Two Alone

Suddenly he dropped to his knees in front of her and jerked her arms away. In the same motion, he whipped the lethal knife from its scabbard at his waist. Rusty squealed in fright when he clasped her left hand tightly and raised the glittering blade to it. He made a short, efficient job of paring her nails down even with the tops of her fingers. When he dropped that hand, she looked at it remorsefully.

“That looks awful.”

“Well, I’m the only one here to see them and I don’t give a damn. Give me your other hand.”

She complied. She had no choice. In an arm-wrestling match, she could hardly win against him. And now her breasts were fair game for his condemning gaze again. But when his eyes glanced up from the bizarre manicure he was giving her, they weren’t condemning. Nor were they cold with contempt. They were warm with masculine interest. A lot of interest. So much interest that Rusty’s stomach took another of those elevator rides that never quite took it to the top or the bottom but kept it bobbing up and down somewhere in between.

Cooper took his time trimming the nails on her right hand, as if they needed more care and attention than those on her left. His face was on a level with her chest. In spite of the awful things he’d said to her just moments ago, she wanted to run her fingers through his long, unruly hair.

As she watched his lips, set firmly in a scowl, she couldn’t help but remember how soft they could become in a kiss—how warm and damp—and how marvelous his mustache had felt. If it had felt that good against her upper lip, how good would it feel against other parts of her body? Her neck? Her ear? Her areola—while his lips tugged at her nipple with the gentle fervency of a baby hungry for milk?

He finished cutting her nails and sheathed his knife. But he didn’t release her hand. He held it, staring down at it, then laid it on her thigh, pressing it there with his own hand. Rusty thought her heart would explode from the pressure inside her chest.

He kept his head down, staring at the spot where his hand covered hers high on her thigh. His eyes looked closed from Rusty’s angle. The lashes were thick and crescent shaped. She noticed that they, like his mustache and eyebrows, were tipped with gold. In the summertime his hair would be naturally streaked, bleached from the sun.

“Rusty.”

He said her name. There was a slight creak in his voice, a groaning protest of the raw emotion behind his saying it. Rusty didn’t move, but her heart was beating so fast and wildly that it stirred the silk that wasn’t doing a very adequate job of covering her.

He removed his hand from hers and placed each of his on either side of the chair seat, bracketing her hips. His knuckles pressed into their flaring shape. He remained staring fixedly at her hand, which still lay on her thigh. He looked ready to lower his head and wearily rest his cheek against it, or to bend down and tenderly kiss it, or to nibble on the very fingers he’d just cut the nails from.

If he wanted to, Rusty wouldn’t stop him. She knew that positively. Her body was warm and moist and receptive to the idea. She was ready for whatever happened.

No, she wasn’t.

Because what happened was that Cooper came to his feet hastily. “You’d better get to bed.”

Rusty was stunned by his about-face. The mood had been shattered, the intimacy dispelled. She felt like arguing, but didn’t. What could she say? “Kiss me again, Cooper,” “Touch me”? That would only confirm his low opinion of her.

Feeling rejected, she gathered her belongings, including the pile of dirty clothes she’d left beside the tub, and walked around the curtain. Each of the two beds had been spread with sheets and blankets. A fur pelt had been left at the foot of each. At home her bed was covered in designer sheets and piled with downy pillows, but it had never looked more inviting than this one.

She put her things away and sat down on the bed. In the meantime, Cooper had made several trips outside with buckets of bathwater. When the water level was low enough, he dragged the tub to the door and out onto the porch, then tipped it over the edge and emptied the rest of it. He brought the tub back into the room, replaced it behind the curtain, and from the pump in the sink began filling the pots and kettles again.

“Are you going to take a bath, too?”

“Any objections?”

“No.”

“It’s been a while since I chopped firewood and my back is sore. Besides that, I think I’m beginning to stink.”

“I didn’t notice.”

He looked at her sharply, but when he could see that she was being honest, he came close to smiling. “You will now that you’re clean.”

The kettles had begun to boil. He lifted two of them off the stove and headed toward the tub.

“Do you want me to massage it?” Rusty asked guilelessly.

He stumbled, sloshed boiling water on his legs, and cursed. “What?”

“Massage it?” He gazed at her as though he’d been hit between the eyes with a two-by-four. “Your back.”

“Oh, uh...” His eyes moved over her. The tank top left her throat and shoulders bare, cloaked only with a mass of reddish-brown curls. “No—” he refused curtly “—I told you to go to sleep. We’ve got more work to do tomorrow.” He rudely returned to his task.

Not only was human courtesy impossible for him, he wouldn’t let anybody be nice to him. Well he could rot, for all she cared!

Rusty angrily thrust her feet between the chilly sheets and lay down, but she didn’t close her eyes. Instead she watched Cooper sit down on the edge of his bed and unlace his boots while he was waiting for more water to boil. He tossed his socks onto the pile of dirty clothing she had made and began unbuttoning his shirt. He was wearing only one today because he’d been working so hard outside. He pulled the tails of it from his jeans and took it off.