Chapter 16
Okee
“She knows,” Boone murmured.
I said nothing. Shame was too imprecise a word for what moved through me then. Not fear that Lula would run her mouth—she had already shown herself steadier than that. No, what I disliked was simpler. I did not care to be examined. Least of all by her.
A man can bear the judgment of fools. It is harder to endure the notice of someone whose opinion might matter.
Boone mistook my silence for uncertainty. “She don’t give a damn,” he said, low and impatient.
Perhaps she did not. That did not mean I wished to stand in the light and be looked over.
After that day, I kept scarce when I could. There was always wood to split, traps to check, snow to stamp from the porch. Boone took this for avoidance. I let him.
We rise early now. He makes the coffee while I take stock of what remains.
“We’re down to venison and snow,” I say. “Salt is nearly gone. There’s barely a swallow of whiskey left.”
Boone straightens from the hearth. “I know the way to town. If I leave now, I can make it back before dark.”
“You said yourself it isn’t safe to travel,” Lula says from the loft ladder.
We both look up. I did not hear her stir. Boone recovers first, already reaching for his coat.
“Ain’t safe for you,” he says, shoving an arm into a sleeve. “I can keep my head down. Won’t nobody bother me.”
“You oughtn’t go alone,” Lula says. Her fingers clench around the handle of an empty tin cup. “What if those men are still about? What if others like them are?”
“What if a tree falls on me?” Boone shoots back. “What if the sky comes down? Christ, Lula, I could choke on a biscuit.”
“It is not the same and you know it,” she says, cheeks flushing. “You said yourself winter is when the worst kinds of men travel.”
“Yeah, well.” Boone’s jaw works. “You’re lookin’ at one.”
He checks his pistol, tucks his scarf close at his throat, and heads for the door. When he passes Lula, he pauses a fraction, not touching her, not speaking. Then he looks to me.
“Come back,” I say.
“Always do,” he answers, capturing my mouth in a quick kiss before he goes.
The door shuts behind him. For a moment the cabin seems too still, as if Boone has taken all the motion with him. I stand with my coffee cooling in my hand, aware of Lula across the room having witnessed the brazen show of affection and unwilling to look at her before I must.
I set the cup down and reach for my coat.
“Okee.”
I stop, hand on the peg, and turn.
She has drawn herself up as though preparing for an argument. “I was unkind the other day. What passes between you and Boone is none of my business, and I had no right to—”
“Please,” I say sharp enough to halt her. “You are under no obligation to tidy discomfort.”
She studies me, her brow drawn. “I did not mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“Perhaps not.” I hold her gaze then, because not doing so would be worse. “But I prefer not to be discussed as though I am absent.”
A faint color rises in her face. “That is fair. I meant no rebuke.”
I incline my head once to acknowledge it. That ought to have been the end of it. No need to set a bone twice.
But she does not let it end. Her mouth shifts. After a beat, she says, “In truth, it stirs envy in me.”
That brings me still.
“Envy,” she repeats, “of the fierceness between you. The trust. The way you give and take without apology, without need of words.”
The fire snaps, a small log collapses inward, sending sparks up the chimney. My shoulders ease a fraction, though I still cannot quite bring myself to meet her eyes.
“The world does not take kindly to men like Boone and I,” I say.
“I am not the world,” Lula answers. “And I assure you, I will never speak of it beyond these walls. What is yours is yours. I claim no judgment.”
I study her then, looking for insincerity and finding none.
“Thank you,” I say, though even now it is easier to look at the floorboards than at her face. Then, quieter: “It is actually a relief. No longer needing to hide.”
A muscle in her face shifts—minute, but I see it. The wariness rearranges itself into something else. “I never want you to hide who you are on my account.”
Outside, the wind combs along the cabin wall.
The sound gives me something to attend to besides her eyes.
I cannot tell her that Boone and I spend our evenings whispering about her, trading stories from the day, each retelling a study in how a brilliant mind can live inside a pocket-sized creature who is equal parts goddess and tyrant, so I only say, “Nor I you.”
There is the fire between us. The table. Several feet of worn wood floor. Yet this feels too close. Too intimate.
Boone is scarcely beyond the yard, and there is work enough outside to occupy me until dark. Instead I remain where I am, coat in hand, behaving like a man who has forgotten himself.
Lula crosses to the table. The movement cuts the space between us in half and somehow takes the air with it.
“I am afraid I made a poor beginning with you,” she says.
In a white-out. Surrounded by death.
“It was not an ideal beginning, no,” I say, and scratch at my brow for lack of anything better to do.
Her mouth tightens, though she does not look away. I ought to leave it there.
“And I might have been kinder,” I add. The words are out before I can stop them. They surprise me enough that I continue. “More welcoming.”
Welcoming?
“Or,” I amend quickly, “perhaps I made you feel like a burden.”
Worse.
“Not a burden. Only, perhaps I was somewhat adversarial. Most men are, out here. At first.” I scratch at my brow again, though it offers no assistance. “I regret the circumstances of our first meeting.”
Stop talking.
Her eyes lift to mine. “I wonder,” she says, “how a woman might make the acquaintance of hired guns under better circumstances?”
The question is absurd enough that I laugh.
