Page 7 of Guarded By the Mountain Man

“You really can cook. And are you sure about the job?” he asks, mopping his plate, “I'll drive you down for your shift. Roads'll be dark at half five.”

“I’m sure. I need to start earning my keep. But you don't have to get up at five for me.”

“I'm up at five anyway. And you’ll need this to keep in touch with Nora, it’s an old phone.”

“Thanks, are you sure?”

“No problem.”

After the dishes are done, he takes me out to the porch with a hatchet and a round of dry fir, because I asked at dinner how he makes the kindling so thin. The air is cool out here as Holt sets the round on the block and hands me the hatchet handle-first.

“It's a wrist motion, not a shoulder one. Nothing too fierce.”

My first swing bounces, while the second one sticks. He steps in behind me and adjusts my grip with two fingers, his big fingers warm over mine. He tips the angle of the blade, and his voice rumbles low behind me.

“You got it… let the tool do it.”

My third swing drops a thin, clean curl of kindling off the round and I laugh out loud. Holt makes a sound behind me which could be a laugh or a cough, I have no idea. I’m taking it as a compliment.

I split kindling until my wrist aches and I’ve made a small pile of it.

“My father would have a fit… his daughter, doing yard work.”

“What would your father rather you be doing?”

“Looking decorative and making small talk.” I say it lightly, even though the memory twists inside me. “Kind of like one of those ornaments that you wind up and they play an annoying, tinkly tune.”

Holt is quiet while he splits the rest of the round himself.

He shakes his head. “Would’ve been a waste of a great baker.”

We take the kindling in and he builds the fire. I sit on the couch with Six's head on my knee, watching Holt's hands stack the splits into a little cabin shape over the tinder. He has a long white scar across two knuckles. He strikes the match and the fire takes, and as the light moves on his face, I suck my breath in. He’s so handsome, but it’s more than that. I could watch his face forever and not get bored.

“How old are you, Holt?”

His shoulders tense. “Thirty-nine.”

“I'm twenty-four.”

He closes the stove door harder than it needs. “Yep.”

“And?”

“There’s not much more to say, Juliette.” He stands and puts the matches on the shelf, squaring the box up with the edge. “You know, when you were in high school, I was working my third protection contract? We’re different generations.”

“So?”

“It's fifteen years.”

“I can do math, you know. Despite my young years.” I stand up too, because I'm not having this conversation with him looming over me, even if standing still leaves me with a height difference of a foot. “What are you trying to say?”

He turns around and the firelight catches his eyes, making them look almost silver.

“You're only thirty-six hours from a wedding you ran from. The first door you knocked on happened to be mine. In a year you'll be somewhere better, wondering what you were thinking, telling stories of some weird old guy on a mountain you had a strange week with.”

The fire pops; Six lifts his head. He looks at us both, sighs heavily, and puts it back down.

Anger builds inside me, bubbling up until I can’t stop it. “You know what you’re doing, Holt? Deciding things for me, without asking what I think. I ran to get away from that…”