6. Aleks
Aleks
Building a house was . . . fun?
That seemed a strange word for hard, sweaty labor that involved painstaking accuracy and moving enormous trees around, but somehow that was what it was.
We piled logs and moved things where Cash told us to, though he was shy about anything that resembled giving orders, and always tacked a “please” or an “if you would, thank you,” to the end of every order.
Request. That was the word.
Not a thing I was used to at all.
Still, something about working together that way was better than just random physical labor.
I liked a hard day’s work, because it was a good way to get your mind off of other things, but this was even better.
I didn’t just get to stop worrying about Viktor and Grant and the pack for hours every day.
I got to do that, and then go back with a smile on my face, thinking about Leo nearly dropping a log on his toes, or the way Cash blushed when Mama told him he could take his shirt off if he was too hot.
Tragically, he’d demurred and told her that it was safer and cleaner for him to keep it on.
That made sense, as at the time he’d been sanding the logs down, and with the shirt he was less likely to get splinters or get covered in .
. . tree dust? I needed to see if there was an English word for that.
We spent over a week like that, felling trees and then preparing them, which wasn’t exactly slow work, but it took a lot of wood to build a house.
And that was to say nothing of the fact that first, Cash had needed to measure and level the area where the house would go, as much as he could.
Then came the digging, deep holes for the posts that would hold Mama’s house up, which then needed to be measured and cut precisely, and stabilized with concrete.
I didn’t ogle him as much as I wanted too, too busy to be staring at him instead of doing my work, but it was nice anyway.
Every time I looked up, I was surrounded by either some of the people I loved most in the world, or the lovely picture of Cash, wearing his clear goggles as he measured and cut wood.
He had answers for everything—how to make water flow, how the sun could warm the tank and the wood stove could keep it from freezing in winter, how to best take advantage of sunlight. He meant to build something better than what we’d had before, and watching him figure out how was marvelous.
The way he would tug his lower lip between his teeth when he was deep in thought, so focused on his work that I was sure the world had fallen away for him.
I had always been comfortable being forgotten, because forgotten meant no beatings, no humiliation, no attention from people who might want to do me wrong.
But in this case, Cash forgetting we were there seemed like the best of compliments.
He was so nervous, so skittish around most of the pack, that his level of comfort with us felt like a gift.
The concrete had been “curing” for a few days, though I was unclear on why that was the word used, and we were finishing with the last of the logs that would make the walls, when Leo gave me a sly smile and ducked behind a huge old oak and returned with . . . Mama’s picnic basket.
Had he brought lunch? Usually Mama brought us all food around lunch time, but if Leo had brought it with him—well first off, how had I not noticed? And more, why was he giving me that look, like the proverbial cat who got his cream.
Instead of opening the basket and handing me food, he handed me the whole basket, then pulled a blanket I hadn’t noticed from under his arm. He turned around and, selecting a likely spot, whipped it out and spread it across the grass.
Then he turned, winked at me, and whispered, “Only today.”
It was . . . something we’d taken to saying to each other after we had escaped Russia; a kind of shorthand to remind ourselves that we might not have decades and decades to live, like most wolves, or even humans. We might only have this one day, so we should live it as best we could.
While we weren’t happy in Idaho, exactly, we were settled. Safe. Complacent. It was easy to forget that everything could be gone in an instant.
That your brother could be standing at your side one moment, and the next, just . . . gone.
And then Leo was disappearing back into the woods, headed in the direction of the other houses. He had brought lunch just for me and Cash, and was leaving us alone to eat it.
There was a reason that, though Leo was technically the oldest of us—even if only by an hour—Mama always called him her puppy. He was an incurable hopeful romantic. He’d smiled through losing his mother, our pack, and even his twin.
At least he knew Viktor was alive. He always said so whenever the topic came up. We just needed to find him. I’d never managed to ask if he believed because of some mystical bond between them, which I alternately hoped for and was envious of, or simply because he couldn’t believe otherwise.
I wondered if he ever had the same doubts I did, but also, I would never ask it. I liked that he always saw hope in everything, and I would never willingly do anything to crush it.
Regardless, that thought was for another time.
Now was for lunch. A picnic lunch with Cash, that Leo had dreamed up.
As I opened the basket, it became apparent that my mother had helped him, since Leo was no cook, and this lunch was lovely.
Fresh dark bread, pickled cucumbers and tomatoes, and skewers of what smelled like lamb.
There were even two little cakes packed in their own container.
Yes, Mama had definitely had a hand in this.
I supposed I hadn’t made my admiration for Cash any kind of secret. I didn’t see a reason to.
Oh, I wouldn’t tell Grant. He was the kind of man who enjoyed seeing others unhappy, so he might do something awful if he knew. But mostly, he left me alone so long as I did the things he wanted when called upon.
Cash came wandering over, brushing wood chips out of his hair and looking confused.
