3. Emi
Iwasn’t sure what to think of this handsome stranger in my grandmother’s house. He was acting as if he had every right to be here, and I couldn’t deny he was charming, but Grandma Ruby wasn’t exactly known for being friendly. One only had to look at where she lived to know she wasn’t fond of company. I really hoped I wasn’t meeting my grandmother’s much, much younger paramour, because, I did NOT want to think about that. Although, I wouldn’t fault her taste…No, bad brain.
Wolf looked close to my age, somewhere in his twenties, so I was sticking with the firm belief that he was a gardener. Nothing more. Just…no.
“And where is she now?” I asked, dragging my thoughts back to Grandma.
An odd expression flickered over his eyes, so fast it might never have been there. “She left before conditions deteriorated. I wouldn’t expect her to return anytime soon.”
I twitched Grandma”s curtain to the side. Mist swirled up to her garden gate, closer than I”d ever seen it come before. The thickest of it normally clung to the dark woods but left her clearing and the path alone. The memory of snapping jaws flushed my body with hot fear and I hugged my arms around myself.
“You’re safe in here, Emi. Don’t worry.”
Wolf’s calming words infused me with warmth. Having someone notice that I needed comfort was unsettling. “You know,”—I studied Grandma’s visitor—“that is exactly what some sort of crazed hunter-slash-ax murderer would say to put me at ease. You aren’t going to ax murder me, are you?”
He held up empty hands. “No ax.”
“Reassuring,” I teased back, aware that a gardener would know the ax lived out by the wood pile. Oddly, in spite of a sharpness to him that spoke of competence and self-assuredness, I didn’t sense danger. I still wasn’t pleased to be stuck here with a stranger, but the peril outside was far greater than what I sensed from him.
“How long have you done Ruby’s gardening?”
Grandma Ruby was fiercely independent, surviving alone out here, so I trusted her judgement in allowing this man to be here. Besides, it wasn’t like she had anything to steal unless he was inexplicably drawn to moth-eaten afghans and multitudinous bundles of dried herbs. But his presence niggled at me.
Was her age catching up to her? Did she need more help? She could have asked me. I would have come more often.
Unless…unless she didn’t want that. My heart fell.
“Only recently.” Wolf turned away as he answered
Grandma was careful. She wouldn’t have let just anyone in here. My surprise at finding that she trusted him alone in her home only told me he was a man who’d earned her confidence. Not a very open or loquacious man, certainly, but likely a good one. With a strong back for gardening. And strong muscles. And a very nice, um…face. Yes. I was looking at his face.
I swallowed.
While he poured a glass of water at the kitchen tap, I studied him. Most Anterrans had light hair, and Wolf was no exception. His was light brown, warm like cinnamon, and it looked like it hadn”t had a proper cut in some time. The ends were uneven and long enough that they curled in every which direction. I wanted to comb my fingers through it and tame it, but that thought would not help the lingering heat in my cheeks, which was absolutely, definitely, totally, only there because of careening into him earlier.
His broad back flexed as he turned off the tap and those muscular shoulders under his threadbare shirt reminded me how wide and firm his chest had been against me. My cheeks flamed.
“Emi.” He startled me, and I looked up to find him holding out the glass of water, amusement lighting his face. His eyes were an unusual grey, pale enough to be almost silver. “You look thirsty.”
Was that a smirk?
“I’m, uh—a bit out of breath. From the running.” I gulped the water down gratefully, then changed the subject. “Now what?”
He shrugged. “We stay here until it”s safe out there.”
That made sense, but I hoped we weren’t stuck past nightfall.
Carrying my water, I padded to the couch and sat at the end facing the fire. Wolf must have been keeping it stoked because it flickered merrily with an occasional pop of sap. The warmth leached the last of the cold from my bones, and I relaxed against the cushions as Wolf joined me at the other end.
It was nice to talk to someone who didn’t already know all about me for a change. I rarely got to meet new people, only the occasional merchant or traveler, and that attractive trader that Grandma used sometimes, but I hadn’t seen Locke in many moons now.
