“So the no bread thing isn’t about avoiding carbs like those bullshit diets?”
I smiled a bit at that. “Your brain needs carbs to work right. I just prefer to eat them shamefully. Mac & cheese or pasta,” I clarified. “I’d rather have that than bread with my lunch.”
“Fair enough,” he agreed, eating steadily.
“Do you have any ideas on how I might make coffee without electricity?” I asked, sounding about as hopeless as I thought the matter was.
“Got a coffee machine right there,” he said, sounding confused. My lack of understanding must have been on my face because he shook his head at me much the way a teacher might to a student who asked a really ridiculous, common sense question. “Prepare the pot like you’d normally do, but instead of adding cold water, pour boiled water over it. Though, that’s a good reminder. Gotta get a French Press up in this place for the future.”
“And maybe some solar panels,” I suggested. “I mean, this isn’t so bad,” I admitted. “You kind of get used to, ah, what’s the term…”
“Roughing it,” he supplied easily.
“Yeah.”
“If you, Big City, can adjust, just about anyone can, I imagine.”
“You make me sound so materialistic,” I said, not caring that I was showing that his opinion of me was affecting me. I didn’t like showing that kind of vulnerability. But here in the woods under a foot of snow with no modern comforts to distract us, I somehow felt comfortable doing something that – in my old life – I never could have.
“You had a lot of comforts in your life, duchess. Wasn’t being insulting.”
“But you were,” I objected. Confrontation – outside of work – was never a strong suit of mine, but I somehow felt like this was important. Why? I couldn’t tell you. But that was the feeling regardless of the motivation behind it. “You’ve made a lot of comments that imply I am spoiled.”
“Because that’s how you project yourself, Miss Blythe-Meuller.”
“I never told anyone to call me that.”
“You never corrected us either.”
“It was a business interaction. Most people speak that way. With formalities.”
“Well, drop them,” he suggested, as though it was that easy. I had worked hard at this, cultivating myself, improving myself, being someone worthy of doing business with, investing in, being obeyed by employees. You had to project a certain image to be able to pull that off.
And, after a while, you become that person.
I became that person.
Happily, I might add.
Because then no one could see the girl I used to be. The girl in a twenty-year-old double-wide with an alcoholic mom who took her anger out on me and a father who popped in only to insult me, screw my mother, steal from us, and be off again.
“It’s not that easy.”
“You’re gonna have to try, duchess,” he told me, standing, moving to put his dish in the half-full of water and soap sink. “I’ll bring in some more wood and water, but I want to get back to it while the sun is still out.”
With that, he did.
I cleaned, drew, tried not to obsess, then set to work on dinner.
A chicken and rice stew.
It stole all the rice, but I figured we would get by without that for another couple days if we had to.
The odd closeness we had shared the majority of the day was gone as Gunner came back in, tired, grumpy, hungry. He ate, making no comment about the fact that I ate my food this time as well. Then he went into the bathroom, where I could hear him cursing as he scrubbed with too-cold water.
Coming back out, he had changed into soft black heavy sweatpants and a long-sleeve gray tee.
“Wanna hit the sack early?” he asked as the cabin got darker.
Seeing as there was nothing to do at night anyway without technology, I agreed, got myself ready for bed, then met him back in the living room where he had made the couch – and not the cot. The realization that he still wanted to sleep together – in the PC version of the word – sent an odd thrill through me.
“The fire should last a bit longer,” he told me, turning away from where he had carefully stacked a bunch of logs before moving onto the couch. “You coming?”
Even with his somewhat surly attitude, yes, yes I was.
And as he yanked me back on his chest, mumbling something about how I would wind up there anyway, then pulled the blankets over us, I had the oddest thought.
This feels so right.
SIX
Gunner
“This is cozy.”
The low, rumbling, deep voice woke me up in a goddamn blink, my hand already reaching for the gun I had put on the floor beside me.
“If I were Cortez, you’d be dead already,” the voice added, and my brain was clearing of the fog of sleep enough to recognize it.