CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“You cooked, so I guess I should do the dishes. But you’ll have to show me how.” Patrick carried his bowl across to the sink. There was no tap, but otherwise it looked like a big old-fashioned farmhouse sink.
She joined him. “I can manage.”
He ignored her and retrieved the empty milk can. “Does that drain connect to something?”
“There’s a pipe that dumps the gray water into a ditch. You need to scrape the plates really clean.”
“Okay. Is there a bucket?”
She pointed at a rusty metal pie plate with her chin. It held the fish bones.
“Do we bury the food waste? And what about the milk can?”
“We let the animals have the scraps – but a long way away from the house. The rinsed can will go back to town and the recycling depot.”
“Okay. Now how do you want the dishes done?” He rolled up Lenny’s sleeves to expose his newly hairy forearms. Taking bear had made his body hair sprout like grass after rain. Her eyes went over his arms, but she didn’t curl her lip.
“I’ll fill a pot and put it to boil.” Heather produced a small vat and poured what was left in one of the two buckets of water into it.
She found a small rectangular plastic tub and set it inside the sink. There was a wooden dish rack over the sink, half blocking the kitchen window. “We air dry the dishes. I’ll take the garbage out and fetch more water if you want to wash.” There was a challenge or something in her tone.
“Why don’t you supervise me? And then you can show me where the garbage goes and we can take both buckets for water.” She looked better, but Heather was still pregnant. He didn’t like the idea of her carrying heavy pails from the river.
“I guess. I better change the wash water in the lean-to.”
“Good idea.”
They worked companionably together until the kitchen was orderly. He squeezed out the kitchen cloth after he had wiped the counters and held it up. “What do we do with this?”
“I boil it every night. After I pour off our drinking water.” She put the plastic tub away and tipped the water in the basin she had fetched from the lean-to down the drain.
He lifted the plastic pail before she could and tipped a little into the basin. She swished it out.
“I’ll take it to the bathroom and refill it there,” he offered.
“Okay.”
She was wearing a red jacket when he came back out. It was nearly twilight. “What should I do with the rest of the water?”
“Rinse the sink out. We’ll get fresh.” She grabbed a five-gallon pail from a cupboard he had missed. “Here, you can take this one.”
It was pretty outside. Damp of course. He still wasn’t used to the greenness of the Pacific Northwest. Somewhere a cardinal sang of his love and was answered by his mate. Heather led him down the road to a stony scar in the earth. “We can dump the pie pan here and wash it in the river.”
She was so solemn that he reckoned she had decided to have that quarrel she had promised him. The trail they were on was not very wide. Just one person wide. She was leading the way – only natural since this was her stomping ground – but she kept looking over her shoulder as if he was too close.
During dinner she had smelled better. Riper. Pregnant. A tiny bit aroused. But now she smelled of fear. He shortened his steps. She turned. He was about five paces behind her. Her fear settled down. But it didn’t disappear completely.
“You know, I don’t hit girls.”
She turned to glare at him. “I would be a woman.” Despite her fear, there was definitely a challenge in her voice.
“Stop for a bit.” He came to a halt and turned his bucket upside down and sat on it. “My Uncle Freddie said ‘girls’,” he explained. “Probably thought there wasn’t much chance a six-year-old was going to go around thumping grown-ups.”
Heather looked confused. “What are you talking about?”
“How long ago it was explained to me that men don’t punch females.”
Her face cleared. “Oh. Who is your Uncle Freddie?”
“He is my father’s second cousin. He and my Aunt Brenda pretty much brought me up after my mom died. My Uncle Freddie has old-fashioned ideas about children. He disapproved of us boys picking on Bethany and Laura. Of course we were older. But that only made it worse.”
She bit. “And Bethany and Laura are?”
“Uncle Freddie and Aunt Brenda’s daughters. Zeke and I think of them as sisters. At least we think of Laura as our sister. Bethany and her mom were taken out by a drunk driver.” Even after all these years the pain seemed as sharp as the day he had first heard. Worse even than when he had learned that his own mother had died. He was just used to it.
“Oh. Out in Colorado?”
He stood up and offered her his seat. “That’s correct. We all grew up on the ranch together. Laura and Bethany used to follow us boys around asking dumb questions – at least they were dumb to a pack of stupid boys. Uncle Freddie insisted that we weren’t to hit girls – even those pests. And you better believe, we didn’t.”
She shook her head at him. “We’re going to lose the light. We shouldn’t sit here to talk.”
“All right.” He righted his bucket and picked it up by the handle again. “All the same, you’re going to tell me who trained you to think that a man would hit you.”
She spun on her heel. Her anxiety was evident in her wide blue eyes. “Why do you say that?” Her voice rose an octave higher.
“Who was he?”
She practically ran all the rest of the way to the river. He followed behind making sure he didn’t quite catch up with her. She was hand shy and it hurt his heart to see it.
It was dim on the path with the leafy canopy of the trees shading it. The woods were full of little rustling noises as the animals that hunted at twilight scurried about in the leaf litter. He thought he saw a shrew of some kind wriggling its small nose and rooting out bugs. The birds had gone silent.
Heather knelt on the bank of the stream and leaned over to fill one of her two pails. A vision of her tumbling headfirst into the river had him lifting her by her waist and setting her on her feet. “Let me do it. Please.”
“I don’t know who you thought fetched the water you drank and washed in.”
“I know you did. And I thank you. But it’s a moderately dangerous activity. And I’m not pregnant.” He took the empty bucket out of her hand and filled it. “Should you even be carrying something this heavy?”
“I’m pregnant. Not an invalid.” Her tone was argumentative but she had still backed out of range of his fists.