We chatted idly, taking it in turns to check outside the window. Wolf was tight-lipped about himself, answering my questions in short sentences.
He lived “nearby.”
He”d been a gardener for “a few annums now.”
He had worked for Ruby “several times.”
“Yes,” he had family in the area.
The way he answered carried a hollowness, as if he was missing a piece to his puzzle. He sounded lonely.
Or maybe that was me projecting. It was probably me.
I filled the silences with whatever came to mind, and he slowly relaxed into his corner of the couch, speaking more as he asked me about my life.
I told him a bit about my father. “He’s very busy with work, so he doesn’t have much time to spare unless it’s for my sister. I’m the one who puts meals on the table, brings in enough from the bakery to save for our tithes, and actually remembers when the fief’s collector is coming, but she’s the eldest.” I fought to keep the bitterness from my voice, but it was gratifying to see his frown anyway.
By unspoken agreement, we avoided the topic of Grandma Ruby and my festering anxiety over her whereabouts. The longer we talked, the more comfortable I felt with Wolf, but I couldn”t help wondering how much longer Grandma was going to be. He caught me glancing to the door again.
“If she went to town, she’d be stuck waiting this out the same as us,” Wolf reassured.
“I’ve never seen it like this.”
He frowned but didn”t answer.
If the Mist didn”t lift, I didn”t relish the idea of making my way back home. Growls and roars still echoed in my mind, and my heart raced at the thought of not being able to see my surroundings properly.
Strangely, I didn”t hate the idea of being stuck here a bit longer with Wolf, although when night fell, things could get awkward. It was a small cottage. Grandma”s bedroom was the only one, and aside from the tiny water closet, it was the only room with its own door.
“We should eat,” Wolf suggested as the day wound down. “I’m sure we can find something worth cooking in here.” He was good at distracting me right when I needed it.
Cooking…now that I could do!
I set down my empty glass and stood. “I had cornbread and biscuits that would have been good with some simple beans and a roasted quail, but unfortunately…” I waved a despondent hand toward the front door.
“Ah.” Wolf nodded sagely. “Necessary sacrifices, given the circumstance.”
“I suppose.”
He chuckled at my obvious disappointment over the lack of fresh bread. “If you can rustle up that quail, I can solve our dearth of bread.”
I raised a skeptical eyebrow. “But I’ll need the oven.”
“Leave it to me, Emi.” He winked, and I was mildly uncomfortable with what that wink did to my insides.
All right, then. “First, one of us is going to have to brave the back garden to gather some beans. Sounds like a job for a master gardener, wouldn’t you say?”
“Oh, I see how it is. Sacrifice the stranger, is it?”
I gave him my most beatific smile.
He responded with a flourishing bow. “At your service.” Then he ducked out the back door without even a hint of fear. It set my fingers tingling.
By the time he returned with a fistful of string beans, I had a bird out from Grandma’s cold storage and was rubbing the plucked flesh with a combination of the dried herbs from above her kitchen window. I would do a dry roast and add the beans when the skin began to crisp, but I was far more interested to see how Wolf was going to make me bread without the oven.
The whole cottage was small, so the kitchen had just enough space for one person to work between the parallel countertops. Wolf and I quickly tangled limbs as we tried to navigate it.
“Have you seen flour?” he asked.
I pointed. He had to squeeze by me to reach the pantry, and I held my breath as he steadied my hips while he slid behind me. For a heartbeat, our bodies were pressed together. Then he had to do it all over again in reverse once he had the flour in hand. I sucked in my lips to stop from smiling, curious if I might be having some effect on Wolf, since he certainly had one on me if the butterflies in my stomach were any indication.
From the corner of my eye, I watched with interest as Wolf prepared the simplest of ingredients. He added some cornmeal and baking powder to the flour. Then he used hot water from the kettle to melt some butter and added that as well.
“Will you use the stovetop?” I asked. I may have been secretly hoping he’d say yes since I wouldn’t mind having him in the tight space with me some more.
But he shook his head and took the bowl along with a stick he’d brought inside over to the fire. “I’m used to cooking over open flame.”
