“Who?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Carla. I saw the whole thing in my blasted head. You and him were…well, you know what you were doin’.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The hell you don’t! Where’s Jock? Come on now. Time’s a-wastin’. He could need me.”
Carla sat on the bed and folded her hands in her lap. After a moment, she smoothed her palms over the coverlet and crossed one leg over the other.
Clearly baffled, Grant stretched his neck forward and said, “Now ain’t the time to proposition me, Carla. Me and you? We’ve had a right smart bit of time to see if we were gonna take and we didn’t. Now ain’t the moment to explore what might have been when my best friend might be a-lyin’ dead someplace.”
“You’re all roostered up again. Aren’t you, Grant?”
With his unkempt hair flying around his shoulders and his eyes as wide and red as plump strawberries, he staggered a minute before he said, “Even if I’m full as a tick, I still have a right to know where my pack master is. Last thing I heard in my head he was…well…you know what he was a-doin’.”
“You keep saying that as if we were ‘doin’’ something inappropriate.”
“If you ain’t in the marriage way and you ain’t earnin’ money for the time you spend lying on your back, then I’d say—”
“For your information I wasn’t lying on my back,” she snapped. “And for a man who soaked his brains in liquor before coming in here spouting off about sexual relations, you don’t have a very good imagination.”
“My imagination ain’t what women see when they look at me.”
“They see a whipping dummy?”
“Bite your tongue, woman. That’s a most insultin’ thing to say to a man.”
“And it’s quite flattering for you to assume the only way a woman can have relations is to lie on her back and take it like an animal born to breed? For your information we fucked outside, up against the logs!”
He opened his mouth to speak again but sealed his lips just as quickly. He grunted in an effort to at least make a sound. Finally, he said, “I don’t care a Continental if you…”
He stopped short of finishing his sentence. He rolled his lips back and forth, seemingly processing the new information. “So the two of you um…”
“We fucked, Grant.”
“Here now. Shut your cock holster. Ain’t no need to talk like a man. Jock wouldn’t like it.”
Carla felt her face heat. Grant had some nerve. Just who did he think he was coming into her cabin and insulting her? “My cock holster?”
Grant’s lips twitched. He waggled his brows. “You expect me to believe you didn’t bag his pipe while you were having marriage relations?”
Carla was furious. Swinging her arm to the door, she screamed, “Out! Now! I’ve heard enough from you. You’re snapped and I refuse to sit here and be insulted. Why don’t you just go and drink another bottle dry!”
The crunching of pebbles and sticks under the weight of heavy boots drew Carla’s gaze to the doorway. Frank and Jock appeared there a moment later.
“Is there a problem in here?” Jock asked.
“Carla’s been a tad cantankerous. Nothin’ I can’t handle.” He turned to Carla and grinned. “Ain’t that right, Carla?”
“Argh!” she screamed outright and started to leave the cabin, but Frank caught her around the waist.
Frank winked. “Here now, kitten. Why are you running off so soon?”
A throaty sound left her lungs. She tried to wiggle free, but Frank held her still tighter.
His expression changed to one of pure male dominance. “Don’t.”
An unexplainable and arousing chill shot through her body. His dominance left her listless, relaxing in his arms.