by Ev Bishop
After a long minute, Gray wearily removed his sweat-soaked shirt. In a wretched way, he was glad Celine had stopped in. The stretches between her visits were longer and longer nowadays, and during all their reassurances, there was something none of the shrinks bothered to tell him. That as much as visits from his dearly departed made him think he’d lost his marbles, he’d miss the torturous moments with a physical ache when they stopped.
Gray stretched his shoulders and neck, forced his head back on straight, then lay his shirt over a hardy lavender bush. He had a small clothesline rigged up behind the cabin, but the lavender would scent the fabric nicely and the sun was hotter on this side of the house. It still amazed him how effective sunlight was at cleaning clothes. Well, maybe not for greasy items, but for clean sweat? Absolutely. The shirt would be fresh as a daisy—or as a lavender plant—in no time.
Returning to his chopping block, he grabbed his splitting maul and axe and stashed them in the corner of his packed woodshed. The wood he was doing now was all gravy. He’d had what he’d use this winter readied over two months ago.
He intentionally avoided looking in the direction of either of the trails that led to his place. It was pointless. Mia probably didn’t want to traipse through unfamiliar forest to find him. He’d thought about that gaff too late, after he’d already placed his reply in the tree and hoofed it home. Oh well, it was probably for the best anyway.
He headed into the cabin and dumped water he had sitting on his cast iron cook stove into his metal washtub—and repeated the mental reminder. It really was for the best that she didn’t come by, that they didn’t kindle some type of, any type of, relationship.
He removed his pendant, bent low over the tub and scrubbed his hair and beard, then used a cloth on his face, chest and armpits. Next he lathered up with a bar of homemade soap Jo had given him. There really was no end to the things she and Callum concocted in their kitchen. Why did that thought make his gut hollow? Because he used to have someone he never got tired of being with too, someone who enjoyed making a home with him—and for him and their son. And because, try as he might to ignore it, these days the pain of his loss was almost matched by the pain of . . . longing. He rinsed off vigorously, trying to ignore the flood of fury caused by admitting he was lonely, even to himself. This was all Mia’s fault. Until he’d met her—and felt unwanted attraction to her—he’d been able to keep a tight lid on all unrealistic thoughts and desires.
He’d just toweled off and slipped his pendant back over his head when he heard a shuffling noise outside. He’d been living in the wilds for so long, and it was the right time of year, that his first thought was bear. He snatched up his big antique cowbell, grabbed his rifle from by the door, and charged outside, dressed only in his jeans and boots. Clanging the loud metal bell in one hand, waving his rifle in the other, he hollered at the top of his lungs, “Go on now, get out of here, shoo. Shoo!”
He practically bulldozed right over Mia.
“What?” It was more a yelp of sound than an articulated word and Gray stopped in his tracks, rifle midair, bell still ringing though he’d stopped shaking it.
“Uh,” he said. “You’re not a bear.”
“Nope, I’m not—but nice apology.”
“I wasn’t apologizing. I was explaining. I thought you were a bear. You’re not.” Gray shook his head at his own stupidity. Mia. Here. At his cabin in the middle of woods. It didn’t matter that he’d invited her, or that he’d thought about pretty much nothing else over the last seventy-two hours, other than what if she actually showed up. He was still shocked to see her. Couldn’t have been more shocked, in fact.
“You startled me. I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Yes, we really have to stop meeting like this.”
For a second, Gray didn’t understand what she meant. Then he got it. She’d greeted him the same way the other day, yelling and shooing some imaginary beast when he showed up unannounced. It was pretty funny—but the idea that he found it so made him speechless.
Mia rocked back and forth on the heels of her hiking boots and scanned his cabin, the nearby woodshed, his big old chopping block, and the garden area that was pretty much cleaned out and waiting for winter now. She looked uncomfortable and awkward, but also unapologetically curious. “I thought you’d be expecting me. It’s still this week and it’s past noon.”
