Page 6 of Sweetheart and the Grouch
“I’m right here,” she calls out as I burst free of the cabin. I’m in such a hurry to get to her that I forget about the stairs and stumble down them. But it’s not the dirt I hit as expected. It’s a hard wall of…man.
“A-Ajax?” I stammer, lifting my head to meet his concerned gaze as he steadies me.
A giggle bubbles up from beside us. “I can see your butt.”
“What? Oh no.” It’s at that point I realize I lost my towel in the fall. Which, of course, means I’m pressed up against Ajax wearing nothing but the skin God gave me.
His eyes go down, and I fist my hands into his shirt, holding myself to him like he’s my shield. “Don’t you dare look.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, sweetheart,” he says, a smirk pulling the side of his mouth as he glances toward Elena.
“Wanna grab that towel there for your sister?”
“Uh-huh.” Ellie springs to action, and it’s not long before Ajax is shaking the towel out then draping it around me.
“Better?”
“Much,” I say, securing it around my body as I pull away from him. I don’t miss the way he averts his eyes when I look up at him.
“Did you light a fire?” he asks while he shakes his coat off.
“Not on purpose! It was cold and I was sure I did it right. I put the guard up and nothing was close by that could burn. I was careful.”
“Did you open the damper?”
“What?”
“The little lever you slide so the smoke can get out of the chimney?”
“Oh. Crap.”
“OK,” he says, shaking off his coat and wrapping it around my shoulders as I bite at my lip and try not to let my tears overwhelm me. Here I was feeling so proud of myself that I got us here that I totally missed a vitally important step. We could have died.
“Is the cabin going to burn down now?”
“No.” He frowns as he starts buttoning the coat around me. “It’s just going to smell like a chimney for a day or two.”
“How can you be so sure?” I ask, sniffing back my tears.
“Because,” he starts, reaching down and whipping my towel out from the bottom of coat. I shriek. “I’m going to go in there and fix it.”
“What on earth are you doing?”
He grins, lifting the damp towel up to his face. “Reducing the smoke inhalation. Stay with your sister.”
And with that, he runs into smoke-filled cabin.
“Wow,” Elena says as she slides her hand into mine. “He’s like those heroes on TV.”
“Yeah,” I say, pulling the collar of his giant coat closed around my neck and inhaling the warmth of his scent a little. It could just be the smoke, but there’s something about his smell that makes me heady. “He really is.”
AJAX
“This isn’t a cabin,” Elena practically yells as I usher the girls inside my home, a bag filled with a day or two’s worth of clothes for them in my hand so they can stay with me while their cabin airs out.
“No? What would you call it,” I say, chuckling at the way she does a slow spin as she takes in her surrounds.
“It’s a lair.”
