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He turned on her, a can in one hand. “This,” he said. “Where in blazes is all this food going?”
She raised an eyebrow at him and peered into the can. “Got me. You’re the cook.”
“You dang right, I am, and I can tell you right now, I know what I’m cooking and how much food should be left over so where’s it all going?”
He started going through the bins and bags stored in the supply wagon, counting while still mumbling to himself.
Alex shook her head and left him to his counting, searching out a flat stretch of ground to put the fire pit. Finding a suitable spot, she scooped the grass away with her booted hill before searching out a few rocks to keep the fire from spreading. She was setting the metal cooking grates down when Jesse joined them.
“Once the others have all had their bath, I’ll stand guard while you wash the dirt off of you.”
Alex straightened. “Stand guard?”
“Unless you want me to join you.”
He grinned, his eyes shining with humor. She bit the inside of her jaw to keep from returning it.
The last two days had been a test of wills. When she told him to find somewhere else to sleep, he’d made a great production of coming to bed, under the wagon with her.
She put her saddlebags between them to keep him on his own bedroll, he’d kicked them out from under the wagon and slid in so close his breath tickled the back of her neck.
Every time she demanded some sort of boundary between them, he’d push twice as hard and remind her, and everyone within hearing distance, that she was his wife.
As hard as he tried to stay close, he’d not tried to touch her intimately again. She’d waited under that old wagon when they went to bed for him to try something but he just scooted in close and was snoring within minutes.
For reasons she didn’t want to think about, she felt downright insulted by it. If he wanted her so badly, why hadn’t he tried harder to steal more kisses or take things to forbidden places?
“You’re impossible,” she said, his grinning face a constant reminder of how large a pain in the rear he was. “I don’t know why you keep hanging around when you know I don’t want you around me.”
“Maybe because deep down I know you’re madly in love with me.”
Her pulse leaped. “Is that so?”
“Yep.”
She laughed. “You’re crazy.”
“Crazy about you.”
Her laughter died, her pulse doing a funny little dance under her skin as she straightened and looked at him. The look on his face grew intense.
“Have you ever asked yourself why I picked so many fights with you, Alex?”
She hadn’t. In all the years they fought she never once stopped to ask herself why he insisted on picking on her. She just assumed he disliked her so much he couldn’t help himself. She shook her head. “No. Why?”
He stepped around the fire pit and lifted his hand, pulling a piece of grass from her hair. “Because, Alexandra, picking a fight was the only way I could get you to acknowledge the fact I was there.”
“I always knew you were there.”
“Maybe, but without me pulling your hair or shoving a toad down the back of your shirt, you never said a word to me.”
Someone yelled his name and he broke eye contact and looked away. She watched his face as he spoke to one of the cowboys, his words whispering through her mind again.
For reason’s she didn’t want to examine, her chest tightened and the back of her eyes burned. She left him there and hurried to the other side of the camp, putting as much distance between them as she could.
She blinked gathering tears away as she reached the horses and found a brush, not even looking to see which horse was in front of her, but started brushing him down blindly.
Her entire childhood played back in her mind’s eye, all those days Jesse tortured her in some way coming to the front, the numerous days they’d rolled across the ground while she tried to clobber him to the point he’d leave her alone.