He nodded like a dullard. He’d only ever had Jo and Callum visit and not very often at that. Plus, they’d stayed in the yard, never entered the cabin because it was under construction. Or that was the excuse he’d made as he brought them coffee outside. Mia wasn’t going to want to come inside, was she? What had he been thinking?
It did not get less awkward—at least not for him. He showed her around like he was a realtor at an open house, needlessly explaining each feature of his home, from the solar panels he used to provide a few hours of electricity each night, to the pulley-and-bucket system he’d rigged to draw water from the creek, to the reasoning behind where his outhouse was placed and why it bore a small sign that read, “Take time to smell the lilacs.” (Because lilac bushes were traditionally planted by old homestead privies to help mask the odor.)
He managed not to grin like an idiot when she chuckled at his explanation, but did a poorer job of hiding his pride when she oohed and ahhed over his cleaned out garden. It was pretty, though. The nasturtiums were still brilliant and prolific, and somehow the freshly turned soil, all ready for winter, looked full of possibility, not like a foreshadower of death.
She studied the food he had stored in the root cellar he’d dug into a hill behind the cabin like she was taking notes.
By the time they’d finished the tour, Gray was sweating like he’d run from town and back. Mia hovered expectantly by his cabin’s door, but Gray shook his head. “I don’t think, I mean, I’m not sure . . . ”
Mia backed away from the stoop as if burned. “Oh, of course. I get it.”
What did she “get” exactly? That he was a darned fool? Why was he being so strange? She’d wanted to see him, presumably to discuss personal safety techniques, and he, whether he liked it or not, had invited her to come. After getting her to hike all this way, then forcing her to endure his weird homesteading 101 lectures, it would be bizarre to turn her away without so much as a cup of tea.
He sighed heavily, shook his head again, then pushed his hand through his damp hair. “That is to say, if you want to come in, I could make you tea.”
Gray gripped the doorknob as he waited for her response—but now she was the one who seemed to have reservations. Her blue eyes darkened, and she chewed her bottom lip. Finally, she gave a firm nod. “Okay, yes. That would be nice. Thank you.”
Wanting absolutely nothing more than to rescind the offer and send Mia back to where she’d come from, Gray opened his door and ushered her into the shelter of his sturdily constructed walls.
Chapter 11
Mia could have breathed in the scent of the snug little cabin all day. It smelled delicious and unexpectedly domesticated and homey, not wild or scary at all: notes of lavender, masculine deodorant, and vanilla, like maybe Gray had been baking.
Everywhere Mia looked, something of interest caught her eye—something she wanted to touch. A flannel and denim patchwork quilt on an ancient looking rocking chair. Rocks and bits of broken ceramic and green glass lining the window’s sill. The spines of surprisingly current novels arranged neatly in a tall narrow bookcase. An oddly out of place action figure with a homemade cape. A child-sized pair of rubber boots made to look like frogs, complete with bulging eyes on the tip of each boot’s toe. . . .
Although the cabin was warm, a frisson of awareness made her shiver. Her desire to touch things extended to Gray. She wanted to touch Gray. To run her hands over his impossibly defined chest and abs. The majority of his skin was a warm honey brown that spoke, as did his muscles, of heavy physical work done bareback under the wide-open sky. He had deep scarring along his left side, howe
ver, similar to what she’d first observed on his wrist and hand. It didn’t mar the beauty of his body. If anything, the damage made her feel a strange kinship with Gray and her insides panged with empathetic recognition. How badly, how deeply, you could be hurt and still survive.
And maybe part of her was slightly envious. If you bore physical proof of your wounds, if people could see your scars, did it make them less judgmental? Celebrity-centered “news” passes quickly and she rarely heard of her name or her case being mentioned online or anywhere else these days, but she’d never forget the hateful backlash against her from complete strangers, castigating her, blaming her, suggesting she was nothing more than a desperate, washed up star going for a publicity grab, when some hack got wind that Mia Clark, the child star from way back when, had a stalker issue.
Gray shifted his weight and her attention zipped back to him full-force—a welcome, if embarrassing, diversion from the old familiar circular thoughts.
