Page 57 of The Widow and the Wanted

Outside, the wind combs along the cabin wall. The sound gives me something to attend to besides her eyes. I cannot tell her that Boone and I spend our evenings whispering about her, trading stories from the day, each retelling a study in how a brilliant mind can live inside a pocket-sized creature who is equal parts goddess and tyrant, so I only say, “Nor I you.”

There is the fire between us. The table. Several feet of worn wood floor. Yet this feels too close. Too intimate.

Boone is scarcely beyond the yard, and there is work enough outside to occupy me until dark. Instead I remain where I am, coat in hand, behaving like a man who has forgotten himself.

Lula crosses to the table. The movement cuts the space between us in half and somehow takes the air with it.

“I am afraid I made a poor beginning with you,” she says.

In a white-out. Surrounded by death.

“It was not an ideal beginning, no,” I say, and scratch at my brow for lack of anything better to do.

Her mouth tightens, though she does not look away. I ought to leave it there.

“And I might have been kinder,” I add. The words are out before I can stop them. They surprise me enough that I continue. “More welcoming.”

Welcoming?

“Or,” I amend quickly, “perhaps I made you feel like a burden.”

Worse.

“Not a burden. Only, perhaps I was somewhat adversarial. Most men are, out here. At first.” I scratch at my brow again, though it offers no assistance. “I regret the circumstances of our first meeting.”

Stop talking.

Her eyes lift to mine. “I wonder,” she says, “how a woman might make the acquaintance of hired guns under better circumstances?”

The question is absurd enough that I laugh.

It is a mistake. Her expression warms at the sound, and I feel the room close in another inch.

“We don’t often meet women under better circumstances. If we’re making a woman’s acquaintance, it generally means someone has put a price on her head.”

That earns me the barest lift of her brow.

“And if she wished the meeting to stay pleasant,” I add, “she’d need to offer the bounty.”

She sets the cup down. “So it is not morality that governs you. Only money.”

“I am sure you know the store does not take morality in exchange for bread.”

She pours coffee into her cup. “And if I couldn’t pay you. What then?”

The question sends blood rushing straight to my cock.

“Depends if you came quietly.”

Her lip curves. “I wouldn’t.”

“Then we’d find a way.”

Silence thickens. Her gaze moves over my chest, my gun belt, my hands. Then she asks, soft as sin, “And who decides that?”

“I do.”

The way she looks at me then—steady, unafraid, curious—nearly breaks me. Her gaze drops to my hand where it still grips my coat, then rises again.