by Joyce, T. S.
“You got snow machines?”
“One. It needs work to run.”
“And the garden?”
“Out back. It’s overrun with weeds and not producing much right now. I’ve been having trouble keeping up.”
The man strode away from her on those long legs, his boots squishing over the muddy drive. Elyse rushed to follow. On the porch, he kicked his shoes off and pushed open the door to her cabin. She winced at what his attention hesitated on. Dishes in the sink, dead flowers in the vase on the table, un-swept floors, dust on everything.
He hooked his hands on his hips and shook his head.
“I must look pathetic to you,” she whispered.
“No.” He turned and gave her a sympathetic glance with those striking eyes of his. “I’m pissed at your last man for draining you like this, but I can see you’ve tried. It’s been months since he left, though. You should’ve rebounded.” He gave a long, irritated sigh. “I’ll consider your offer and give you an answer before weeks’ end.”
“Okay,” she murmured, shocked. Had she made him an offer? She was supposed to be in charge of negotiations, but he’d come in here and dumped her off balance.
He strode out of her house and shoved his feet into his boots. Without bothering to tie the laces, he strode off for an old cream and brown Ford truck with fat tires and mud all down the sides.
“Wait!” she said, lifting her voice as he drove away. “What’s your name?”
“Ian.” With one last flash of blue eyes before he drove away, he called out the window, “Ian Silver.”
Chapter Five
Ian pulled over to the side of the road about a mile from Elyse’s homestead. “Dammit!” he yelled, slamming his open palm against the steering wheel.
Wrecked by how different she looked, he couldn’t drive like this. His skin prickled with the first tingles of the Change, and if he didn’t get it under control, he would destroy his truck and Change way too close to Elyse. And he could feel what his inner bear was planning. The monster was pissed that he was driving away from her right now. He would be back at her cabin in a minute flat if he gave the animal his skin right now.
Skin and bones. Fuck. She looked so different from the folded picture he’d been carrying around in his back pocket for the last four months since he’d put Cole down. She was thin in the picture, sure, but now? Her damned collar bones were sticking through her thin, gray shirt as though she had no meat on her at all. And her hands were shaking, but she didn’t smell nervous. And it wasn’t the drink or any other kind of self-medication that was making her this way, either. He would’ve smelled that, too. No, she was hungry and working herself to death to keep that place running.
There had been two salmon in her freezer. Two. The first snow would come in two months if she was lucky, and all she had stocked up for it was two goddamned fish. He hated Cole all over again for not being stronger. Giving her chickens away to his no-account brothers. That wasn’t the crazy part of him. That was the learned, freeloading part of him. He’d thought Elyse could save him, but Cole hadn’t ever stood a chance of her doing him any good. Not when he used her up like that.
For the hundredth time, he wanted to read the letter Cole had given him to deliver to Elyse. Ian had kept it neatly and tightly folded over the last four months. It was private and none of his business, but dang it all, he was curious about what Cole could’ve possibly written to make an apology this big.
She was hiring a husband!
Ian didn’t like it, but he got it. Homesteads around here usually went to sons, but Elyse had been handed one and was stubborn enough to work herself into a grave to keep it up. Romantics need not apply. Ian wanted to spit. She was screwing herself out of any chance at a happy life by the way she was going about this, and all for the sake of keeping her homestead.
Ian leaned his elbow on the open window of his truck and gritted his teeth. He would make a damned poor husband, but even he could see the merit in him helping her. He could work harder and longer than a human man, he slept all friggin’ winter so she wouldn’t have to worry about him getting cabin fever, and he could help her in the warm season to stock up. He could provide for her. Make sure she lived comfortably during the snowy months.
But…
His secrets could get her hurt, or worse. He’d just come back from checking his den on Afognak, and the McCalls had burned his cabin in the cave. They’d been thorough about it, and now it was nothing more than ashes. How they’d tracked him down, he didn’t know. He’d used that den for a decade without problems. Miller was hunting him slow, and burning his den was a warning. They hadn’t forgotten about their brother, and if Ian stayed here, a mere thirty miles upriver from where the McCalls lived, Elyse could get caught in the crossfire.
