Two Alone

Her chin went up a notch. “I don’t remember asking for one.”

“You didn’t have to. If we... If I... With just the two of us here, for God knows how long, that’s what it would amount to. We’re already dependent on each other for everything else. We don’t need to make the situation any more complicated than it already is.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” she said breezily. She had never taken rejection very well, but neither had she ever let her hurt feelings show. “I lost my head last night. I was frightened. More exhausted than I realized. You were there, you did the humane thing and rendered comfort. As a result, things got out of hand. That’s all there was to it.”

The lines running down either side of his mouth pulled in tighter. “Exactly. If we’d met anywhere else, we wouldn’t have looked at each other twice.”

“Hardly,” she said, forcing a laugh. “You wouldn’t exactly fit in with my cosmopolitan crowd. You’d stick out like a sore thumb.”

“And you in your fancy clothes would be laughed off my mountain.”

“So, fine,” she said testily.

“Fine.”

“It’s settled.”

“Right.”

“We’ve got no problem.”

One might wonder, then, why they were facing each other like pugilists squaring off. The air was redolent with animosity. They’d reached an agreement. They’d figuratively signed a peace treaty. But by all appearances they were still at war.

Cooper was the first to turn away and he did so with an angry jerk of his shoulders. He pulled on his coat and picked up his rifle. “I’m going to see what the stream has to offer in the way of fish.”

“Are you planning to shoot them?” She nodded at his rifle.

He frowned at her sarcasm. “I rigged up a trotline while you were languishing in bed this morning.” He didn’t give her time to offer a rebuttal before he added, “I also started a fire under that caldron outside. Do the laundry.”

Rusty followed his gaze down to the tall pile of dirty clothes and looked at it with unconcealed astonishment. When she turned back to him, the spot he’d been standing in was empty. She hurried to the door as quickly as her limp would allow.

“I was going to do the laundry without you telling me to,” she shouted at his retreating back. If he heard her, he gave no indication of it.

Cursing, Rusty slammed the door shut. She cleared the table. It took her almost half an hour to scrub clean the pot she’d cooked the oatmeal in. Next time she would remember to pour hot water in it as soon as she’d spooned the oatmeal out.

She then attacked their pile of dirty clothes with a vengeance. By the time he came back, she wanted to be finished with the chore she’d been summarily assigned. It was mandatory that

she prove to him that last night’s breakdown was a fluke.

After putting on her coat, she carried the first load of clothes outside and dropped it into the caldron. Previously, she had thought that such black iron pots suspended over smoldering coals existed only in movies. She used a smooth stick to swish the clothes around. When they were as clean as she thought they’d get, she lifted them out of the water with the stick and tossed them into a basket that Cooper had washed out the day before.

By the time she’d finished washing all the clothes using this archaic method, her arms were rubbery with fatigue. And by the time she had wrung them out and hung them up to dry on the wire that stretched from the corner of the house to the nearest tree, her arms felt as if they were about to fall off. Not only that, her wet hands were nearly frozen, as was her nose, which dripped constantly. Her leg, too, had begun to ache again.

A rewarding sense of accomplishment helped relieve some of her miseries. She took comfort in the thought of having done her job well. Once again inside the cabin, she warmed her hands by the fire. When circulation returned to them, she tugged off her boots and wearily climbed onto her bed. If anyone deserved a nap before dinner, it was she.

Apparently she’d been in a much deeper sleep than she had planned on. When Cooper came barging through the door shouting her name, she sprang up so suddenly that her head reeled dizzily and yellow dots exploded in front of her eyes.

“Rusty!” he shouted. “Rusty, did you— Dammit, what are you doing in bed?” His coat was open, his hair wild.

His cheeks were ruddy. He was breathing hard, as though he’d been running.

“What am I doing in bed?” she asked around a huge yawn. “I was sleeping.”

“Sleeping! Sleeping! Didn’t you hear the plane?”

“Plane?”

“Stop repeating every damn word I say! Where’s the flare gun?”