Covering my disappointment, I left him to his task and returned to mine, basting the quail with its own juices and adding the beans to finish it off. The cottage filled with delicious scents and my mouth was watering by the time I plated the food and carried it to where Wolf was finishing up at the fire.
“Is there honey?” he asked.
I grabbed it from the shelf and handed it over. Wolf had made several flaky-looking golden biscuits that were shaped like squished logs wrapped around the stick and cooked in the open flames. He gently pulled the last one off and then drizzled his creations with honey.
“Those smell amazing,” I gushed. “What is it?”
“Skaan. I added cornmeal to replace your lost cornbread. Trust me.” He placed one of the honey-drizzled creations on my plate and I couldn’t decide whether to stare at it or at the muscular forearm below his rolled back shirt sleeve.
Either way, I was drooling.
We sat together on the couch to eat, laughing over stories as he finally opened up and shared a few with me. I was warm and flushed with delight when he mentioned he had a friend named Bear. What was going on with names where he came from? My cheeks hurt from smiling.
I licked the last bit of honey from my fingers and we both set our empty plates on the low table. Somehow we shifted as we sat back again, ending up close enough that our knees touched. He told a story of his friend Robin playing a prank on Bear that had me clutching my side. I grabbed his arm to make him stop and left it there as I caught my breath. He moved only enough to let his leg rest against mine. He was warm. Solid.
“My sister used to play tricks on me too, although they were more mean if you ask me. This one time, Jade took my favorite mug and—”
“Jade?” His tone was suddenly sharp.
“Yes. My sister, Jade.” I really hoped he didn”t ask about her. The last thing I wanted was for my attention-stealing sister to pry him away without even being here. Jade took everything worth having.
He withdrew. “Emi. Is that short for something?”
It was, but I wasn”t about to share. Apparently, when your mother was named Sapphire, you got to have the unfortunate name of Emerald. Well, no thank you.
Emi suited me better and stopped people from giving me the wide-eyed looks of horror that the name Emerald always seemed to elicit. I hated those looks. Yes, it was an unusual name. Yes, it was terrible. Yes, I was aware. So no, I wasn”t sharing my full name with a man I just met. I didn”t want that look from Wolf…the one disturbingly close to the one he was already giving me.
“It”s just Emi.”
He stood so abruptly, I tipped back. “It”s dark. We should sleep.”
“We—Uh, I suppose we should.” So much for avoiding awkwardness. Awkward just stormed through the door.
Wolf took our plates to the kitchen. When he turned back to find me staring after him, his whole demeanour had changed. His face was closed, nothing like the smile he’d worn before. We had just been laughing together. Now he was cold, his voice hard when he spoke. “I’ll take the bedroom. You can sleep out here.”
What?
Without waiting for my indignant response to that, he strode through the door and closed it firmly behind him.
I stood frozen.
What just happened?
Of all the— The nerve of him!
Had he seriously relegated me to the couch with no discussion? Did he not know he was the guest here, not me? I’d been called names, whispered about, and ignored, but I’d never felt so thoroughly dismissed.
What had made him shut down so suddenly? I wanted answers.
Of course, the bedroom door had a lock. There was no give when I jiggled the handle.
“Wolf!”
No response.
“Seriously?” I pounded on the door.
Nothing.
Bewildered, I added a log to the fire and gathered a blanket from Grandma’s chest below the front window before settling on the couch. I lay awake a long time, restless, wondering where I’d gone wrong, and worried about Grandma.
Just when I had started to settle, strange scratching noises disturbed the quiet. I clutched the blanket tight, my pulse racing in my throat.
“Wolf, was that you?”
There was no answer. Had I expected anything else? He was the same as everyone.
My whole body was tense, on alert like I was out on that path again. A loud growl sounded in the night, so close it must have been right outside. I shivered and dove under my cover. I didn’t understand why the Mist and beasts were so aggravated right now. I didn’t like how Wolf had turned into such a crusty-livered toad without warning. I was uneasy here without Grandma, and mostly, I hated that nobody at home would even notice I was missing.