But then again, the last place Miller would expect to find him was with Cole’s ex-mate.
Ian could prepare her homestead for winter, hunt the meat she needed, then go bear and find a natural den on Kodiak Island with the wild bruins. It wouldn’t be a fancy cabin in a cave, but his animal wouldn’t care overmuch as long as he got to sleep peacefully. Or as peaceful as possible knowing Miller would be searching every den in Alaska to kill him in his sleep.
His stomach soured at the thought of dying like that. Miller didn’t know anything about giving an honorable death. Miller would do it when Ian couldn’t fight back.
He leaned over his window and glared at the muddy road that stood between him and Elyse’s homestead. He could be happy here, and that was a truly dangerous thought. He was having a hard enough time leaving after talking to her for five minutes. What was going to happen when he fell for her completely? Her life would always be in danger because of him.
A scarred-up grizzly shifter enforcer could make no woman happy.
But from the way she acted back there, she wasn’t looking for happy. She was looking for security.
He would make a shite husband, sure, but he could get her fed.
Ian growled and jammed his foot on the gas. Putting distance between them was vital. He was compromising with himself, justifying staying and putting her in danger. This is why he had stalled on delivering that note. This is why he’d waited four months and then decided, in a moment of weakness, to give it to her himself. He had harbored an unhealthy amount of obsession over the woman in the picture since he’d awoken from hibernation.
His damned bear was clearly broken, and now he was convincing Ian to shack up with a needy human.
No. She would find someone decent to fill her advertisement and live a longer, happier life for it.
Ian was no better a choice for a mate than Cole McCall.
****
Ian Silver had lied.
He’d said he would give an answer by weeks’ end, but it had been nine days since he’d graced her doorstep and given her freezer that judgmental look. He’d backed out, and the brute hadn’t even had the decency to tell her in person.
And now the applicants for her advertisement had waned to no prospects, and she’d wasted all that time interviewing for nothing.
Now, she was further behind than the last three years, and by a lot. Uncle Jim would be so disappointed in her if he saw his place now. This land had been in the Abram family since 1914, and it had never been more at risk than when it fell into her lap. And most nights, she still stayed up wondering why her uncle had thought it best to give her the land instead of her brother, Josiah.
Josiah was strong, had a good head on his shoulders, and wouldn’t have ever let this place fall to ruin. He would’ve never been duped by someone like Cole.
Elyse grunted as she scooped another heaping pile of chicken poop-matted hay from the coop floor. It was late August, and the layers of scat from the winter were thawed out. There wasn’t any hope for more chickens until she could figure out how to make more money and purchase the animals plus feed, but the coop was smelling up the clearing, and she’d set aside the morning to clean it up in hopes that someday, p
erhaps next warm season, she would be in a better place to house hens again.
A soft noise outside made her draw up and frown, but when she listened harder, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Birds and rustling grass and the ever present sound of bugs. Shaking her head and fancying herself crazy, she bent back down and scooped another pitchfork full of smelly muck into the bucket.
There was that noise again.
Elyse set the fork against the wall and made her way out of the coop door, knee-high rubber galoshes squishing against the filth with every careful step. Her gaze was drawn down the dirt road toward the noise that was getting louder now.
The muddy nose of a brown and cream pickup was bouncing slowly toward her. Ian Silver was back.
With a gasp, Elyse wiped her hands on her jeans and patted her messy hair she’d piled high on her head. Her pants were smeared, her black rain boots were covered in an inch of fragrant muck, and she was about to see the man she’d been thinking of constantly all week. He would definitely tell her no when he saw her like this.
As he eased his truck in front of the cabin, he was pulling a trailer with a snow machine behind it, and sudden hope bloomed in her chest. The bed of his truck was piled high with belongings, and even the back seat of his truck looked full.
