Page 74 of A Land So Wide
He frowned. “I don’t recall doing anything to give you such an impression.”
“I told you mine, and you didn’t offer yours in return.”
“You never asked.” For the first time since they’d met, a full smile crossed his lips. It was wide and toothy and just a touch lopsided. “Well. Won’t you?”
Greer opened her mouth but laughed with disbelief, unable to form the words.
He stretched out his legs, warming his feet before the fire, clearly enjoying his moment of triumph.
“Oh, kind sir, won’t you tell me your name, please?” she tried, her tone sweet but long-suffering.
“Finn,” he said without preamble. “Noah Finn.”
“Noah,” Greer repeated, testing its feel.
“Finn,” he corrected. He inspected the meat, tapping at a leg. Unsatisfied, he returned the rabbit to the fire. “You know, you haven’t said what you’re doing so far out here. Inland. In the north,” he parroted, and the corners of his eyes crinkled.
“You’ve not asked,” she countered.
He laughed. “Greer Mackenzie, what in the Devil’s blazes are you doing out here, so far from the shores you call home?”
Her first impulse was to join his good humor, but the laugh caught in her throat with the sudden, horrible realization that she had absolutely not told him her last name or where she’d come from.
Greer stared at this stranger—and it didn’t matter that he’d finally shared his name, he was a stranger still—wondering how best to proceed. She was in the middle of the wilderness, alone with a man she knew nothing about. A man who somehow know more of her than he had any right to.
Even if Ellis somehow knew exactly where she was, somehow knew she needed help, he’d never come to her rescue in time should something sour with this stranger called Finn.
Greer was on her own.
“Running away from home.” She threw it out lightly, mischievously, as if she’d not noticed the disturbing intimacy he’d given away. “Isn’t that how all good fairy tales begin?”
He glanced about the trees and, again, she spotted that eye-shine. “Are we in a fairy tale now, do you think?”
She shrugged, though she felt as if she was picking her way across a treacherous spring river. One wrong step and the current could take hold, washing her to peril. “How long have you been out here?”
“Long enough.”
“It’s strange, I’ve never felt such solitude as I did today, but you were so close, exactly when I needed you.”
“Lucky thing.”
She nodded. “Perhaps there are more people in the forest than I first thought. Have you seen many on your travels?”
“Not many.”
“There was a young man heading north earlier, perhaps a day or two ago? Tall, auburn hair?”
Finn shrugged and took the skewers out. “Done, I think.”
“His name is Ellis? Ellis Beaufort?”
He made a helpless expression. “You hungry?”
Greer accepted a stick. “Thank you.”
They fell into silence, though Greer’s head was full of meat tearing, teeth sinking deep.
Finn tore through his allotment, barely bothering to chew the tender meat. He ripped the flesh from the bones with gusto, swallowing quickly before going after another bite.
