by Cara McKenna
After that pain, loneliness had ceased to register.
Until Merry.
He slopped cold water down his arms, grabbed the soap and turned it around in his hands.
Merry.
She looked at him as those girls had, back in his finest days. She looked at him as though he were someone worth her curiosity, worth sitting down and sharing a space with, getting to know.
And now he realized, he wanted that feeling again, so badly. To be seen as worth knowing, if not actually known. But without a drink . . . Where to even begin? And the pain of that uncertainty trumped the pleasure of her attention.
Except . . .
Except with her, out here, he wasn’t loose and charming from Dutch courage. He was just his solitary, stroppy self . . . yet she seemed to want to know him, anyway.
He soaped his shoulders, chest, under his arms, and scrubbed with the washcloth. Granted, he was literally the only human company to be had for long miles in every direction, but still. She wanted to be friends, he thought, and not with his supposed best self, the one filtered through a pint glass and made palatable. For reasons unfathomable to him, she liked sober Rob, just as he was. And he didn’t think he could say that of any woman. Not his ex-wife. Not even his mother.
And the man he was out here . . . Rob didn’t self-reflect often these days, but this was the most he’d liked himself, ever in his life.
Well, not liked. But this was easily the least he’d ever loathed himself. He wasn’t the awkward, unnerving child, or the self-medicated charmer, or the monster that charmer was doomed to become. He was a slave to the seasons and weather, not the bottle.
Merry liked the man he’d become out here. And that made him nearly like that man, too.
Maybe you don’t need a drink to be that way with another person.
Maybe. Just maybe. He dunked his head and came up dripping. Water in his eyes, he felt around and found the soap, lathering his hands.
Even as his head ached from the cold, it felt so good, this wash. He worked the soap into his hair. Christ, he must look a mess. He hadn’t seen himself in a mirror since his last trip in the Land Rover—six weeks ago, surely. He needed a haircut. Had to be hovering somewhere between hippie and homeless. He’d better shave, at the very least.
With his hair rinsed and dripping cold rivulets down his back, dampening the waist of his jeans, he lathered the hand towel and scrubbed his face, hard enough to sting.
What could I talk to her about?
Anything. But his brain always seized up when the time came for actual conversation. He’d make a list.
San Francisco.
Her plans once she reached Inverness.
Her father was gay, she’d said—was he married? That was legal some places now, and she seemed the type who’d feel passionately about the topic. Yes. He’d get her going about that, and surely he’d catch the thread, too. It was the initiating that was—
“Are—oh.” The unmistakable sound of female surprise.
“Hang on.”
“No, never mind.”
But Rob splashed his face and grabbed the rough old bath towel, getting to his feet. He patted the water from his eyes, finding Merry standing just outside the back door, eyes wide, cheeks pink.
He hazarded a smile, trying to look disarming, in case his half-nakedness was upsetting her. Maybe she was more conservative than she let on. Or maybe his build looked as down-and-out as his hair and beard surely did. These past two years had stripped any softness he might’ve carried with him from the city. Perhaps he looked lean and threatening, like a convict or a drug addict. He toweled his arms quickly, suddenly feeling vulnerable and exposed, as though she could make out those hideous bruises he used to wear, his liver’s desperate cries for help.
“Did you need something?” he asked, frantically faking perkiness. Probably came off fucking manic.
Merry’s eyes snapped from his middle to his face. “Oh, no. I just heard the pump, and I was restless. From the coffee. I thought I’d see if I could help with anything.”
“Just trying to maintain the barest semblance of hygiene.” He managed another smile. They were getting easier.
Her posture had relaxed, gaze dropping again, only to be politely hoisted back up. What must he look like, compared to those robust Californian men she knew back home? Oh well. His body was what it was. Out here, function trumped form, to the nth. Plus he was such a shit host, it’d take some serious Adonis-level attributes to offset his personality.
Once dry, he pulled on the clean tee, and Merry seemed to relax further.
Rob strode to the edge of the garden, gathering scattered tools. With the plots spent until spring, these could be stowed for the time being. He dropped them into the basin and turned to Merry. She lingered still, uncharacteristically quiet.
“Would you mind grabbing me a scrubbing brush from the shelf just inside?”
She seemed to awaken at the request, disappearing through the back door.
Rob got to his knees, and was surprised when Merry reappeared and did the same on the other side of the basin. She’d brought two brushes, and he accepted the one she handed him. “Ta.”
“Oh, brrr.” She flexed her hands after their initial dunk. “Jeez. You’re a masochist.”
Rob started, realizing too late what she’d meant.
“Tell me you take the time to heat your bath water in the winter,” Merry went on, too busy scrubbing the crusted grit from his trowel to notice how that word had knocked him sideways.
Masochist.
“I do,” he said quickly. “I was just too lazy today.”
“Does it ever get so frigid you hole up in the Land Rover with the radiator on?”
“Not yet, no. The cottage stays warm, what with the stone walls. Tempting, though.”
He set a clean pair of shears on the slate slab and felt for the next implement. Merry did the same, and their knuckles touched. His neck and cheeks burned hot even as his hands stung with cold. He stole a glance at Merry’s face, but she was already busy scrubbing at a plastic garden stake.