It is a mistake. Her expression warms at the sound, and I feel the room close in another inch.
“We don’t often meet women under better circumstances. If we’re making a woman’s acquaintance, it generally means someone has put a price on her head.”
That earns me the barest lift of her brow.
“And if she wished the meeting to stay pleasant,” I add, “she’d need to offer the bounty.”
She sets the cup down. “So it is not morality that governs you. Only money.”
“I am sure you know the store does not take morality in exchange for bread.”
She pours coffee into her cup. “And if I couldn’t pay you. What then?”
The question sends blood rushing straight to my cock.
“Depends if you came quietly.”
Her lip curves. “I wouldn’t.”
“Then we’d find a way.”
Silence thickens. Her gaze moves over my chest, my gun belt, my hands. Then she asks, soft as sin, “And who decides that?”
“I do.”
The way she looks at me then—steady, unafraid, curious—nearly breaks me. Her gaze drops to my hand where it still grips my coat, then rises again.
“I was not only speaking of Boone earlier,” she says.
My fingers still.
“No?”
“No.” Her cheeks color, but she holds my gaze with that confounding bravery of hers. “I meant what I said. I envy what you have together. But I would be lying if I said envy was the only thing I felt.”
The fire crackles behind her.
I should make this easier for her. A gentleman would. A kinder man would step back from the cliff and offer her the safety of pretending she had not come near it.
Instead I ask, “What else did you feel?”
Her throat moves. “Curiosity.”
She looks at my mouth. Only for a breath, but I see it.
“I know you love him,” she says.
“I do.”
“And he loves you.”
“Yes.”
Her fingers curl around the edge of the table. She studies me, gathering courage in little pieces. “How does one explore such an attraction?”
The room stills around the question.
“I suppose,” I say slowly, “one begins by admitting it exists.” I look toward the door Boone has gone through. Snow has already softened his tracks beyond the window, blurring the proof of him. “With Boone,” I say, “we denied it for a long time.”
Lula does not interrupt. That is wise of her. If she did, I might come to my senses and stop speaking.
“One night after a skirmish, Boone found me sitting alone beyond the picket line. Fool thing to do. I had blood on my coat that was not mine and a letter from my father in my pocket. I remember thinking I had done every duty asked of me and yet felt less a man than ever.”
Lula’s mouth tightens, but she says nothing.
“Boone sat beside me and said, ‘You can stop pretending with me.’”
The words still have weight after all these years.
Lula’s voice is soft. “Pretending what?”
“That I was not afraid.”
It was bitter cold. Clear sky. Our stars shone above us.
A warmth moves through my chest, followed closely by ache.
“He kissed me first,” I say. “Quickly. As if he meant to steal the thing before sense took it back.”
The cabin feels smaller now. Warmer.
“I had felt an attraction before that night,” I say, and my voice lowers despite my best effort.
Her lips part. “How did you know?”
“The noticing,” I say. “First unwillingly. Then often. Then constantly.” Speaking it aloud triggers a shift in me. A blink, and all at once the world shines with a new clarity. “The way a woman lifts her chin when contradicted. The pleasure of watching her mind move faster than anyone expects.”
Her color rises.
“It is wondering whether she knows what she does to a room when she enters it. Whether she knows a man has begun counting the distance between them. Whether she knows he has imagined closing it.”
I step closer, stopping just an inch away. I see the moment she understands me. Worse, I see that she does not step away. I lean in slow. Slow enough for her to stop me. When she doesn’t, I take her face in my hands and kiss her.
The second our mouths meet, I groan into her warmth, tasting her, feeling the slick, plush heat of her lips.
I should stop.
Instead, my arm bands around her waist, and I lift her as if she belongs fitted to me.
Her breath breaks and her hands fly to my shoulders. For a heartbeat she’s weightless in my arms, skirts brushing my thighs, the heat of her pressed against me so fully it steals sense from my head.
I take three steps—two—lifting her backward until her spine meets the cabin wall with a soft thud.
I lean in again, hungry now, the kiss deepening into something with no pride in it.
Her mouth opens under mine, and I take the invitation like I’ve been starving.
Her fingers curl into my hair, and the pull of it makes a sound tear out of me that I swallow against her lips.
I pull back only enough to breathe, forehead hovering near hers, chest heaving.
“That,” she whispers, voice unsteady in a way I have not heard from her before, “was not very prudent.”
“No,” I breathe, and my thumb drags once along her jaw like I cannot help myself. “It was not.”
Her lips part again, like she might say something sharp. Her hands settle against my chest—not pushing, not pulling, simply there, as if she is testing whether I will take too much.
I feel how easily I could.
I stop myself with an effort so sharp it makes my vision spark. I force my hands to loosen at her waist. I set her back on her feet, though every instinct in me protests the distance.
I step back once. Just once.
Her breath is quick. Her cheeks are flushed. She watches me like she can’t decide if she wants to strike me or follow me. Boone’s face flashes through my mind—his claim on the parts of me I don’t give away lightly. And my chest tightens with the knowledge that this is not only mine to take.
I force myself back another step. And I leave her there, flushed and breathing hard, while the fire pops and the cabin creaks, and my whole body screams at me to turn back.