As expected, he doesn’t answer, so I push up to my feet, holding my still-sore ribs, and cross to him.
He’s working on an all-black lure, this one with a rubbery tail. “You’ll have no use for this particular skill.”
“How do you know? Maybe I have plans to become a master fisherlady.”
He shakes his head. “You don’t.”
“I know, but let’s pretend I do.” I prop my hip against the table. “Where do I start?”
He stares at my hip, just inches from where his elbow rests. His thick, dark hair is mostly pushed back off his face, except for a rogue lock that falls across his forehead. My fingers itch to push it back, but I ball my fists instead. His hazel eyes, fixed in a constant scowl, slide from my hip up my torso to my face. They linger on my lips for a couple of seconds before finally settling on my eyes.
A flash of heat radiates through me at the way he forcibly holds eye contact. My breathing picks up, and I imagine him reaching for me, pulling me between his open thighs, and running his big hands up under my shirt. Feeling his palms against my skin, those eyes burning with need, the tiny space filled with nothing but the sound of our breathing.
His eyebrows pull together, and he turns back to his lure, breaking the spell between us. “If I agree to show you, will you take that as an excuse to talk the entire time?”
Huh… maybe the spell I was feeling wasn’t mutual but just my own boredom catching up with me. Wouldn’t be the first time I initiated a sexual relationship out of pure boredom. I thumb at the ring on my finger. Case in point.
Lincoln obnoxiously pursued me and wore me down until I agreed to give him a chance. I only went out with him because I didn’t have a better offer on the table. We’d had sex the night of our first date.
Not the kind of love story I’d want to tell my grandchildren.
“No talking. I swear.”
He grunts and scoots his box over to make room for me to sit at the table.
I take the second chair, which puts us so close together that our knees touch. He sets down the one he was working on and gets out a single hook. “After I make it, can I use it?”
His glare slides my way.
“Sorry,” I say through my quiet laughter. “No more questions.”
“I don’t know how well you’ll do with casting because of your ribs, but you can try.”
“Okay. Just show me what to do and—”
He blows out a long, defeated breath.
“I’m done. Sorry.”
He takes the next however-many-long minutes to explain in as few words as possible how to make what he calls an inline spinner. To me, it looks like a gaudy dangly earring. There isn’t much of the furry substance except to place what he calls a bucktail on the end to camouflage the hook. There is no intricate threading, just stringing bright-colored beads, sinkers, and a hammered copper blade that he says spins in the water and catches a fish’s attention.
He holds up the finished product and then gives me the go-ahead to try.
“You’re not going to stick around and supervise?” I say as he gets up from the table.
He pulls on his knit beanie and jacket. “No.”
Having learned that it’s pointless to ask where he’s going, I let the disappointment settle in my chest and then turn to the new project at hand. The door opens and closes behind me, and although I feel a bit guilty at having hijacked his hobby, I’m too excited to actually have something new to focus on to feel too terrible.
I move through the process he showed me and try not to think too deeply about what he might be doing out in the snow. Thinking of him wandering too far and getting stuck in a blizzard or getting hurt in some way makes my stomach sour.
Refusing to let myself worry about things I can’t control, I go back to the lure-making. Because they look so much like earrings, I end up piecing together a matching set by the time Grizzly comes back into the cabin. He’s covered in snow, and his cheeks and nose are pink.
He shakes off his coat, hat, and gloves and then heads to the woodstove to warm up.
“Look what I made.” I hold the lures up, bring them to my ears, and grin. “Multifunctional.”
He scowls, looking unimpressed.
“Earrings.”
He turns his focus back to the fire, rubbing his hands together in front of the heat.
“Jealous much?” I admire my creations displayed on the table. “Cock-blocking my swagger.”
He makes a strange sound, and I whirl around to see a slight grin on his lips before he hides it by blowing warm breath into his fists. Was that… laughter? It sounded more like an animal that got kicked in the ribs—growly with a hint of a squeak.
I wonder if he’s ever thrown his head back and laughed so hard tears came to his eyes. Or if he’s laughed so hard, no sound comes out, and his stomach muscles hurt.
Sadly, something tells me the answer to that is no.
Alexander
I’ve learned a valuable lesson over the last forty-eight hours.
When the woman wants something, the sooner I give it to her, the quicker she stops being obnoxious as hell. Ignoring her is not the best way to get her to leave me alone. Quite the opposite, as it turns out.
This revelation is how I ended up where I am right now, sitting at the table, the woman sitting in her chair too close to me, while we play a card game she calls war.
Mindless and completely boring, the game takes a preschool-level education to play. Flip the cards simultaneously, highest card gets the pair, equal cards means war, whoever ends up with the entire deck at the end, wins.
Since we started playing, she’s stopped with the million-miles-a-minute chatter but unfortunately hasn’t stayed completely quiet.
“Mine.” She gathers my three of hearts and her eight of clubs.
I clench my jaw. We flip again.
“Yours.” She shoves her jack of spades at me along with my king of hearts.
My nostrils flare as I try to take a calming breath. We flip again.
“Ugh, yours again.”
“I do know basic math. You don’t need to announce whose card is higher every time.”
We flip again.
“Ha!” She gathers the cards. “Mine!”
A long internal growl rumbles in my brain. How does anyone survive being stuck indoors with anyone for any length of time without committing murder? And why does she purposefully incite my anger?
“War!” She wiggles excitedly, shaking the rickety table. “Put seven cards facedown—”
“I know.”
Her eyes become exaggeratedly large. “Okay, jeez.”
She puts her cards down quickly, and mine go down last, having taken a few extra seconds to keep my hands from shaking with annoyance.
“When’s your birthday?”
I put the rest of my cards down and consider ignoring her, but I remind myself the best way to get her to stop talking is by answering her. “February.”
“February what?”
“Twenty-first.”
She sees I’ve put down all my cards. “On three. One. Two. Three.” We flip our final card, and mine is higher, a ten to her three. “You win that one, dammit.” She pushes all the cards my way, and I gather them into my pile. “How old are you?”