She patted her hair again and smelled her shirt, but scrunched up her nose at that bad decision. The scent of old chicken poop had a tendency to cling to everything. Maybe he wouldn’t notice.
Ian Silver got out of his truck and strode around the front on his long, powerful legs. He was more intimidating than she’d remembered. Was he even bigger? She thought so. More filled out and muscular somehow.
She fidgeted until he looked up from the ground and stopped her cold with those bright blue eyes of his. “I have a few negotiations.”
“Uh. Okay?”
He hooked his hands on his hips and glared. “One, I’m not marrying you.”
“Non-negotiable. I want a husband.”
“Why? I can work just as hard whether I’m your husband or not.”
“Because I want you to have incentive to stick around, Mr. Silver. I’m not looking to hire labor for a season.” She gave him an empty smile. “I want to grow old with you.”
Ian inhaled deeply and rolled his eyes. “Oh, God. Fine, but you have to go through an entire year with me before we talk marriage.”
“What? No! You’re just buying yourself time to escape. I want a husband.”
“You don’t want a husband, woman. You want loyal help.”
“I know what I want.”
“Well, you’re being unreasonable.”
“I’m twenty-six years old, have horrible taste in men, and no prospects. Galena isn’t exactly teaming with available men my age, Mr. Silver. I put an ad in the newspaper for a husband, not charity work. I want someone I can depend on to work beside me, and what reason would you have to stay if we don’t say vows in front of a preacher?”
“My answer is no. We can talk about it after you see how it is living with me through the winter season.”
“Well,” she said, crossing her arms stubbornly over her chest and swallowing the lump of disappointment down her throat, “then I’m afraid we don’t reach an agreement.”
“Dammit, Elyse Abram, why are you turning away good help?”
“Because I want more than that.” Shit, it was out there now, and her eyes were burning with tears. “I want someone to be there for me. I’m not asking for love, Ian. I just don’t want it to be so easy for a man to leave. It took ten minutes for Cole to pack up his belongings and leave my life, and just like that,” she said, snapping her fingers, “he was gone.”
“Yeah, and what if I end up to be as bad as him? Huh? You don’t know me!”
“I know you well enough. I know you looked in my freezer first thing. Cole only opened that lid when he was taking something from me. You counted how much wood I had chopped and asked about my garden and took stock of my animals and for fuck’s sake, you even asked about the hay I’d planted. Cole didn’t care. He was on a bender in town while my brother and I planted those fields by ourselves. Will you raise a hand to me, Mr. Silver?”
“Never.”
“Then you’re all right by me. I want vows. I want a man legally tied to me. I want a man to see me and have pride that he is making something work with me, and I never want to wake up again wondering if my helpmate is going to leave.”
“Gah!” Ian barked out, his eyes blazing in irritation as he paced in front of her.
He ran his hands through his mussed hair and then flung them forward. Fuming, he turned and got back in his truck, and before she could muster up the words to stop him, he was pulling away and out of her life for the second time.
And it was back to square one. Again.
Chapter Six
Elyse dumped another bucket of water over the floorboards in the chicken coop and stood back to inspect all her hard work. It had taken well into the afternoon for her to get it cleaned on account of the stupid tears that were blurring her vision half the danged time.
Stupid Ian Silver had teased her. She’d been so close to having a good man and the promise that life around the homestead would be less overwhelming, but he’d been here a total of five minutes before he left. Typical.
With a growl, she stomped out of the newly cleaned and entirely empty coop, then stabbed the earth with the pitchfork with every step she took toward an old water trough. Running water up here was sketchy. Uncle Jim had set it up to feed from a natural spring at the back of the property, but the water pressure left a lot to be desired, and it was cold as icicle piss. She grabbed the old rusted handle of the water pump and worked to get the water flowing. When it trickled an acceptable amount, she hurried to wash her hands and arms with the bar of soap that sat on the ledge. And when she was done with that, she turned her attention to the shelter for her two horses, Milo and Demon, the last one aptly named because he was a biting, bucking asshole to anyone in his saddle.