“Is everything okay? Is Leo . . . ” Staring at the food, he trailed off.
“Oh. That’s nice. Is it . . . Should I .
. . ” He looked around the clearing nervously, like maybe I’d invited company for lunch, and they were hiding behind a tree somewhere.
“Leo went back to eat. Mama made this for us.” I hefted the basket, then went to where Leo had laid out the blanket, plopped myself onto it, and patted the spot next to me. “Both of us.”
And then I started unpacking the food. Even if he was hesitant at such a forward gesture, no one could resist Mama’s fresh bread and butter. She always used just the right amount of salt and the tiniest hint of honey in the butter, and it was perfect.
Sure enough, a moment later, Cash was sitting next to me, staring at the food, then nervously up at me. “You—or she, she didn’t have to—”
“Mama doesn’t have to do anything. She does this because she wants to.” I pulled out a slice of bread and slathered it with butter, then handed it to him.
His whole face lit up, as it should, and also . . . it always should. He should always look as happy as he did in that moment, with something so simple as a piece of bread.
I pulled the rest of the food out, and the plates Mama had packed, portioning the food out onto each and handing him one. He chewed and swallowed his bread, but he was already shaking his head. “You should take more. You’re working so hard.”
“You are also working hard,” I answered without thinking. “And you are also werewolf. You should eat more.”
I refrained—barely—from becoming my own mother and telling him he was too thin, and simply held the plate in front of him until he took it.
He groaned over his first bite of lamb, and I had to adjust my position to keep my jeans from getting too tight over the noise.
How was anyone in the world so innocently sexy?
His eyes were bright with joy, though, and I couldn’t turn that moment into something dirty by bringing sex into it. “Your mother is a wonder. I feel like we should get her together with my dad. They’d take over the whole pack with their cooking.”
I laughed at that, but he wasn’t wrong. As a wolf easily swayed by a good meal, I suspected I would do anything Henry and Mama asked of me.
A bang from the woods grabbed my attention, followed by Leo’s very loud, annoyed voice. “Sorry, Alpha. Just dropped something.”
Alpha.
Grant? What was Grant doing here?
Sure enough, though, Grant came striding out of the trees a moment later, an apologetic Leo following after him. His jaw was clenched, and he rolled his eyes at me, more frustrated with Grant than I’d ever seen him before.
Well, except for once. But that was best not thought of, and why I kept Leo away from Grant’s pack business now.
“What the hell are you doing?” Grant demanded, not of me, but of Cash, who almost dropped his plate and stared at the alpha, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. “You’re supposed to be working, not prancing around in the woods like—”
“Is lunch,” I said, deliberately fucking up my English, because nothing got Grant’s attention on me faster than incorrect English.
“Everyone must eat midday, yes?” Then I motioned to the huge pile of logs and the posts in their concrete-filled holes.
“We have been working hard. House starts—what is word? Framing? Today. After lunch.”
Grant scowled, but he did cross over to the area where we’d been working.
Cash swallowed hard and set his plate aside to join Grant immediately. I took a moment to pack the food away, because damn it, once he left, we were going back to lunch. He wasn’t going to ruin my afternoon, or Mama’s excellent cooking.
Leo seemed to read my mind, because he slipped up next to me, grabbed the basket, and then disappeared again—because I wouldn’t have put it past Grant to take it with him when he left. He liked taking things that didn’t belong to him.
Then I rushed over to where Cash was stammering something about the amount of time it takes to strip and treat logs, while Grant glared on, unimpressed.
“Is me,” I said, employing the same language tactic as before. “I have no learning. Cash had to teach me so I would not be useless.”
“You’ve been doing great,” Cash immediately corrected me, and I had to work hard not to smile and give myself away.
His voice, when he spoke again, was stronger, with no hint of the previous stammer.
“It’s just that building a house from scratch takes time or money.
If we don’t want to spend money, then it takes longer.
Stripping a whole tree and prepping it takes hours, and there’s no way to get around that, unless you want to spend thousands of dollars on lumber. ”
Grant scrunched his nose at the very thought, which I could understand, because thousands of dollars was so much. Better to take time and build, I thought.
Finally, he huffed and moved over to the posts and concrete, and started demanding answers about how much it had taken, and whether there was any way to reduce that in the future, because money was too tight to be spending it on bags of concrete.
I breathed a sigh of relief, because it meant the danger had passed. Grant’s temper ran quick and hot, but once he calmed, he usually stayed that way.
For a moment, I imagined what I might have done if he hadn’t calmed.
He couldn’t be allowed to hurt Cash. Me?
I could take care of myself. He had never taken his temper out on Mama, and hadn’t ever been able to find a reason to be angry at Leo, who was simply too good at being happy and even better at slipping away into the shadows.
But Cash?
Well. We’d have to see what happened if I ever found him taking his anger out on sweet, innocent Cash.