Something Has to Give

by Maren Smith

  Please don’t come back here.

  He didn’t. His clumping footsteps carried him back upstairs instead, and staggeringly-unexpected disappointment sunk into her like an impaling rod. She had the most absurd urge to cry again and that made her angry.

  She shoved back off the kitchen counter. “Get a hold of yourself!”

  She threw herself into her morning routine instead. She took care of her eggs, she made her cheese, and then because the snow made it unlikely that she’d be getting customers today, she took advantage of being alone on the lower floor to catch up on a little housekeeping.

  Just before noon, Quint wandered back downstairs with his army duffel bag of dirty laundry slung over his shoulder and they passed one another without a word. He headed for the laundry room. She took her cleaning upstairs. She made up the bed that was their battlefield and then, because there really wasn’t much else to clean, sat down on the foot of the mattress to think. There were two other rooms up here. One looked a little like an office with a couch that folded out. One looked like it might once have harbored hope of becoming a nursery. There were stars, moons and teddy bears all along the border paper that wrapped the walls along the ceiling. The rest of the room was stacked with boxes. She’d looked in some of them. It was mostly crafts, blankets and old clothes. There was probably enough bedding in those boxes to make up the sofa couch, but in the back of her mind she knew the first to leave this bed would be the one to lose the house.

  It wasn’t going to be her.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Elsie’s influences were all over the house. He could see her everywhere, in damn near every room he went. Of Maydeen, he could barely find any hint at all. It was the strangest thing. His ex-wife’s clothes were all over the house, but when he looked at them, he saw Elsie. Elsie was in the goats that came up to the porch for milking and in the warbling crow of that cussed the rooster out back. She was in the wax-dipped rolls of cheese hanging from the rafters in the cellar, along with the dozen or so pint jars of honey and about four shelves stacked with a variety of canned vegetables. He went outside and found the remains of a summer garden, bedded down under a mound of mulch, manure and leaves for the winter. All of that had to be Elsie. As far as he knew, Maydeen had never gardened a day in her life. She’d never canned either. She’d barely cooked.

  Speaking of cooking, what was that smell wafting out from the kitchen? Elsie must be making dinner. It smelled heavenly. His feet began to move him back through the house, following the smell although he knew this certainly had to be yet another of Elsie’s war-shots. It was a good one, too. Whatever she was making smelled so good that his stomach had no trouble remembering it had not eaten since breakfast. At the same time, he also knew he wasn’t going to get a bite of it. Oh, the cruelties of war.

  He got as far as the dining room, but froze when he noticed the table was set for two—albeit at opposite ends—with plates positioned as far apart as possible.

  Quint stared at the twin settings. Ooo…Elsie was really good at cruel.

  The smell of supper cooking tantalized his senses with every deeply indrawn breath. His mouth was watering, his stomach was rumbling, and against his better judgment, his hopes were rising. Yet, in the back of his mind he knew the second he stepped through the kitchen archway, she was going to dash those hopes with little more than a crusty look and maybe—maybe, if he was lucky—an unspit-upon peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

  He braced himself—for combat, he firmly told himself, but his heart was racing and his body humming in the way it did only when beautiful women were involved—and rounded the corner.

  Elsie was standing at the stove, alternately shaking and stirring a sizzling pan of steaming potatoes, green beans and corned beef. The sight of that simple homemade hash was enough to cramp his empty stomach. A bowl of grated cheddar cheese rested on the stove within easy arm’s reach. Next to it was another bowl stacked with a handful of clean, white eggs.

  There was definitely enough food in that pan to serve two, three, maybe even four people.

  Elsie stubbornly kept stirring, turning the browning potatoes over and over and shooting him nervous sidelong looks out of the corner of her eye. She said nothing, but he could already see her back stiffening and her defensive hackles rising.

  “Looks good,” he said, fully expecting her to lash back, verbally at the very least.

  She didn’t. She shot him another sideways look, one that didn’t quite rise far enough to meet his eyes, and then flipped the potatoes again. “Thanks.”

