I threw a quilt over Cooper and another two logs onto the fire. I sank to the couch and wondered what exactly you did in a situation like this. I was overwhelmed with the compulsion to boil water. For what I had no idea, but in the movies, when someone is injured in the wilderness, they’re always boiling water.
I tilted my head, watching the firelight play on Cooper’s skin. I don’t think I’d ever really grasped how huge he was—long, rangy arms and well-muscled legs that stretched well beyond the limits of the blanket. His feet were long, narrow, and highly arched; the pads were dirty and covered with shallow, healing scrapes.
In all of the injury hubbub, I hadn’t had the acuity to look at his . . . lower forty-eight. How wrong would it be for me to lift the quilt? I mean, technically, he did owe me his life. And if he had an incredibly small penis, it might explain why he was such an ass all the time. Watching his face, I lifted the blanket and snuck a peek.
Wow.
“There goes that theory,” I muttered.
Cooper shivered and stirred as the cooler air seeped under the blanket. He whimpered, curling his body protectively around his leg. Blushing, I tucked the quilt around his body.
If I were smart, I would call Evie or even Alan right now. But something about this Cooper, the vulnerable, honest Cooper, made me want to protect him. Or at least find out what the hell he was doing. There had to be a compelling reason for him to be running around outside my house naked with a bear trap on his leg. Even with the odd assortment of characters I’d met in Grundy, even when you factored in the werewolf issue, that was the sort of thing that merited attention.
I coiled in the corner of my couch and pulled the quilt up to my chin. I closed my eyes, enjoying the way the lights danced behind my eyelids. I dreamed of running. I was racing through the woods. My feet were bare, slapping against the blanket of pine needles on the ground. A living canopy laced over my head as my legs stretched in front of me. I expected the leaves, the low-hanging pine branches, to slap and sting, but they were caressing fingers, welcoming me to come deeper into the forest. I wasn’t afraid. There was something waiting for me deep within the dense gathering of trees. Something I needed.>“Shh!” I cried, pressing my hand to her mouth before anyone at the counter overheard. Susie snickered against my fingers. My full name has been a thorn in my side since the day I started public school. The stunned gasp following my announcement at my high school graduation stalled the ceremony for a full three minutes.
Sure, I could legally change it, but my parents effectively kept me “off the grid” until my late teens. I’d barely gotten my social security number in time to apply for college. The idea of erasing what little personal history I had because my parents were unapologetic hippies was just irritating. So I carefully guarded all personal information and forms and suffered through. I really didn’t want to do that in Grundy.
“Sorry,” I said, snatching my hand away from her face.
“Oh, I think it’s a lovely name,” Susie said, teasing. “Very unique.”
“What do you want?” I asked, my eyes narrowed. “How do I buy your silence?”
“A dozen of those chocolate chess squares ought to do it,” she said, nodding at the glass-domed dish.
I wrapped them carefully. “On the house,” I told her. And by the house, I meant me.
“Pleasure doing business with you, Moon—”
“Shh-shh!” I spluttered, making a “zip it” motion with my hands.
Susie snickered and hopped off her stool. “You can pick up your package anytime before three.”
“What was that all about?” Evie asked as I gave a departing Susie the stink eye.
“Nothing,” I grumbled.
There was only one person who would address a package to me using my full name. My mother.
I left the package sitting at the post office for three days while I stewed and did some compulsive baking. I finally picked it up out of morbid curiosity and a desire to keep Susie from claiming the package was abandoned, opening it, and finding whatever humiliating thing my mother had sent.
“Are you going to open it?” Susie asked, her curiosity evident as she helped me heft the box to my truck.
“When I get home,” I said. “Did you enjoy the chess squares?”
“I took the lot of them down to the Cut and Curl,” she said, grinning. “They were a big hit. Gertie Gogan asked what I’d done to merit a full dozen, and I told her I was just helping out a friend.” Susie looked mildly embarrassed now. “Of course, some of the ladies down at the beauty shop hadn’t been into the Glacier since you and Evie made all those changes. They hadn’t heard of you yet. So Gertie and I told them all about you, about you being a transfer and all . . . and then somehow, yourfullnameslippedout.”
Honestly, first Kara’s mom spills her guts, and now Susie. Didn’t I know any discreet people?
I shrieked. “Susie! I thought we had a deal!”
“It just happened!” she squealed. “It was all that chocolate. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“Well, you are cut off. No chess-square privileges for a month.”
“But Mo!”
“A month!” I repeated, climbing into my truck. I rolled down my window. “I’ll sell you the lemon bars, but that’s it!”