Shoes squishing in the mud, she swatted at a bug that was hovering right in front of her face, then skidded to a stop as she spotted Ian’s pickup coming down the road again. He wasn’t being careful about her driveway this time. Instead, he was skidding this way and that, pulling the trailer behind and going faster than she would ever advise with the short clearing she had for a yard.
He locked up the brakes, and the tires stopped spinning. The truck, however, took a good extra twenty feet to skid to a stop. Ian got out and slammed the door behind him, then marched over to her. He stood a good foot taller than her, so she had to arch her neck all the way back to take in his angry face. From the fire in his eyes, she thought he would ream her out, but instead, he held up a simple gold band between his pointer finger and thumb.
“This is a bad idea,” he muttered. Clearing his throat, he sank down to one knee in the mud and dragged his furious gaze up to her. “I can’t in good conscious marry you without you seeing what kind of man I am for one full winter. I can’t explain to you why, but I don’t feel right tethering you to me legally until you know all of what you’re in for. But I can give you this.” He held up the ring, and the sunlight glinted off it like newly washed miner’s gold. “I’ve never asked a woman to marry me, never even considered it, and this is the first and last ring I’ll ever buy. This ties me to you and to this place as well as any marriage license would. I’ll be your man, Elyse Abram. I’ll make sure you don’t go hungry and that you are safe. As long as I’m alive.” The last part he said in a quieter voice as the heat cooled from his eyes. “Wear my ring, and it’ll make me a part of this place. This is the only vow I can give you right now. It’s my final offer.”
Her mouth was hanging open, so she closed it with a small snap. Her breath trembled as she looked down at her dirty clothes and muddy, floppy galoshes in shock. “You’re proposing?”
Ian pursed his lips and nodded once.
“But I smell like chicken poop.”
&n
bsp; He nodded again. “That you do. What’s your answer?”
Stunned, she gulped and shook a strand of loose hair out from in front of her eyes. “I accept your negotiations.”
Ian frowned slightly, then stood to his full, towering height and shoved the ring roughly onto her finger. He spun to walk back to his truck, but hesitated with his back to her. He turned and stared at her, his stormy eyes troubled. His throat moved as he swallowed, and slowly he rested his hand on her waist. She froze under his touch as warmth pooled in her middle. He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, his rough beard tickling against her skin. His lips lingered there, and she closed her eyes to savor the unexpected moment.
Easing away, he dropped his hand from her hip and nodded toward his truck. In a deep, growly voice, he murmured, “I brought you an engagement present.”
“You did? What is it?”
“Chickens.”
And as she stood there stunned, with the weight of the gold band heavy on her finger, watching her new fiancé unload cardboard boxes with holes poked in the tops from the back of his truck, a weight lifted from her shoulders. The advertisement had worked, and better than she’d ever imagined.
Ian Silver was hers, and not only that, but the man had already pegged the clear and direct way to her heart.
Pretty promises and poultry.
Forcing her legs to move, she squished up to him and took a box from his hands. It was heavier than she’d expected, and when she heard the mature squawking and fluttering from inside, she understood. He hadn’t bought her chicks to raise. He’d bought her adult hens that would already be egg producers. He’d probably paid a pretty penny for these, and now her respect for him as a capable man bloomed.
“Have you worked a homestead before?” she asked, suddenly feeling overwhelmed by how much she didn’t know about her fiancé. Fiancé. Geez, she’d really done it.
“No, but I know what needs to be done to keep you alive through the winter.”
“Oh.” She toted the heavy box toward the coop, ignoring how noodle-like her legs felt as she bounced this way and that as if she’d taken a half dozen shots of tequila. She’d been proposed to. Like, handsome-man-on-his-knees-in-the-mud-asking-for-her-hand proposed to.