“You’re stronger than I give you credit for,” he added.
“I am,” she said. “Stronger than I give me credit for too.”
She brought the cake to the table, and the subject of her working for Griffin was dropped.
And she repeated what she just said to Ryder, over and over internally. She was strong. She was. She had lost her parents, she had helped raise her siblings. Cleaning up after one backwoodsman was going to seem easy in comparison.
She was certain of it.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN GRIFFIN WOKE UP Monday morning, he had the realization that today would be different than the one before it.
And that was strange.
He didn’t really look forward to things. And he wasn’t sure that he could say he was looking forward to this. Mostly, it was a strange mixture of alarm and anticipation. It was just knowing that the day wouldn’t stretch on until it ended with nothing interrupting it. Knowing that another person would be sharing his space. Space that had been sacred ground since he’d moved in.
But he went out, and he worked on the house until the sun started to make his shoulders feel blistered, and he stripped his white undershirt off and wiped his face with it before shoving it in the back pocket of his jeans and heading toward the house, his stomach growling.
Her car was there. Gleaming in the late afternoon light. He had moved the log yesterday so she wouldn’t have to hike up to the cabin the next time she arrived. It seemed the least he could do.
He walked up the steps and pushed the door open, and stopped when he saw her, down on her hands and knees on the floor, scrubbing vigorously. Her dark hair was hanging limp in her face, her brow gleaming with sweat. She was wearing a plain gray T-shirt that showed nothing of her body, and a skirt that fell down past her knees, and he didn’t know why he was frozen there watching her work.
Maybe it was just the strangeness of having her there. It sure as hell couldn’t be anything else.
She straightened, clambering to her feet, her eyes wide. Her mouth went slack, then dropped open.
“Hi,” he said.
“Oh” was her response. She was staring at him. Or more accurately, at his chest.
Right. He’d taken his shirt off.
Which, he could see was maybe not the best move in context with the situation. But he had kind of forgotten how to do the whole people thing.
He stomped over to his dresser, which was pushed up against the wall, opened the top drawer and grabbed a black T-shirt out of it. He shrugged it on over his head. “Thanks for coming,” he said.
She was still staring at him.
“Well,” she said, clearing her throat. “It is what we agreed on.”
“We didn’t agree on a time.”
“No,” she said tentatively. “We didn’t. That is true. But I thought... Well, since I don’t have a key to the bakery, or anything like that.”
“Give me your address,” he said.
“Oh?”
“Yes,” he said. “Give me your address and I will have it mailed to you.”
“Thanks,” she said. “Anyway. I figured since I didn’t have anything to do at the bakery today I would come and get a head start on getting whatever needed to be done here...done.”
“Enterprising. I admire it.”
Of course, doing anything around this place was essentially a lost cause. It was dirt on dirt. Not that he cared. It was rustic. It was basically camping, and that was just fine with him. He’d tried.
He had tried to stay in the Bay Area. Had tried to continue to run his business in San Francisco, living in an apartment there. But there was no normal. And nothing had gotten better. So a couple of years ago he had come to Gold Valley. It had always been the plan, after all, so it made sense that he would follow that plan. And about six months into ruminating at the top of the mountain he had come to the conclusion that the house still needed to be built.
Even if it wouldn’t be for its original intent.
Anyway. It gave him something to do.
And as far as the cabin went, he didn’t mind it. Not in the least.
“I did bring food,” she said, indicating a picnic basket sitting on the kitchen counter.
“You said you didn’t have electricity?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
“How do you...refrigeration?”
“Icebox,” he said. “In the most literal sense of that word.”
“Oh. Good to know. That seems...rustic.”
He looked around the room. “Did you have the idea that I wasn’t rustic?”
“No. I guess not.”
Two days in a row he had talked to another person. It was strange.
He grunted. “Don’t stop cleaning on my account.”
“No,” she said, scrambling back down to the floor. He nearly smiled. Nearly. Instead, he walked over to where that picnic basket sat and opened the top. There was a platter of fruit and cheese inside, artfully arranged. There was also a sandwich, made on what looked to be a homemade baguette, with little jars containing mayonnaise and mustard on the side.
There was also a small bottle of wine, and a bottle of beer. And he was starving.
He opened them up, pulling the plastic wrap off the top of the platter and digging straight into the cheese. Flavor. So different from what he’d been making on the stove top in this place. What he learned was that you could take TV dinners, dump them into a pot frozen and make something edible. He had gotten well acquainted with cut up hot dogs and baked beans. Had eaten a fair amount of canned chili.
It had been a long time since he’d had something like this. Something that had intense texture and flavor. Different kinds of cheese were a strange human luxury. The time and effort that must have gone into figuring out you could get a different result from letting milk age in a slightly different fashion from another batch of milk was one of those things he’d never wondered about before. Who had discovered that? Who had perfected it?
And to what end?
The nutritional value had to be the same.
It was just for taste. Just for pleasure.
Eating this cheese was just for pleasure.
Having been deprived of pleasure of any kind for the last five years, it was a revelation he hadn’t expected. And it made him all the more eager to dig in to the sandwich. He took one of the small knives that she had included in the basket and slathered mustard on the inside of the baguette. There was also ham, and yet more cheese inside. He put a generous helping of mayonnaise in there as well. And he groaned, audibly, when he took his first bite. And didn’t bother to hide it.