“I thought you’d be gone longer.”
“I could have been anybody,” he roared.
“Like who?”
“Like...like...”
Hell, he couldn’t think of a single other person who might have barged in the way he just had, never guessing that he’d find a breathtaking sight like this one in a rude cabin in the Canadian wilds. He felt the front of his pants strain with his instant erection. Either she genuinely had no idea what effect she had on him, or she did know and was maliciously using it to slowly drive him crazy. Whichever, the result was the same.
Frustrated, he tore the pelt from his head and shook snow out of it. Gloves went flying. He tore at the tongs tying on his snowshoes. “Back to my original question, what the hell are you doing?”
“Taking my stitches out.”
The peg in the wall caught the coat he tossed in that general direction. “What?”
His stance—that know-it-all, arrogant, condescending, masculine stance—grated on her like a pumice stone. Not to mention his superior tone of voice. She looked him directly in the eye. “They’re itching. The wound has closed. It’s time they came out.”
“And you’re using a razor?”
“What do you suggest?”
He crossed the floor in three angry strides, pulling his hunting knife from its scabbard as he came. When he dropped to his knees in front of her, she recoiled and drew the blanket tightly around herself. “You can’t use that!”
His expression was forbearing as he unscrewed the handle of his knife and shook out several implements that Rusty hadn’t known until now were in there. Among them was a tiny pair of scissors. Instead of being pleased, she was furious: “If you had those all along, why did you cut my fingernails with that bowie knife?”
“I felt like it. Now, give me your leg.” He ex
tended his hand.
“I’ll do it.”
“Give me your leg.” He enunciated each word as he glared up at her from beneath his brows. “If you don’t, I’ll reach into that blanket and bring it out myself.” His voice dropped to a seductive pitch. “No telling what I might encounter before I find it.”
Mutinously she thrust her bare leg out from under the blanket. “Thank you,” he said sarcastically.
“Your mustache is dripping on me.”
The frost was beginning to melt. He wiped it dry on his shirt sleeve, but he didn’t release her bare foot. It looked small and pale in his large hand. Rusty loved the feeling, but she fought against enjoying it. She waged a war within when he tucked her heel into the notch of his thighs. She gasped over the firm, solid bulge that filled her arch.
He raised sardonic eyes up to hers. “What’s the matter?”
He was daring her to tell him. She would die before she even let him know she had noticed. “Nothing,” she said nonchalantly. “Your hands are cold, that’s all.”
The glint in his eyes told her that he knew she was lying. Grinning, he bent his head to his task. Clipping the silk threads presented no problems to either of them. Rusty was thinking that she could just as easily have done it herself. But when he picked up a small pair of tweezers and pinched the first clipped thread between them, she realized that the worst was yet to come.
“This won’t hurt, but it might sting a little,” he cautioned. He gave one swift tug to pull the stitch out. Reflexively Rusty’s foot made a braking motion against him.
“Ah, God,” he groaned. “Don’t do that.”
No, she wouldn’t. She definitely would not. She would keep her foot as still as stone from now on, even if he had to tear the stitches out with his teeth.
By the time the tweezers had picked the last thread out, tears of tension and anxiety had filled her eyes. He’d been as gentle as he could be, and Rusty was grateful, but it hadn’t been pleasant. She laid her hand on his shoulder. “Thanks, Cooper.”
He shrugged her hand off. “Get dressed. And hurry up with dinner,” he ordered with the graciousness of a caveman. “I’m starving.”
Soon after that, he started drinking.
Chapter Nine