Blackwolf's Redemption

And stopped in the doorway. She hadn’t really looked at the room before, when she’d fled here. Now she saw that it was huge, easily as big as her Brooklyn apartment.

Except, her place overflowed with, well, with just plain stuff.

Jesse’s dressing room was so close to empty, it was Spartan.

Shelves and cubbies lined the walls, but most of them were empty. Only a couple of narrow sections contained clothes. A couple of wool sport jackets hung from a rack; jeans, sweaters, T-shirts, sweats—tops and bottoms—were all neatly folded and neatly aligned on the shelves. Boxer shorts and socks were alongside.

At the far end of the room, in lonely splendor, a military uniform hung suspended from a hanger on a rod. A pair of boots, polished to a gleaming luster, stood directly beneath.

Sienna set the lantern on an empty shelf. Was her reluctant host a soldier? It was none of her business. Still, she crossed the room for a closer look.

Her breath caught.

The jacket bristled with medals and ribbons. She had no idea what any of them were; she didn’t even know what branch of service the uniform represented, but whatever it was, Jesse must have served it well.

She couldn’t imagine him as a soldier. He was too independent to take orders from anyone. He was good at giving orders, though….

She jumped as a fist banged against the still-shut outer door.

“Hurry it up,” Jesse barked.

Sienna almost laughed. “Yessir,” she said, and gave the all-but-empty room a brisk salute.

The kitchen was easy to find.

The lantern provided plenty of light and all she had to do was follow the smell of…

“Chicken noodle soup?”

Jesse turned as she entered the candlelit room. He’d put on a long-sleeved chambray shirt, the sleeves rolled back on his tanned, muscled forearms. He was wearing a fresh pair of jeans and his hair was drawn back from his face and secured with a length of rawhide. He stood at a marble counter over a pot bubbling away on the burner of a camping stove, a wooden spoon in his hand, a noncommittal expression on his face, and gave her a long look.

“I see you found something to wear.”

Sienna glanced down at herself. She was wearing heavy gray cotton sweats—classic, basic gymwear. There’d been half a dozen pair in the dressing room, varying only as to color. Jesse was apparently not given to anything that defeated the utilitarian purpose of sweats, or to silly designer logos.

She couldn’t imagine he ever would be.

“Yes.” She decided to test the waters, offer a small flag of truce by giving him a hesitant smile. “I took your advice about layering. I have on two of your T-shirts. And—” she raised one foot “—two pairs of socks.”

“Good.” He swung back to the stove. “You can put the lantern over there.”

“Okay.” He heard the soft scuff of her sock-clad feet as she made her way across the Mexican-tile floor. “The soup smells wonderful.”

“I opened two cans. There’s plenty of it.”

“Good. Anything I can do?”

Yeah, he thought. There was.

She could stop looking so beautiful.

He had to be really desperate, he thought coldly, finding Sienna Cummings beautiful. Not that there was anything wrong with her looks; it was just that he didn’t go for her type. Independent women, questioning women, ones who thought they were on an equal footing with men…

Not that he liked his women stupid.

He just liked them to know when to defer to a man.

He wasn’t into this women’s lib nonsense that had taken the country by storm.

Linda hadn’t been into it, either. She’d known how to make a man feel good. She’d looked up to him, let him know he was in charge….

Until he suddenly hadn’t been.

I need a man who knows how to be a man, Jesse, she’d said, and how could he fault her for that? A woman didn’t want a man in her bed who woke up soaked to the skin from nightmares that kept threatening to pull him under, who had no clue as to what he wanted to do with his life, who had believed with all his being in things that no longer made sense….

“…must be something I can do,” Sienna said, and he blinked and focused his eyes on her.

“What?”

“I said, you did the cooking. I’d like to do something. Set the table, maybe?”

“I opened a can,” he said gruffly.

“Two.”

She smiled. It was impossible not to smile back.

“Yeah. Okay.” He jerked his head toward one of the birch cupboards. “How about setting the counter? The bowls are in there. Silverware’s in that drawer, bread’s in that cabinet. You want butter, there’s some in the fridge. Just don’t keep the door open longer than you have to.”