“Hmmm.” He filled his own bucket and hefted it. Five gallons of water weighed more than forty pounds. He took one of her pails. It was smaller and less heavy of course and the two pails didn’t balance. He set them back down. “You want to put the trap back in the river?”
“Otherwise we’ll eat stew for breakfast.” That challenge with its hint of fear was in her voice again.
“Is there any way to set it without getting wet?”
She shook her head and her braid bounced. “Nope.” Her grin was cheeky.
“What I thought. How deep is it? I’m asking if I need to take my pants off or if just rolling up the legs will do.”
“You probably should take your jeans off, otherwise they’ll get wet. I had to kneel to lock it down in the gravel.”
“Okey dokey.” He toed off his loafers. He had had to remove his socks to get them on. When his hands went to the waist of his jeans, Heather backed up as if they had not been making love earlier in the day.
He set his teeth, and waded into the river with the fish trap. “You’ll have to tell me if I’ve got it right.” He began to wriggle it back into the position he remembered.
“You need to move it a little more to the left so that when the fish come over those rocks they just get funneled into the trap.”
“Better?”
“Yes.” Her voice was softer and breathier. Maybe at the sight of his hairy legs. But that was too much to hope for. He got out of the river and shook first one leg and then the other. He laughed as she backed away from the spray of drops.
* * *
He didn’t seem as pissed off as he had earlier. The fury that had had him stomping off to the lean-to had gone. He seemed alternately amused and resigned by their situation. And he was being a good sport about the primitive conditions. And then he waved his legs at her and water flew off the black curls in a big arc and dampened her clothes.
“Hey!” She backed away laughing.
He stood up to his full height and took a backwards step away from her. “It’s too bad we didn’t bring anything to carry blackberries home in.”
Heather took her treasure out of her hip pocket. It was a small Ziploc plastic bag that she had found in one of the kitchen drawers. She waved it at him.
“Clever girl.”
“I told you already, I’m a woman.”
“Sorry. But you concede clever?” He grinned at her.
“Sure. Are you going to help?” Maybe they could talk with the width of the berry bushes between them.
He ran his hands down his legs. “I don’t think I should put my jeans on till I am a bit drier.”
Even though she had harvested a lot of fruit already, there was still plenty left. Patrick was scanning the area with narrowed eyes as if he didn’t like her spot.
“What’s the matter?” She asked.
“You do know that there’ve been bears here – real bears – and you’re picking from their patch?”
“Their scat is old.”
“Doesn’t mean they won’t come back.”
“They won’t come near,” she said. “They get one whiff of shifter, and they’re out of here.”
“Really? Are you sure of that?”
“I don’t know if it’s true in other places, but the black bears around here know two things. One, hunters aren’t going to shoot them. And two, shifters can take them in a fair fight every time. They don’t mess with us, and we don’t mess with them.”
“Good to know.” He held out a big hand with a pile of blackberries. “Can you hold the bag open?”
He had to come close to put berries in her bag. It was already half full.
“There’s not much room left,” she pointed out.
“Then I better eat some,” he moved away and suited action to words. “Are you ready to explain to me why you sent Lenny Benoit away instead of letting him take us back to French Town?” He no longer sounded angry, just curious.
“I like it up here. And I thought – since we are married – maybe we should get to know one another better. Was I wrong?” She moved a little further away from him as if she was just seeking a few more berries.
“It’s not a bad idea. I wouldn’t have thought of taking my bride camping on our honeymoon.”
“It’s not exactly a honeymoon.”
He advanced on her with his hands full of berries. “Have you got room for these?”
“Not all, or the bag won’t zip.”
“Then we’ll have to eat the rest.” He offered her the fruit like an olive branch. “We just got married – we’re off alone together – I’d say it’s a honeymoon.” His expression invited her to share his amusement.
“I don’t imagine you would pick to go on vacation in the great outdoors.” She zipped up her bag and they stood together companionably eating from his big palm. The light was going, but like all bear shifters, she had good night vision.
“Now there’s where you’re wrong, sweetheart. I’m just not used to women who like to rough it. But I think you’re forgetting where I grew up, and how much time I spent training with the reserves.”
That was right. Patrick was a captain in the Colorado National Guard. Reservists spent a weekend a month training. It was hard and grueling work. She couldn’t imagine how he managed with all his citified ways, but then he was an officer, and maybe that made the difference. “If you like camping, you’ve been hanging out with the wrong kind of women.”
“Probably. I’ve never hung out with a female bear shifter.”
“Never?”
“Nope. Should we head back?”
“If your legs are dry?” Now why had she called his attention to his naked limbs?
“Mostly.” He went whistling back to the branch where he left his jeans. He stuffed his feet into his battered loafers.
“Those are pretty fancy shoes for someone who likes to rough it.”
“They are a mighty poor choice of footwear for the woods,” he agreed. “But the thing is, when I came to French Town, I didn’t expect to stay more than a few days, and when I got dressed two mornings ago, I had no idea that I would be trying to tramp up the mountain in them.”
“They’re ruined.”
He held out a big foot. He shook his head. “I’ll have to order another pair. I sure wish Lenny had left me a pair of boots.” He picked up the big pail in one hand and took one of her plastic pails in the other. “You want to go ahead?”
It was easier walking with just one bucket of water. The blackberries needed to be handled carefully, but they didn’t weigh much and she rested them on the pie plate which made it easier.
Patrick wasn’t likely to do anything to her while he was carrying two heavy buckets of water. She didn’t know why she was so scared of him. He had said plenty of things that hurt her feelings, but he hadn’t hurt her. But she couldn’t help being nervous around him. For a guy who worked for a big corporation, he had a lot of muscles. One swipe of his big arm could knock her into tomorrow.