’m a hermit, not a Luddite. And that was far easier than lugging hundreds of paperbacks.”

  “What happens when the battery dies?”

  “I’ve got a travel charger, for the Land Rover.”

  “Oh, of course. Clever you. Thanks.”

  He shrugged. “Figured you must be sick of the view out that one window by now.”

  So he wanted her to borrow this . . . He wanted her to be entertained, and comfortable. So did that mean she was welcome to stay another day, perhaps?

  She wouldn’t say no. The wound at her temple didn’t frighten her as it had yesterday. She’d ditched the bandage, and the pain had faded to a dull ache, rising in the occasional crescendo, then receding almost to nothing for minutes at a time. She didn’t feel right, but the discomfort was no longer urgent.

  “I’ll let you relax,” Rob said, excusing himself to the bedroom once more. He reappeared with a tee shirt and towel in his hand and headed for the back hall. She watched him go, each and every step, until he disappeared.

  She stroked the velvety rubber corners of the eReader. Secretly, she hoped Rob would invite her to stay for an extra week, then make a move on her, but that probably wasn’t happening. She couldn’t spare the time, anyway—each day she lingered here was a day stolen from her visit to Inverness. And Rob surely couldn’t afford to keep pumping his energy and resources into uninvited houseguests. Winter was on its way. He must have a million things to do. And three hundred books to read.

  Too bad. She’d have liked to have gotten to know him better. He was easily the most interesting person she’d met in years.

  * * *

  Rob grabbed a washcloth and a bar of soap from a shelf by the back door, tossed them and the towel and the shirt in a big metal basin, and hugged it to his chest as he exited. Usually he bathed in the morning—more bracing than a coffee—but he felt the urge now. Plus . . . He was avoiding Merry again. And she could probably guess as much.

  Just a quick wash. You’ll have all evening to fumble through awkward conversations.

  Were they so awkward, though? The strange thing was, he was beginning to rather enjoy the woman’s company. But it had been so long, and he was so thoroughly shit at socializing . . . The urge to run away kept trumping the draw of human interaction.

  But one thing had become perfectly clear today.

  He was lonely.

  Frowning at the realization, he dropped the basin before the pump. He constructed his usual pyramid on a flat slate paving stone, off the dirt—T, towel, washcloth, and the bar of soap on top.

  The pump gurgled to life with a croaking wail. Rob pushed the handle again, again, until water was tumbling into the basin, clean and clear and icy cold.

  He’d convinced himself he wasn’t lonely, these past two years. That the scenery and the friendship of an unnamed dog were all he needed. All he wanted.

  So often, we tell ourselves we don’t want or need things, simply because we’re rubbish at them.

  He’d been rubbish at friendships as a child, and so contented himself with solitary pursuits and the coveted company of his brother, when it was offered. He’d discovered he was rubbish with girls as well, some years later. They’d made it plain they didn’t want him, and so he’d decided perhaps he didn’t want them, either.

  He hadn’t wanted them in the obvious ways that other lads had, to be certain. He’d wanted them in ways he knew better than to try to explain, even as a hormone-drunk teenager. If his personality weren’t offensive enough, his sexual interests would surely finish the job. Better to choose loneliness than to suffer it alongside the official sting of another’s rejection.

  And so he’d chosen loneliness his entire childhood and adolescence.

  He switched arms when his wrist began to ache, the basin half full.

  It was only when he’d gone off to university and learned to drink t
hat he’d felt capable of the socializing necessary to foster friendships. Alcohol was like a secret he’d finally been let in on. The password that earned him admittance into the club of carefree youth, and better late than never. A missing part, so simple and so obvious, but that when snapped into place allowed him to function as a young man was designed to.

  And he’d been good at it, to start—the drinking.

  Two lagers, maybe three, and Rob could shut his brain off enough to get lost in a conversation, like any other bloke. To make people laugh. To smile and to truly feel the ease and happiness it reflected. All these new people who’d never met the Rob from that previous, lonely life . . . The memory of that wretched child had begun to fade, like a bad dream forgotten with the sunrise. A liquid sunrise, golden and pure, poured into a glass to warm the very heart.

  He’d rarely gotten drunk, those first few years. The thrill and relief of being able to relate to people had been intoxicating enough. To see people smile when he arrived at the pub, actually excited to see him. Him. To feel a girl’s hand on his arm and realize he was being flirted with. To be invited to explore a woman’s body, to be touched and wanted, after so many years of feeling tolerated, at best.

  And from perhaps eighteen to twenty-eight, he’d managed a balance. For that decade, alcohol had been but a crutch, the lubrication that loosened his brain and mouth enough for him to enjoy the company of others. To make him charming enough, calm enough, to foster two successful businesses, to court and marry his wife.

  With a final stroke, he let the pump handle go. He stripped his ripe shirt and tossed it aside, got to his knees before the basin. His hands prickled the second they plunged into the frigid water, but the physical discomfort was welcome, its distraction dulling the sting of these memories.

  It hadn’t been until after Rob married that things had changed. Steadily, drinking had transformed into the means for becoming insensate, rather than merely a bit of fuel to get the social flames to catch.

  He’d gone too deep into the thing, and he could never get back to how he’d been, content with two or three. He’d ruined it. He’d needed it too badly, sold his soul for that fleeting sense of peace and belonging, not noticing the corrosion until it was far too late, his body and brain chewed hollow. Not until sobriety had become the illness, a discomfort too painful to suffer. And so the bottle, that most cherished lover, had risen up to kiss his lips and soothe his hurt, again and again and again.