Chapter Five
TARYN
I step back to let Hawk in and he ducks his head coming through the door.
He sets the packages on my worktable and I peel back the butcher paper. The backstrap inside is deep red, trimmed clean. I've handled a lot of meat in my years of cooking, and nothing this good has ever come into my kitchen.
“Hawk, this is gorgeous.”
“It’ll taste better than it looks. Took him in November.” He sets a jar down next to it: huckleberry preserves, the date written on the lid in neat block letters. The man dates his preserves; Grandma June would adopt him on the spot.
“Does Marvin know about this?”
“Marvin's getting the shoulder. The backstrap's for you.” He shrugs off his jacket, hangs it on the hook by the door and rolls up his sleeves. “Show me what you can do with it.”
He's staying. A warm glow spreads through me as I light the burner under the cast iron.
We fall into an easy rhythm. I cut the backstrap into medallions and season them while he takes the shoulder to the far board and breaks it down for the freezer. His knife work is clean and quick, the best I've ever stood next to.
“Where does a forest ranger learn to butcher like that?”
“The government taught me some of it.” He stops for a second, rubbing his beard. “The rest I picked up on the mountain… the winters are long here.”
There's a story there, but I don't push. I sweat shallots in butter and splash in some stock. When I open his preserves, the smell is like August sunshine. I build the pan sauce a spoonful of huckleberry at a time, tasting as I go.
“Taste this.” I hold the spoon out across the worktable.
He leans in and tastes, then his brow creases.
“That's my fruit?”
“It is. Turns out it likes butter and a happy cook.”
The corner of his mouth lifts for a second and it makes me determined to get him to smile.
I plate two portions and we eat standing at the worktable. The venison is everything that ruby color promised. We clean our plates in minutes, and the kitchen settles into a warm hum, the oven ticking as it cools.
“Marvin needs this on the menu,” I say. “Venison and huckleberry, weekends only, while it lasts. People will drive over the pass for it.”
“ I bet he’ll want to call it something dumb.”
“Hunter's Special.”
“Told you.”
I laugh and bump him with my shoulder. He doesn't move an inch, which makes it funnier.
“Speaking of specials, Viv's roped me into baking for this big engagement party on Saturday. Striker and Bethany? Six pies and a cake. She says some of the town are going too.” I look up at him, batting my eyelashes. “Even grumpy rangers, I'm told.”
He stares down at me.
I don’t drop my gaze, although my cheeks start to flush. “Will you be there?”
Hawk doesn't answer. There's a smudge of the sauce in his beard and I reach up and brush it away with my thumb. His hand catches my wrist. His grip is gentle but firm.
“Taryn.”
“That's my name…” I whisper.
Then he kisses me like he's been thinking about it as long as I have.
His hand spreads across the small of my back and pulls me in tight.
His mouth is slow and sure. I rise up onto my toes, my fingers grasping his shirt.
He walks me backward until the walk-in door is cool against my shoulders, and he's warm everywhere else.
A low sound rumbles in his chest. It runs straight through me, from my scalp to my core, and makes my knees quiver.
I say his name into the kiss and his fingers slide into my hair, cradling my head like I'm something delicate and precious.
One more minute of this and I'll be suggesting we test how sturdy the worktable is. Then he stops. Hawk pulls back, his hand still cupped behind my head. We're both breathing hard.
“That shouldn't have happened,” he says, his voice rough.
“Funny. It felt like it was going to since I first ate that pie you baked.”
“Taryn, you got a letter a coupla days ago that knocked your whole life over, and you're stranded in a town you've known for five minutes.
And I'm a lot older than you.” He straightens up.
His hands leave me slowly and that's the only reason I don't throw the saucepan at him.
“I won't be the bandage you wrap around what that man did.
When you pick somebody, you'll do it with your feet under you. Not because you washed up here and I was standing closest to the door.”
“That's the stupidest thing anyone's ever said to me.”
“It's not stupid.”
“Hawk, I'd been eyeing you up for an hour before I knew Keith wasn't coming.”
For a second I think the door he closed is going to swing open. Then he steps back, lifts his jacket off the hook, and the shutters come down over his face.
“Don’t forget to tell Marvin about the venison,” he says at the door.
The lock clicks behind him. His bike starts on the first kick and the engine fades up the mountain road. I stand alone in the warm kitchen. My lips are still humming, and my body aches in a strange way, like it wants to be pressed against his chest again.
I pick up the jar and turn it in my hands; he thinks I kissed him because I'm stranded, or lonely, or bored, but he’s wrong.
I'm not spoken for anymore. But Hawk is. He just doesn't know it yet.