"It's good," I say, because not saying it would be a lie and I don't lie about small things.
"I know." She tips her face up to the sun, throat working as she swallows, turquoise sliding along her collarbone, and I look away because looking is dangerous and I learned a long time ago what dangerous costs.
A man my age has no business with a heat like this for a woman that young. A man with my history has no business with a heat like this for anybody.
I drink my coffee and stare at the marked pine and run the numbers on the seep so I've got something to do with my mind that isn't her.
"You always show up unannounced," I ask, "or am I special?"
"Oh, you're special." She grins, full this time, and it knocks something loose in my chest I thought I'd nailed shut years back. "Brand new, mysterious, broody as a thundercloud, won't tell anybody where you're from. The whole ranch is dying to know your deal. I drew the long straw."
"Long straw."
"I wanted to. They didn't make me." She shrugs, easy. "I like a puzzle."
"I'm not a puzzle."
"Everybody's a puzzle, Harrison."
My name in her mouth stops me cold. I never gave it to her. Gabe, then. Of course Gabe. She's probably read my file, knows more about me than I'd hand any stranger, and the wrongness of that should have me bristling.
It doesn't. That's the trouble.
I set the cup on the stump. "I've got eight more trees before dark."
"So get to it." She doesn't move. "I'll just watch. Make sure you don't kill the cows."
"You're gonna sit there all day."
"I'm gonna sit here till I'm satisfied you know this land good as you know your saw." She settles deeper against the stump, hat low, ankles crossed, looking for all the world like she's planted. "Could be an hour. Could be a week. Faster you stop fighting me, faster I'm gone."
There it is. The thing I should want. A timeline to her leaving.
I pick up the saw and don't examine why the word week didn't land on me the way it should have.
"Fine," I tell her. "Stay clear of the fall lines. You get hurt out here, it's my hide."
"Aw." Hand to her chest, mocking. "He cares."
"I care about Gabe not firing me eleven days in."
"Sure." That corner-of-the-mouth smile again. "That's it."
I yank the cord. The saw roars to life between us, loud enough to drown her out, loud enough to drown most things, and I turn to the pine and reposition my face cut to drop it north, away from the seep, away from the water, the way she told me without telling me.
She sees it. I feel her see it even with my back turned. I don't look to check.
But I move to the next mark slower than I need to. And when I glance up between cuts, just once, just to gauge the wind, she's still there. Boots crossed. Coffee in hand. Watching me work with a patience that's got nothing to prove and everywhere to be except gone.
The mare shifts. A jay calls. The sun climbs over the ridge and lights the whole clearing gold, and for the first time in eleven days, the quiet I came out here to find has somebody standing in the middle of it.
I tell myself I want her gone.
The saw bites wood. The lie sits heavy in my chest, right next to the warm spot where her fingers touched mine.
Eleven days of nobody. And now this.
I should send her down the mountain.