She probably touches people all the time. Just casual. A clap on the arm, a kiss on the cheek, a chiding punch on the shoulder when someone told an off-color joke. Seemed like how she’d be, back home with her cheerful American mates.
Rob hadn’t been raised that way. He was Northern to the marrow. He’d not said “I love you” aloud until he’d met his wife. He’d not been told that by his parents or brother or nan or anyone else, growing up. It wasn’t done in his family.
His father had managed the words a little over three years ago, but not until the final hour of his life. A chore, procrastinated to the last possible moment? No. Just too scary, too vulnerable and soft for a man of his upbringing and generation. He’d said the words to Rob with his eyes shut, the two of them alone, late at night. They’d sounded painful, gurgling around the breathing tube snaked down his throat. But he’d meant them.
And Rob had felt them, real as a hand on his arm. He’d said them back, eyes wide open, breath surely smelling as antiseptic as everything else in that awful hospital room. Fucking drunk at your father’s bedside. But that was the only way he’d been able to function by then.
Get yourself sorted, Rob. Those had been his father’s final words, to Rob or to anyone. Soft, sad words, raw with heartache.
And have I? Have I got myself sorted?
He wasn’t committing slow-motion suicide anymore, that much was true. He was sober. He wasn’t hurting a woman he’d vowed to cherish and protect. But this couldn’t have been what his father had wanted for him—exile. Hiding away in this place, a coward taking refuge in his only fond childhood memories.
He glanced at Merry, her attention cast down at her fingers, picking dirt from the grooves of another
stake. For as long as she was here with him, he was duty-bound to protect her. But he had no doubt this woman was stronger than him by leagues. Tell her so, you cagey twat.
“I . . .”
She glanced up, and it was Rob’s gaze that fled to the basin now.
“I think it’s very impressive of you,” he managed, and met her eyes. “All this that you’re doing.”
“Really?” She grinned, her lost sunniness returning. “Coming from you, King Badass, that’s high praise indeed.”
“I’m not impressive. I’m just some grumpy old man trapped in a thirtysomething’s body.”
She laughed.
“You came out here for the challenge,” he said. “I’m just hiding from the responsibilities of twenty-first century adulthood.”
“Hiding?” She groped through the now-muddy water, coming up empty. She swished the brush clean and stood, drying her hands on the towel. “You swore you weren’t a fugitive,” she teased.
“Not in the legal sense. Just, you know. What you said about my dropping out of the rat race.”
“I don’t think that’s hiding,” she said, wandering around the yard. She picked up a mallet from beside the fence, giving a wooden post a couple of limp thumps. “I think that’s escaping. Why bother even completing a race if there’s no satisfaction in crossing the finish line, right?”
“Maybe.” Rob set the final stake on the pile of clean tools and ran his brush around the basin. “You seem determined to give me far too much credit.” He looked up, mustering the warmest smile he could, but it wilted in an instant.
She’d picked up the end of an old rope that had been tangled by the side of the cottage. As she toyed with the fray, she looked pensive. She said something, but Rob didn’t hear. His entire world had shrunk small enough to fit in her fist—the same fist clasping that length of coarse hemp. She drew it through her hands, meter by meter, working out the knots.
“. . . free will,” she was saying, the words reaching Rob’s brain through a dreamlike fog, thin and watery. “We just do as we’re told we should. High school, college, job, marriage, kids. Like, one size fits all.” She met his eyes expectantly.
“True,” he said, at a loss for anything else. All the blood had left his head, surging southward. Thank goodness he was kneeling—his cock was hard, pounding hot and angry.
Fuck.
Merry kept talking, but he lost the thread. She wandered closer. With the knots banished, she gripped the tail of the rope in her fist, making an L of her arm and winding the length around her elbow in uniform loops. Rough, rasping rope against that smooth, perfect skin. And Rob on his knees. Under the water, he pressed his wrists flush, scraping his thumbs over the coarse bristles of his brush, watching as she coiled, coiled, coiled.
Put it away, put it away. If she didn’t, he’d be stuck kneeling here, scouring until he scrubbed straight through the basin. He fidgeted, the hard ground punishing his sore knees. And that rope in her hands, spooling.
A word broke through. “Rob?”
He stared at her face, avoiding her hands, willing her features and words into focus. “Sorry. What?”
“Does this have a home?” She swung the neat collection of loops.
“On the hook. By the door.”
She found the spot. As she hung up the rope and dusted her palms on her trousers, the spell broke.
Jesus fucking Christ. He gulped a breath.
Merry waggled the handle of the ax wedged into the wood-chopping stump until the blade came loose, then set it aside, taking a seat. Rob watched her as though seeing this creature for the first time.
She’d been pretty before, beautiful even, but the way flowers appealed—arranged in a vase, inviting no contact, only civil appreciation. Now, though. That smile looked wicked, those eyes dark and knowing. Those hands . . . His cock throbbed painfully, bound by his jeans.
“Thank you,” his mouth said, the words issued by some synapse utterly divorced from his consciousness. Yes, good. That’s what you were meant to say. “For your help.”
