Page 25 of Kindling
“There are other ways to take the pressure off,” he said finally, voice raspy as gravel scraping under heavy boots.
Her thoughts immediately descended into chaos. Images of his lips on hers, hands all over her, raised goosebumps on her skin, and she gulped as her breath came out jagged. “What…” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her tight throat quickly. “What do you mean?”
His eyes dipped to her lips. They only lingered a moment, but she felt them there like hot coals.
Quickly, he tore away from her, standing up and finding a slab of wood on his workbench to sand down. “Have you ever been wild swimming?”
She shook her head, then realised he couldn’t see her with his back turned. “No, but it sounds like a quick way of catching some exotic infection. I’ve watched too muchGrey’s Anatomyto like the sound of that. If a worm crawled into my hoo-ha and made a home in my digestive tract, I’m not sure I’d ever recover.”
He snorted, turning back around and perching on the bench to face her. “Do you always jump to the absolute worst-case scenario?”
“Yes. It keeps me safe,” she replied bluntly. “And parasite-free.”
He pursed his lips. “I know something about that. The safety thing. Not the parasite. The good news is our loch is probably cleaner than your public pool.People have been swimming in Teàrlag longer than either of us have been alive.”
“Wouldn’t it be freezing this time of year?”
He grinned wickedly, making Harper’s pulse stutter a new rhythm. “It’s not for the faint of heart. Depends if you’re daring enough.”
“I knew it. You really are trying to kill me. You just want to make it look like an accident.” She shuddered at the thought of dipping into icy, open water teeming with god only knew what. Bacteria and rotten fish and duck poo. The boat trip was daring enough for her.
But Fraser chuckled. “I’m just saying, when I want to sort my head out, the loch does the trick. It’s like a natural reset button for the body.”
That gave her pause for thought.I need a reset button for my entire life, she thought. “I will tentatively put it at number seven on the list.” She scribbled it down with ten more question marks and then, in brackets: “(probably not)”.
“Well, I shall leave you to your wood,” she decided, closing her notebook firmly. “Choppingyour wood,” she hurried to clarify as he lifted his brows. “As you are a woodchopper. Cutter. Your tree wood, I mean.”
She shook her head, shrinking as she backed into the bedroom. Nobody in all of history had ever been as terrible at talking to people as her.
But Fraser seemed to like it nonetheless, the sound of his laughter following her through the walls.
The cabin was quiet when Harper returned that afternoon, and she hated the disappointment that welled inside her at the fact. She’d wanted to tell Fraser that she’d Done the Thing, crossed off the first item from her slowly growing list – and all by herself, no less. She never used to book things alone, always asking if Kenzie or Mum would fancy accompanying her. If the answer was no, she would cancel.
The boat trip itself had been fairly boring, mind. The loch was beautiful, no question, but the woods looked the same no matter which side of the water they were facing and she’d been the only passenger. The old silver-haired captain had offered her a sixty-minute lecture on the many different species of trees they could see. She’d waved at Cam on her way past the café, then popped in for lunch after escaping Angus’s monologue. Now she was back and lost once again. More so because the person she was quickly growing accustomed to bouncing her ideas off wasn’t here.
Or maybe he was.
The sound of banging and clattering emerged not from the cabin, but from the shed around the back. The shed that was off-limits because, apparently, the dozens of saws and axes visible from here weren’t enough tools and he still had more to store.
Harper hesitated. She shouldn’t interrupt him…
But she wanted to.
“Oh, Fraser!” Harper called into the slatted old wood, then grimaced when she spotted a cobweb across one of the hinges.Ick.
The bangs ebbed to thumps, and then a predictable, disgruntled sigh muffled through the grotty door. “I’m not home.”
“Don’t you want to hear about my riveting boat trip with Captain Angus?”
“Nope.Don’tcome in.”
Well, that was weirdly insistent. Harper had joked before about how strange this whole thing was, but was he hiding something in there? Or maybe he was just working in the nude... A mental image that – to her utter mortification – made her breathe audibly.Don’t be a pervert, Harper.
“Will you ever feck off?” Fraser shouted. “I’m trying to work in here!”
She took a step back, feeling bruised. She knew she’d promised not to interrupt him. She’d just thought…
They’d been getting along so well that she’d thought perhaps they were friends.
