Chapter 6 #2
She exhaled. “Okay.”
“Okay,” he echoed.
Tilly stood, padded over to the table, and bumped her broad head against Rainey’s knee. She reached down and buried her fingers in the thick fur at the dog’s neck. Tilly leaned into the touch, and Evander watched them both with something unreadable in his face.
He straightened away from the map. “You need breakfast.”
She watched his back as he cooked. He’d agreed to all of her conditions, and now he was taking care of her again, making her food. That should loosen the tight ball of nerves in the pit of her stomach, but it didn’t.
Some men made promises to keep you quiet.
Some men made promises because they’d already decided you weren’t worth the trouble of arguing with.
She wasn’t sure which kind Evander Cole was yet.
Breakfast was eggs from powder and oatmeal cooked on the camp stove.
He ate his portion standing up, his back against the wall, the rifle propped beside him.
He’d put on a shirt, but he hadn’t buttoned it, and she saw the tattoos covering his chest. Skulls—five of them—in stark black ink, each one different, each one too detailed to be decoration.
Names beneath them. Dates. She looked away before he caught her staring, but the image stayed with her, and she couldn’t help wondering what kind of man carried his dead on his skin like that.
She ate because she needed to, not because she wanted to. The oatmeal was plain, and the eggs were dry, but the coffee he poured into a chipped enamel mug was strong enough to strip paint.
Just how she liked it.
She wrapped both hands around the mug, but pulled back when she recognized the faded logo on the side.
Valor Ridge.
She lifted the mug, turning the logo toward him. “You lived there with River?”
Evander was looking at the map again, and went still, his spine stiffening.
“What happened?”
He didn’t answer.
“Please,” she said. “If I’m going to trust you, I need you to give me something.”
He was quiet long enough that she thought he wouldn’t. Then he straightened from the table and crossed to the window, his back to her.
“Walker Nash came to see me in Leavenworth. Three months before my release.” He paused. “I didn’t want to see him, but Walker doesn’t listen to no.”
“Leavenworth,” she repeated, and that knot of nerves tightened in her belly. “You were in prison.”
“Five years.” He didn’t turn around. “Court-martialed. I was a Recon Marine. Made a call I had no business making, and five men under my command died because of it.”
That explained the tattoo.
He fell into silence and didn’t seem inclined to continue.
“So Walker came,” she prompted. “Offered you a place at the ranch.”
“He picked me up from the gate. Drove me to Montana and showed me what he was building. Valor Ridge was only a few years old then, with a handful of residents. Boone Callahan, Jonah Reed, and your brother had just arrived, too.” He turned then, and the shadows under his eyes looked deeper. “I stayed two nights.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want to be there.”
“But you stayed in Montana?”
A muscle jumped in his cheek like he was grinding his teeth. “I put a deposit on thirty acres at the edge of the property line. Built a cabin with my own hands and I was there until a flood took it out this spring.” He paused. “Eight years.”
She thought about that. Eight years alone, in a cabin he’d built with his own hands, with nothing but a dog and the long, cold stretch of Montana winter.
Why had a loner like that stepped between her and Rux’s knife without a second’s hesitation?
“What happened in forty-eight hours to make a man choose eight years alone?”
He stilled. Something in his face shuttered, closed, and she saw it before he could hide it—the flicker of something raw and terrible moving behind his eyes.
Then Tilly’s head came up off the floor, and before Rainey could ask again, the dog bolted to her feet with her hackles raised.
A low growl rumbled from deep in her chest.
And outside in the clearing, a horse screamed.
Evander was out the door with his rifle before Rainey could get to her feet. She followed, her ribs pulling with every step, and emerged into the cool air just in time to see him sprinting across the clearing toward the lean-to she’d noticed last night.
The horse was black as shadow. Her eyes rolled white, and her whole body shook with panic as she pressed herself against the back of the lean-to. A long, deep scrape ran down her left side, bright red through the dark hide, and she pawed at the ground, tearing furrows in the dirt.
At the tree line, maybe twenty yards from the lean-to, a mountain lion crouched.
It was huge. Golden-brown, motionless, its tail switching slowly from side to side as it watched the panicked horse.
Evander didn’t shout or run at it. He lifted the rifle from his shoulder, sighted down the barrel, and fired.
The shot cracked across the clearing like a whip.
The shot hit a tree near the mountain lion and the animal flinched, but didn’t retreat. It rose to its full height, muscles bunching under its coat, and bared its teeth in a hiss audible even from where Rainey stood frozen on the porch.
“Get back inside,” Evander said, and his voice was ice.
She didn’t move.
He took a step toward the lion. Then another. The rifle stayed at his shoulder, the barrel trained on the animal, and he fired again.
The shot landed in the dirt inches from the cat.
The man just told her he’d been a sniper. Why the hell wasn’t he hitting it?
For a long moment, the lion held its ground. Then it turned, languid, almost contemptuous, and vanished into the trees.
Evander kept the rifle up for a long beat. Then he lowered it, slung it back over his shoulder, and crossed to the lean-to.
The horse was still trembling, still wild-eyed, but she’d stopped pressing herself into the back wall. Her breath came in great heaving gusts that made her whole body shudder, and the scrape on her side dripped blood onto the dirt below.
“Sable.” His voice changed. The ice was gone, replaced by something softer, lower. “Easy now. Easy.”