EPILOGUE
BODE
Three months after Cora Welk arrived in my life she was still here sitting at my table, working on drawings for her portfolio.
And I figured her boss, or maybe Travis had worked out what happened, because no search party arrived to look for her even though the day after she found me beneath the waterfall in the cavern, the sky darkened and snow set in as winter arrived a full three weeks early.
That happened occasionally, with that strange onset of fall’s last cloud burst as its final herald, as though the season decided to have its final fling across the mountainside. And then, the passes closed and we were snowbound for the foreseeable future.
Not that Cora seemed to mind simple mountain life at all. No more than I expected really when I saw her that first day, realized she had walked in with one set of clothes, a few rations in her bag, filthy, dirty in so many more ways than one, and refused to leave before she got her answer from me.
I wasn’t sure if she ever got her answer, and she was still here.
But today, she didn’t sit at my table alone. Because even though early winter still drifted across the mountain, the only person crazier than my nearest neighbor had come to visit, and I hadn't seen Walker Roan for a few months now, shut up in his own place a few mountains closer to Red Hart.
No, the visitor we had today made Cora very happy and changed the status quo that I’d adjusted to perfectly fine.
I just wasn’t sure how this would play out…or if she’d stay after he’d had his say.
And so I sat at the other end of my table, drank fresh instant coffee Kyle gifted me—for a price, even though he hadn't disclosed what his was just yet—and said nothing at all.
“They miss you in White Cap.” Kyle flipped idly through the portfolio hosting my older designs and Cora’s newer drawings of my newer works, seeing as I didn't have a printer. He spoke to both of us, but only she answered him.
“Maybe. Ben can get another sales girl. I’m staying.” She leaned over and rested her head on my shoulder. “The jewelry shop was fun. Ten years of fun,” she said much slower under Kyle’s watchful gaze. “But also I think I’m here, now.”
Kyle’s eyes flicked up to meet mine. “Yeah?”
I held his gaze and didn’t move. Didn’t speak, either.
Sometimes, Kyle came up the range and spent a week talking to himself.
I listened. Learned a lot, or learned nothing at all.
At the end of the week we traded for what we both needed, and for what I felt was worth something to sell.
Sometimes the trader walked around the house picking out things he wanted to buy.
Occasionally, he got to take them away with him.
He smiled when I didn't answer. “Sounds like a good place, then.” He paused, and I knew he was loading his bait.
Waited, because the younger nomadic trader was a master at his craft and everyone from White Cap to Red Hart and Black Hill to the properties beyond to the west knew that as well.
“What about the Christmas trade? Or did you forget about that?”
Cora shifted beside me in a way that gave away her desire for something she wanted.
“I—” She leaned away from me. I wrapped an arm around her waist, unwilling to let her move.
She let me, but leaned forward, planting her elbows on the table.
“I thought we had passed Christmas. Just…let it go.” She looked back and shrugged.
“I thought maybe you didn't celebrate it so I ignored dates once I got here. Kind of stopped counting and all.”
I gifted her a faint smile that she returned with a much larger one. No words were necessary right there.
Kyle coughed. “It’s in three weeks.”
Okay, so maybe Cora had been with me for two months, and I couldn't count for shit. Wait– The penny dropped on a different realization. I frowned and tapped her thigh, ignoring Kyle. Her head angled sideways when I tapped her thigh again, a little harder.
She nodded. “I know.”
“When?” My voice rasped from lack of use. Cora didn't make me talk, or talk when I asked for her silence. Utterly fucking prefect in all ways. I coughed, the sound dry, and seared my throat on the black coffee, seeking lubrication.
She knew. Of course she knew. It was her body. I should have known, too. But I’d been too damn loved up with her to focus on much else. And it had been a long time for me without a woman… Not that it should be any sort of excuse.
“When were you going to tell me?”
Cora shrugged. “Maybe next month? If I thought it was… real.” Her cheeks heated on the lie.
I squeezed her waist in a silent promise.
A child. Here. For us. Fuck. I needed to be so much more for her. For all of us. But she wasn’t backing down and… If this was what she wanted from me, then neither would I.
A woman walked out on me once before. I still had no idea what I didn't do to make the mark, only that it hurt enough that I hid myself away from the world when she broke my trust and another man took my place.
This time, I promised Cora as I stared at her and ignored Kyle, I would be enough for all of us. Whatever she needed.
But there was the little matter that she hadn’t told me. Something she needed to do as trust was a two way door.
We will talk about this later.
Even if later involved no words at all.
Kyle leaned back, letting us host our silent conversation until we were done, and then redirected us.
“Ben needs the extra hand in the shop. White Cap gets busy during Christmas. If you need to go into town, we can travel together to Red Hart. One of the boys will give you a lift back in.” He raised an eyebrow at me, clearly having followed the conversation.
“I miss the rush,” she murmured, glancing at me, her brow dipping as she sought permission that she never needed to request from me.
“Not the work, well, kind of. But Christmas is…it’s busy.
Crazy busy. Non-stop. And people are crazy.
From the time you open, you’re needed. You help all day, finding gifts, solving problems. It’s…
there’s no other time of year like it.” She glowed with every word. I knew what would come next.
I growled at Cora, and she giggled.
You shouldn’t keep secrets from me, sprite.
No matter how long she’d been in the mountains with me or not, I still couldn’t drop the name she’d earned on her first day here that seemed both yesterday and so long ago.
Without a word I shoved my chair back, emptied my coffee mug, dregs and all down my throat and strode for my bedroom. I had a duffle bag from my military days stowed somewhere. That would do for a few weeks’ clothing and whatever else she would need.
Hell, Cora had been wearing my clothes with few alterations for the past months. Maybe when we came back she could bring some of her own things with her, set up what she wanted for the baby properly.
The plan spurred me on. I headed down the hallway until the silence in the living area brought me to a halt.
Kyle coughed, and Cora giggled.
“What are you doing?” she called.
I poked my head back out the hallway. “If you’re keen on working Christmas each season, then we need to pack.”
“We?” She stared at me, open mouthed.
I nodded, my throat already itchy from its long speech of thirteen words. “Yep, we. Going down the mountains. To Red Hart. And White Cap. All of us.” I waved my finger in the air to include our unnamed mountain baby and Kyle, though I cast the trader a hard eye.
He just smiled and drank from my mug at my table while my girl giggled and grabbed her portfolio, already planning which of my carvings she’d take into town.
Guess I’d have a decent income to look after my new family each year if this was the plan from now on anyway. And if she wanted to do this each Christmas… Well, hell.
At least the trader might stay away a little more and I could get some quiet time with my girl once we came back home together.
All of us.