Page 7 of Time to Stirrup Love
“Dammit!” This time the expletive was a bit louder.
He let out a huff and reeled in the line. So much for some relaxing fishing. He waded out of the water and packed up his gear, making his way back to the inlet where he’d left Margaid.
She probably wasn’t in any trouble, but then again, who knows? It was better to err on the side of caution than to piss off the woman who had rented out his services for the next year. The contract with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Fisheries was too good to lose. It was going to set him up well, even if he was slightly worried about them putting a damper on his sportfishing business.
When he got back to the inlet, Margaid was nowhere to be found. When he left her, she said she’d be at the shoreline, only she wasn’t.
“Ugh. Will you let go!” She grunted.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. There were some monsters that lurked in the forests around Harmony Glen, but as far as he knew, none that would try to carry off a female.
My female, a little voice reminded him, but he ignored that thought.
Finn set his gear down and made his way up the river. Through the brush, he realized she’d tracked far up the stream, and then he found her stuck, her gear on the shore, but she was bent over and yanking on her leg.
It was almost comical the way she was pulling on her hip waders, but it also gave him the sweet vantage point of admiring her round posterior. And that primal urge he was trying so hard to suppress threatened to take over.
“Dr. Davis?” he asked. “Is there a problem?”
She stood upright and twisted to look at him, her face flushed with frustration and her glasses slightly askew, which she straightened. “I’m stuck. Clearly.”
The little sunny personality was gone and he tried not to smile. Magnus had been right. Fiery indeed, and he liked it.
“I see that.”
She bit her bottom lip. “I think my foot is caught under a branch or something. I can’t seem to budge it.”
“I see.”
“I would appreciate your help,” she finally said, a bit exasperated.
Finn waded out toward her. The water was deep and he wasn’t wearing hip waders and his rubber boots were filling with water. So he reached down and pulled them off, dumping out the water before tossing the boots on shore. His feet sank in the squishy river bed, the mud squelching between his toes.
“Aren’t you cold?” she asked.
“Nope.” Honestly, he didn’t even really need to wear the boots. He liked to wear them when he was fly-fishing because usually the stream was rocky, but here they were just a hindrance. “Cold doesn’t bother me.”
“Anyway,” she sang, and he just looked up at her. “Like the song? The cartoon ice queen. Cold doesn’t bother me anyway.”
“I don’t like cartoons.”
“Is there anything you do like?”
Finn rolled his eyes and then reached down to feel. Her hip waders were snagged on something.
“You’re definitely stuck.” He stood up and tried to suss out how he was going to get her out of this predicament.
“Okay. So, what’re my options?”
“Well, you need to undo those hip waders and climb out of them. Then I can yank it free. Where it’s caught, I can’t exactly grab it and pull it out with you still inside them.”
“The water is cold and it’s deep here,” she replied, unhooking one of the suspenders. She wasn’t exactly arguing with his suggestion, but he knew it would be really cold for her.
Glashtyns were used to cold water temperatures. Humans didn’t usually respond so well to it. And although summer was approaching, the spring melt hadn’t happened that long ago, and there were still some frosty nights.
“I can carry you to the shore.”
“Well, if I’m already soaking wet, there’s no point in carrying me to shore.”