  Well…hell. She was actually going to feed him.

  “Anything I can do to help?” he asked, painstakingly neutral.

  Another sidelong look. She started to say no, but then he saw her pause. “You can put the glasses and water on the table.”

  “Do you want a beer?”

  “No,” she said shortly. “But I don’t care if you do.”

  “All right.” He went to the fridge and got a beer, then made a brief search of the cabinets until he found a pitcher. He filled it partway with ice and then water from the tap. As he waited for the pitcher to fill, he kept glancing back at her, watching surreptitiously while she added first the eggs and then the cheese to the hash, covered the pan and let it cook. She didn’t look at him. She made a point of not looking. That she wasn’t comfortable with what she was doing was plain, and that began to make him think.

  When the pitcher was half full, he shut off the water and took both it and his beer out to the table. He set the ice water beside one setting and sat down to wait at the other. Hands resting on his thighs, he watched the condensation building on the side of his beer and thought until she emerged from the kitchen with the pan in one hand and a plastic spatula in the other. She came to his chair, already cutting out a square of cheesy hash.

  “I’m still evicting you,” he said, wanting there to be absolutely no mistake in where he stood.

  For the first time, she looked at him, her eyes flashing, the spatula trembling ever so slightly. She spooned a square of hash onto his plate. “More?” she asked, flatly.

  “Yes, please.” Snapping out his napkin, he laid it across his lap and leaned back to watch as she added to what was already on his plate, then spooned up a helping for herself. The hash was thick and heavy, bending the flimsy plastic spatula and leaving multiple strands of yellow cheese trailing from pan to plate. “You should have used a wooden spoon. They’re sturdier…as you probably remember well.”

  Winding the cheese around the spatula until the strands broke, she avoided meeting his eyes. “I burned them.”

  He paused in the midst of taking his first bite. “Did you really?”

  She took the pan back to the kitchen.

  “Well, that’s all right,” he called after her. “I can make more. My woodworking tools are all stacked up neatly in the tool shed.”

  “Used to be, you mean,” she said, coming back to the table and sitting down.

  He stopped with his second mouth-watering bite of hash halfway to his lips. “Used to be?”

  “The red shed.” Her eyes rose to his, and for the first time, her mouth curled up in the most evil of smiles. “It’s a goat shed now.”

  “You turned my tool shed into a goat shed?” Quint stared at her, that little smile of hers stabbing in through all parts of him. The lust was mind-boggling, but there was aggravation hot on the heels of it, sizzling down his spine and out through his limbs the way the hash had sizzled in the hot pan. The buzzing, tingling effects of it were impossible to hold still for, and he couldn’t help it. He laughed, shifting and re-shifting in his seat. He honestly did not know whether he wanted to grab and shake the hell out of her, or kiss her good and senseless. And maybe spank her a couple hundred times because, damn, those were his tools!

  Shaking his head, he laughed again.

  “I’ll give them back to you,” she said, taking another bite. The look on her face was one of slow-savoring satisfaction, and he didn’t
for a second think it had anything to do with the food.

  He snorted. “Sure you will.” He stabbed a bite of potato and stuffed it into his mouth, laughing, shaking his head, squirming and chewing all at the same time. What was wrong with him that he should want to kiss her over this? There were literally thousands—thousands—of dollars’ worth of tools in that shed and he was absolutely beside himself with the need to teach that sassy, smirking little mouth of hers a lesson. What in a kiss was going to teach her anything? And damn, but she could cook. This was really, really good.

  “I will. I have no use for them. I’ll be happy to give them back to you.” She took another bite. “For a price.”

  That very effectively killed his desire to laugh. Kissing her was still on the table, maybe; shaking her, definitely—but at least he wasn’t laughing. “I’m not leaving,” he said gruffly. “You leave. What could possibly be keeping you here?”

  “What’s keeping you here?” she returned.

