Page 14 of Something Has To Give

She took the pan back to the kitchen.

“Well, that’s all right,” he called after her. “I can make more. My woodworking tools are all stacked up neatly in the tool shed.”

“Used to be, you mean,” she said, coming back to the table and sitting down.

He stopped with his second mouth-watering bite of hash halfway to his lips. “Used to be?”

“The red shed.” Her eyes rose to his, and for the first time, her mouth curled up in the most evil of smiles. “It’s a goat shed now.”

“You turned my tool shed into a goat shed?” Quint stared at her, that little smile of hers stabbing in through all parts of him. The lust was mind-boggling, but there was aggravation hot on the heels of it, sizzling down his spine and out through his limbs the way the hash had sizzled in the hot pan. The buzzing, tingling effects of it were impossible to hold still for, and he couldn’t help it. He laughed, shifting and re-shifting in his seat. He honestly did not know whether he wanted to grab and shake the hell out of her, or kiss her good and senseless. And maybe spank her a couple hundred times because, damn, those were histools!

Shaking his head, he laughed again.

“I’ll give them back to you,” she said, taking another bite. The look on her face was one of slow-savoring satisfaction, and he didn’t for a second think it had anything to do with the food.

He snorted. “Sure you will.” He stabbed a bite of potato and stuffed it into his mouth, laughing, shaking his head, squirming and chewing all at the same time. What was wrong with him that he should want to kiss her over this? There were literally thousands—thousands—of dollars’ worth of tools in that shed and he was absolutely beside himself with the need to teach that sassy, smirking little mouth of hers a lesson. What in a kiss was going to teach her anything? And damn, but she could cook. This was really, really good.

“I will. I have no use for them. I’ll be happy to give them back to you.” She took another bite. “For a price.”

That very effectively killed his desire to laugh. Kissing her was still on the table, maybe; shaking her, definitely—but at least he wasn’t laughing. “I’m not leaving,” he said gruffly. “You leave. What could possibly be keeping you here?”

“What’s keeping you here?” she returned.

“Everything. This house has been in my family from the day we homesteaded it. My grandfather was born in this house. So was my father, and so was I. We have farmed it, ranched it, and hunted it. Anyone driving down the highway might think this place nothing more than dust and sagebrush, but the day I relinquish my ownership will be the day they cart me out of here in a pine box. And that’s a fact.” He stabbed another bite of potato and stuffed it into his mouth, chewing viciously. Funny, how being angry made it taste not as good as it had a moment ago.

“You have money,” she said, no longer smiling now either. A hint of desperation had leaked into both her face and tone as she leaned toward him. “You have credit cards and a truck. You could go anywhere you wanted to. You don’t have to stay here!”

“I’m not leaving,” he bit out. When he picked up his beer and popped the top, her shoulders sagged. When he bent over his plate and stubbornly returned to eating, she fell back in her seat for a moment and just watched him. The hash tasted like the dust in his yard now, but he ate on anyway and he didn’t look at her again. Not even when she picked up her plate and took it into the kitchen.

She ate her meal silently over the sink, with the only sound from that point on being the scrape of silverware on his grandmother’s old brown stoneware plates and the occasional sniffle that may or may not have been her crying. He didn’t venture into the kitchen to check. He just left the table.

With the hash sitting in the pit of his stomach like an indigestible lump, he went outside to watch the snow fall and smoke his first after-dinner pipe since he’d been home. On every indrawn puff, he tried to tell himself he didn’t care if she was crying or not. On every smoky exhale, he failed miserably.

* * * * *

Like every other night since he’d been back, Quint adjourned himself to the master bedroom, took up his position on his favorite side of the battlefield, shucked down to his underwear and lay down in the dark with his eyes closed. Unfortunately, tonight sleep wasn’t quick in coming.

Although normally right on his heels at bedtime ready to fight for her half of the mattress, tonight Elsie stayed downstairs for a long time. He could hear her puttering around in the kitchen, the clatter of dishes, the soft bump of shutting cupboards, continuing on for hours longer than it should have taken anyone to clean up after such a small meal.

He wondered if she were still crying.

No, he didn’t. She was the interloper. He couldn’t care less if she was crying. In fact, she should cry. The more miserable she was, the sooner she’d leave.

He punched his pillow twice and tried to find some measure of comfort in what was fast becoming a truly uncomfortable situation. And he couldn’t figure out why he gave a damn. He was the wronged party, here. Why should he give a damn if she was miserable? Shouldn’t that be his goal? Why was he so conflicted?

The bedroom door opened, briefly flooding everything in pale hallway light before she clicked it off. Once again, the room was plunged into darkness, albeit not as dark as most nights. The moon was out and a silver glow reflected off the snow to brighten everything. Lying on his side with his back to her, Quint folded his arms across his chest. He didn’t say anything, but then, neither did she.

Softly closing the door, she sealed them into the tomb-like silence of the bedroom. The smothering quiet only seemed to amplify the whispered rustle of her discarding clothes. He didn’t need to face her to know what was happening. He could hear each piece as she stripped down and his imagination was more than capable of filling in the blanks. He could hear the folds of white cotton as she pulled her shirt up over her head and the rain of her long hair falling back down onto her bare shoulders. He heard the practically inaudible clip of her bra being removed. His mouth watered at the thought of those perfect breasts being revealed; he almost groaned when he heard the flow of her thigh-length nightshirt being donned to cover them again. He wasn’t facing her, but he could well imagine what she looked like with every soft curve illuminated in snowy moonlight as she got ready for bed. Already his cock was stirring, rising, taking notice.

Down, boy. Please, dear God, stay down.

The click of a zipper scaling down its teeth doomed all his efforts to pretend there was no beautiful, maddening, and entirely too-kissable woman getting naked just behind him.

“It’s snowing again,” she said softly, sitting down on the edge of the bed to remove her shoes, socks and jeans. She left them in a kicked off little pile on the floor, right where he’d no-doubt trip over them first thing tomorrow morning. He tried to be irritated about that, but his mind stubbornly locked on the indisputable realization that for her pants to be on the floor they would first have to not be on her, and after that, all he could see in his mind’s eye was the white cotton gusset of panties lying like a second skin over the curves and folds between her naked thighs.

“Good for the snow,” he replied, trying to sound every bit as disinterested as he definitely was not.

Her heated glare burned in between his shoulder blades an instant before the mattress jostled. She threw herself down beside him and he knew when she was fully prone, not because her heel kicked the back of his calf (which it did), but because she once more yanked the pillow right out from under his head and then, with a mighty jerk, ripped both sheet and blankets off the top of him. She had herself thoroughly swaddled before he could do more than growl a sigh.

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