She actively refrained from ogling him, but felt like she was wearing a sign around her neck that announced, “I find you ridiculously attractive and that’s why I’m not looking at you at all.” Somehow carefully not studying him seemed more telling than if she’d feasted her eyes. Her face—her entire body, actually—flamed.
How, how, how had she not known, not realized that the whole reason she’d wanted to see Gray again was not because she was so committed to her self-help plan, but was, instead, the product of what? Curiosity? Desire? Animal magnetism? All three? Bing, bing, bing—we have a winner. She supposed she should consider her raging attraction to Gray another “success” and let herself off the hook. It had been so long since she felt anything except dead in terms of sexual desire that she thought Ryland had killed off that part of her forever. But now . . . here . . . well, ah . . . awkward.
She inched toward the back wall, hyperconscious of every one of Gray’s movements as he filled a cast iron kettle from a pitcher stored on a rough-hewn shelf and placed it on the adorable wood cook stove, then rustled around building a fire in the stove’s belly. And speaking of fires in one’s belly. She fought hard to keep her focus away from the neatly made bed in the corner, with its soft plaid comforter and plentiful pillows. Instead, she fixed her gaze on, of all things, a cherry red Gibson J-45. Gray must be a serious musician. The gorgeous vintage guitar held a position of prominence on the light pine wall. Great. She’d zeroed in on the only other thing in the room guaranteed to exacerbate her pathetic longings.
She pulled her cap off and her hair tumbled down her back in a big mess, but she didn’t care. She felt like she might spontaneously burst into flames of humiliation and thwarted desire. Fanning her face with her hat, trying—and failing, she was sure—to act like being too hot was normal for her, she struggled for something to say.
At the door, before Gray offered her tea, it had been crystal clear that the last thing he wanted to do was invite her in. Why hadn’t she taken the hint, said her piece (that she now realized was totally deluded!) and made tracks? Why had she thought it would be good to push herself one step further out of her comfort zone? She hadn’t even known the zone she was actually in! Was she ever going to know herself or be able to trust her own judgement again?
“I’m sorry,” Gray said suddenly, his voice a self-conscious growl behind her. “I know it’s warm in here, maybe even stuffy. My joints like heat.”
Somehow it made her feel better that he sounded as disconcerted as she felt. She decided to be honest—or as honest as she could be without making him write her off as a wing nut for sure. She felt safe around him and he was a very . . . manly . . . man. (Ugh, she embarrassed herself thinking such stupid, girly things, even in the privacy of her own head!) Still, it made logical sense that she, doing so much better these days and feeling comfortable, would experience attraction. Gray didn’t have to know about it, and now that she recognized the problem, she’d deal with it and end the feelings appropriately. There was no reason he couldn’t still help her.
“Your home is lovely, and the temperature is fine. I’m just not used to being in confined spaces with people I don’t know well.” She turned slightly—and found him studying her as intently as she had been wanting to study him. Her body temperature spiked again.
“People?” he asked. “Or men?”
She shrugged one shoulder but managed to maintain eye contact. “Pretty much all, but yes, males are . . . worse.”
That’s not even a lie, she reassured herself. You do find it more difficult to control your anxiety around men than women. He doesn’t need to know the humiliating layer adding to your current dysfunction.
Gray laced his fingers together, then stretched his arms, palms out. His knuckles cracked, but it was the ripple of movement in his pecs that really caught her off guard. Lord have mercy. She zipped her attention back to the guitar. “Do you play?”
Gray stepped closer. Why?
He reached out and took the guitar down. Oh . . . Mia tried not to be disappointed. What was wrong with her?
“Badly,” he said.
“What?”
“You asked if I play. I answered. Badly.” Gray eased away again, taking the guitar with him. He moved to his small kitchen table, plunked down on one of the two dining chairs, and propped the guitar on his knee.
While his guitar posture was decent—and having justifiable reason to gawk at him was very appreciated—listening to him bang out a few chords was torture. Mia had assumed he was being modest when he said he played badly, but really it was an understatement. He was terrible, and the poor instrument was so out of tune it was a travesty. When he started murdering the main riff for Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water”—something Mia hadn’t thought possible—she grabbed the guitar from him.