  “Everything. This house has been in my family from the day we homesteaded it. My grandfather was born in this house. So was my father, and so was I. We have farmed it, ranched it, and hunted it. Anyone driving down the highway might think this place nothing more than dust and sagebrush, but the day I relinquish my ownership will be the day they cart me out of here in a pine box. And that’s a fact.” He stabbed another bite of potato and stuffed it into his mouth, chewing viciously. Funny, how being angry made it taste not as good as it had a moment ago.

  “You have money,” she said, no longer smiling now either. A hint of desperation had leaked into both her face and tone as she leaned toward him. “You have credit cards and a truck. You could go anywhere you wanted to. You don’t have to stay here!”

  “I’m not leaving,” he bit out. When he picked up his beer and popped the top, her shoulders sagged. When he bent over his plate and stubbornly returned to eating, she fell back in her seat for a moment and just watched him. The hash tasted like the dust in his yard now, but he ate on anyway and he didn’t look at her again. Not even when she picked up her plate and took it into the kitchen.

  She ate her meal silently over the sink, with the only sound from that point on being the scrape of silverware on his grandmother’s old brown stoneware plates and the occasional sniffle that may or may not have been her crying. He didn’t venture into the kitchen to check. He just left the table.

  With the hash sitting in the pit of his stomach like an indigestible lump, he went outside to watch the snow fall and smoke his first after-dinner pipe since he’d been home. On every indrawn puff, he tried to tell himself he didn’t care if she was crying or not. On every smoky exhale, he failed miserably.

  * * * * *

  Like every other night since he’d been back, Quint adjourned himself to the master bedroom, took up his position on his favorite side of the battlefield, shucked down to his underwear and lay down in the dark with his eyes closed. Unfortunately, tonight sleep wasn’t quick in coming.

  Although normally right on his heels at bedtime ready to fight for her half of the mattress, tonight Elsie stayed downstairs for a long time. He could hear her puttering around in the kitchen, the clatter of dishes, the soft bump of shutting cupboards, continued on for hours longer than it should have taken anyone to clean up after such a small meal.

  He wondered if she were still crying.

  No, he didn’t. She was the interloper. He couldn’t care less if she was crying. In fact, she should cry. The more miserable she was, the sooner she’d leave.

  He punched his pillow twice and tried to find some measure of comfort in what was fast becoming a truly uncomfortable situation. And he couldn’t figure out why he gave a damn. He was the wronged party, here. Why should he give a damn if she was miserable? Shouldn’t that be his goal? Why was he so conflicted?

  The bedroom door opened, briefly flooding everything in pale hallway light before she clicked it off. Once again, the room was plunged into darkness, albeit not as dark as most nights. The moon was out and a silver glow reflected off the snow to brighten everything. Lying on his side with his back to her, Quint folded his arms across his chest. He didn’t say anything, but then, neither did she.

  Softly closing the door, she sealed them into the tomb-like silence of the bedroom. The smothering quiet only seemed to amplify the whispered rustle of her discarding clothes. He didn’t need to face her to know what was happening. He could hear each piece as she stripped down and his imagination was more than capable of filling in the blanks. He could hear the folds of white cotton as she pulled her shirt up over her head and the rain of her long hair falling back down onto her bare shoulders. He heard the practically inaudible clip of her bra being removed. His mouth watered at the thought of those perfect breasts being revealed; he almost groaned when he heard the flow of her thigh-length nightshirt being donned to cover them again. He wasn’t facing her, but he could well imagine what she looked like with every soft curve illuminated in snowy moonlight as she got ready for bed. Already his cock was stirring, rising, taking notice.

  Down, boy. Please, dear God, stay down.

  The click of a zipper scaling down its teeth doomed all his efforts to pretend there was no beautiful, maddening, and entirely too-kissable woman getting naked just behind him.