“Oh, sure. I like keeping busy.” She looked around, and everything that might’ve struck Rob as innocent before was charged—that shiny dark hair somehow sinister now, in the most alluring way. Those lips suddenly seemed capable of uttering the sorts of words Rob’s twisted imagination might script. Stay. On your knees. Give me your wrists. Shut your mouth.
Fucking hell. He’d escaped the drink, but that was only one vice, wasn’t it? He was as sick as he’d ever been, back in England, to be projecting such cravings onto this kind woman.
The guilt cooled his arousal, and thank goodness. He tossed his brush on the pile of tools and stood.
“I need to steal your seat, I’m afraid.” He nodded to the stump and Merry got up. He fetched an armload of firewood from the shed. They had plenty of this chunky, slow-burning fodder, but could stand some smaller bits. He balanced a fat log and brought the axe down, splitting it in two. The halves fell to either side of the stump and he placed the next one.
Merry laughed, watching, and crossed her slender arms over her chest. “Goddamn, you’re manly.”
And you’re the devil, he thought, immediately ashamed of the thought. Of course she wasn’t. He was projecting again, wishing she were capable of the things he’d imagined for those few minutes she’d been handling that rope.
He could sense her, waiting. For him to say something. He’d had topics ready for this occasion, but what they were . . . His hateful urges had driven them from his head.
After too long a silence, Merry said, “Guess I’ll head in and read until dinner.” She sounded deflated.
Fix this. Fix it. All he had to do was open his mouth and let some words fall out, like any human being could. But all at once Rob was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, with an unaltered head full of heinous predilections and no clue what to say to a girl to pass for normal.
The opportunity was gone. He looked up at the sound of the back door clacking shut, and with a weary sigh, he brought the ax down.
Another log fell in tidy halves at his feet.
What the bloody hell’s wrong with you? If he’d known, maybe he could have cured it half a lifetime ago. Avoided all the self-destruction with the bottle.
He eyed the door. If he couldn’t be truly charming, he should at least try to appear receptive, if only because Merry seemed so eager to talk. And because in truth, the sound of a sweet female voice in his home . . . It crackled like a hearth, bright and warm and wholesome. As wholesome as his basest thoughts were ugly. And with the flash of lust now thoroughly wilted to familiar remorse . . . He wanted to get close enough to feel that heat again.
Then, for just a breath, he pictured those hands, that rope. And for just a breath, her smile in his mind’s eye turned wicked, dark eyes making dark promises.
Leave it. That was all in his imagination. But her kindness, her company—those gifts were real, and untainted by Rob’s hateful appetites. His head spun, his skull a jar rattling with rusty old screws.
Don’t lose this, he warned himself as the blade came down again. Don’t waste it.
But if it felt as good as he suspected, just talking with her, being near her . . . How awful might it feel tomorrow or the day after, whenever she was well enough to leave?
She’s going, whether you let yourself connect with her or not. How awful might it feel if she left, took away her smile and voice and energy, along with this missed opportunity?
“Fuck it,” he said aloud, and whacked the ax into the stump. He collected the wood strewn at his feet, steeling himself.
He’d make tea.
He’d make conversation.
And though he’d likely make an arse of himself, he’d bloody well make a fucking effort.
Chapter Six
The lingeri
ng caffeine—and antsy lust—precluded a nap. The eReader wasn’t backlit, and Merry read until she was squinting, the sun having retreated to the west. She set the device aside and stared out the window, listening to the steady, muted thumps of Rob’s endless wood-chopping. The mountains loomed.
The Highlands are a sharp, cold, unfriendly place, her mother had told her, more than once.
Merry couldn’t disagree more. Never had she been somewhere that felt so wide and welcoming. Not welcoming like a sunny beach, but those peaks were positively seductive—great, hungry stone jaws streaked with white blood, inviting a person to be swallowed alive by this wild, glorious beast of a land.
Seductive. Hungry and wild.
Rob flashed across her mind, as he had a hundred times in the past half hour. His pale, strong, bare body, wet hair dripping.
Goddamn. All this isolation really was turning her into a sex fiend. She’d ogled him like a rack of ribs, those hips and biceps and that cut abdomen, that body that spoke of primeval labor and efficiency. Survival.
Had he spotted it, her perving? Possibly. He’d gone all quiet and weird, eyed her with what looked so exactly like suspicion . . . Except he’d been looking at her like that on and off since she’d arrived. She just hoped she hadn’t scared that accessible Rob away, the one she’d met taking aim at the old dead tree, or sipping coffee right here, only a couple of hours earlier.
Maybe he’s bipolar. She wasn’t a hundred percent sure what that entailed, but there certainly was an emotional duality at play in the man.
The clouds grew thick, the sky dark and the cottage cool. Merry abandoned the rocker to feed the fire.
Against the wall leaned a large upholstered cushion, a cast-off from some long-departed sofa. She set it on the floor a few feet from the stove and stretched out her legs so the fire would warm her achy toes. She watched the flames through the oven’s slats. Their dance hypnotized her, and she jumped when the rear door creaked. A cold breeze came first, followed by Rob, a fresh stack of wood balanced on one arm.