“That’s too nice an instrument for you to make sound that bad.”
Gray’s eyes twinkled with wry humor and he ducked his head in shy agreement. “I might’ve heard something like that before.”
Mia felt herself smiling back and her stomach lurched. In this rustic, glorious place, with his golden-brown mane curling lightly as it dried and his tanned muscles glistening in the afternoon sun streaming through the window, Gray looked like some half-tamed forest god.
She settled on the edge of the other chair and began tuning the instrument. When what she was doing—handling a guitar with pleasure, not anxiety—sank in, she paused, but only for a second. When the Gibson sounded pretty good, she strummed a few times. Then, singing along, so softly the words were barely breath, she fingerpicked Bill Withers’ “Ain’t no sunshine.” It was the song she’d played last and one that was symbolic for her.
Gray’s head bowed, and he clasp the melted chunk of gold he wore around his neck as she sang.
The cabin was set in a deeply silent place. Mia had been conscious of the quiet the whole time she’d searched for it. When they’d been outside together, the fits and starts of her and Gray’s disjointed conversation had been like bird chatter—a brief noise scattered over silence that existed beneath sound, completely unbroken. Now, with her song finished and Gray still as a statue, it was beyond quiet. Her singing had done something, but she didn’t know what.
A bubbling hiss from the stove made her jump. Gray loosened his grip on the lumpy pendant and it fell back to its resting place above his heart. “Tea water’s ready,” he said, getting to his feet. He grabbed a long-sleeved flannel shirt, pushed his arms into it, did up a few buttons, then moved to the stove.
Mia watched him plop two teabags into a Brown Betty, which he filled from the steaming kettle. He put two mugs on the table, along with a tin of sugar cubes and a small can of evaporated milk. Using a jackknife, he punctured the top of the can on two sides and widened one of the openings to form a spout.
When the tea had steeped about five minutes, he poured her a mug and watched her doctor it. Then he filled his own and added canned milk. “It was my wife Celine’s guitar,” he said in a tone that suggested she’d asked—and a
sked rudely at that. “And the song you played was very apt.”
If it was so “apt,” why did he sound so furious? It was on the tip of Mia’s tongue to respond snippily, to say that the least he could do if he was going to take his wife’s guitar in some divorce settlement was to keep it tuned and in good shape. But then the significance of him having the guitar at all—wouldn’t a personal item like that stay with its owner?—the misshapen chunk of gold he wore around his neck, and the action figure toy struck her all at once. Gray wasn’t divorced; he was widowed. His wife had died somehow and maybe a child, too. Was that how he’d gotten his physical scars as well? Had they all been in some accident or something?
On the heels of that realization, Gray’s choice to live alone, roughing it in the wilderness, no longer seemed brave and enviable. Mia sympathized with him—but also felt bitter. How typical. She would gravitate toward a person as damaged as she was and mistake him for someone who might be able to help her learn how to survive and thrive again. Likewise, her wish to emulate him, to cloister herself away, seemed foolish now. Yes, the cozy, isolated cottage offered protection of a sort, but at what cost?
“Healing” herself to arrive at a point where she could be like Gray and need no one, see no one for months at a stretch, wouldn’t be healing at all. It would be regression. She’d been on the right track when she first arrived. She needed to be able to form relationships, enjoy people, trust again. . . .
Mia picked up her mug and sipped the strong, milky tea. It was good.
After a lengthy spell, she broke the quiet. “I’m sorry if you felt the song was directed at you. It wasn’t. It was about me. Something, someone, I lost.” Myself—she thought, but didn’t say.
Gray shrugged and downed the last of his tea.
“But that brings me to why I wanted to see you. I miss the sunshine. I want it back.”
“And you think I can help with that?”
Mia glanced around the cabin. Its atmosphere had changed, still beautiful, but haunted now. The isolated cell of a mourning monk, complete with revered, holy articles. She nodded slowly. “I had thought so . . . or had hoped, anyway.”