  “It’s snowing again,” she said softly, sitting down on the edge of the bed to remove her shoes, socks and jeans. She left them in a kicked off little pile on the floor, right where he’d no-doubt trip over them first thing tomorrow morning. He tried to be irritated about that, but his mind stubbornly locked on the indisputable realization that for her pants to be on the floor they would first have to not be on her, and after that, all he could see in his mind’s eye was the white cotton gusset of panties lying like a second skin over the curves and folds between her naked thighs.

  “Good for the snow,” he replied, trying to sound every bit as disinterested as he definitely was not.

  Her heated glare burned in between his shoulder blades an instant before the mattress jostled. She threw herself down beside him and he knew when she was fully prone, not because her heel kicked the back of his calf (which it did), but because she once more yanked the pillow right out from under his head and then, with a mighty jerk, ripped both sheet and blankets off the top of him. She had herself thoroughly swaddled before he could do more than growl a sigh.

  He started laughing again, but not because he was amused. He sat up, rolling over, his palm itching even before he saw the bump of her bottom rounding up under the blankets and thrusting back at him. She lay on her side too, stubbornly facing the door, knees drawn up in preparation for another night spent in sleep-off battlefield. The urge to give her a smack was barely resistible.

  “You have exactly two seconds to give back half of those blankets,” he said instead.

  She snorted. “Or what?”

  “Or I’m coming in there after them.” His belly heated at the thought. Languid need like molten ribbons twined around and around in his guts, stroking at his cock from the inside until all he could feel was the steady throb growing with every second she hesitated. When she rolled over to stab him with that narrow-eyed suspicious glare, he felt such a surge of desire that it could only be described as crazy. He didn’t even like her (but she was growing on him) and she certainly didn’t like him (maybe he was growing on her too). Definitely something was growing between them and it couldn’t just be his cock.

  “What the hell does that—” she started, but he didn’t let her finish.

  Grabbing the blankets, with one strong yank, Quint ripped her out of her swaddling cocoon. She actually flipped over, bounced flat on the mattress, her nightshirt riding up to reveal that sexy strip of white panty rounding the curves of her bottom before flowing down between her legs. Like a red cape flashed before a red-blooded bull, that tiny scrap of white inflamed him like nothing else could. Like nothing else had. Not in a very, very long time.

  He wanted her. It wasn’t in his be
st interest. Hell, it could only work against him, but he wanted her.

  And that kinda pissed him off, really. She had to know what she was doing to him. She had to be doing it deliberately, manipulating him every way she could just to keep this damn house. His blood burned; his cock wasn’t listening to reason. It was all he could do right now not to fall on top of her, catch her sassy lips beneath his and just consume her.

  Would she wrap her arms and her legs—those long, soft legs—around him and kiss him back with all the same passion and hunger that was raging inside him now, or would she tell him to go to hell? Oh, the urge to find out.

  “Hey!” she snarled, and sat up so close and so fast she almost cracked her forehead into his. In the pale glow of the moonlight, he could see the anger on her face, but damn if that didn’t make her even more kissable. He wavered, wanting so badly just to taste her.

  “Someone ought to teach you a lesson,” he growled. “Women who crawl into bed with strange men deserve what they get.”

  “Men who do the same deserve to get neutered,” she shot back, incapable of backing down. Her whole small, soft body was trembling now, just inches away from his. When she breathed in deeply, her breasts rose like a challenge and, in the pale moonlight, his eyes locked on the peak and shadow of her nipples tenting the front of her nightshirt. “You think you can scare me—!”

  She yelped. It was all she had time to do. That and to throw up her fists, bracing them against his shoulders when that last tenuous thread of self-control snapped under the sight of those come-hither peaks and Quint closed the distance between them. He kissed her so fiercely, wanting to scare her (yeah, right), send her running away from him (like hell), out of his bed and maybe even out of the house all together. She tasted so good, just like a spitfire ought to, her hot little mouth all full of sass and squeak and freshly brushed teeth that likely would have sunk into his bottom lip if he hadn’t jerked back then every bit as brusquely as he’d charged in to kiss her.