Page 53 of The Widow and the Wanted

Boone begins to prowl behind me, boot heels thudding against the boards. He falls into a chair, drums his fingers on the wall, then the table, then pushes himself up again as if sitting still might kill him.

“You’re making me itch,” I say. “Go scrub the privy.”

“You ain’t the boss of me, woman.”

I don’t look up from my book. “Then stop pacing like a mule with a burr under its tail. You’re dancing around like a man in need of something to keep him occupied.”

His fists tighten at his sides. “You’re teasin’ a hole clean through my last good nerve. I’m fixin’ to tie a rock to you and throw you in the crick, pain in my ass that you are.”

With that, he turns and scales the ladder to the loft.

“How dare you.”

He’s up two rungs before I’m moving, anger propelling me forward.

“Don’t you walk away from me,” I snap, seizing the ladder below him.

He pauses, looking down. The lamplight catches the hard line of his jaw, the faint sheen of sweat at his throat. “Lula,” he says, warning in it, “leave me be.”

“No.” I climb after him, skirts bunched in one fist, heart hammering. The ladder creaks under me. “You don’t get to insult me and then run away like a sulking boy.”

Arms folded, his broad shoulders fill the small space. The air up here is warmer, closer, thick with the scent of pine rafters and him.

Below, Okee resumes his cooking, likely bored enough of our bickering by now that he lets the noise blur into the background. The fat hisses when the skillet returns to the fire.

Boone’s eyes don’t leave mine. “What do you want from me, Lula? I’m tryin’ to keep from sayin’ more that’s unkind.”

“Go ahead and say it,” I challenge, stepping closer, because I can’t seem to stop myself. The loft is dim, only a sliver of lamplight climbing the ladder. We’re inches apart now. I feel the heat rolling off him, smell woodsmoke and winter air clinging to his skin.

“Fine,” he says, his hand coming up to brace against the beam beside my head. I am caged between him and the low rafters, close enough that my skin prickles with him. “I seen how this goes, all right? A woman don’t get that sharp over a man unless she’s bothered by him.”

“I’m bothered because you’re insufferable.”

“Not put out bothered, hot and bothered,” he says. Then quieter, like he’s being sensitive to my embarrassing secret, “’Cause you want somethin’ you don’t mean to.”

The accusation lands with full force. My chest tightens, forcing a brittle laugh out of my throat that horrifies me.

“You must think highly of yourself.”

His arm stays braced beside my head, the muscle in his forearm corded. He doesn’t move back. If anything, he leans in a fraction, flexing his muscles as if to prove a point—just enough that I feel the shift in the air, the way the heat of him presses against the chill still clinging to my skin.

“And all day you mind me. Always wonderin’ what I’m doin’.”

“Only because you’re loud and coarse and take up too much space,” I manage.

“That all?”

“No, there’s plenty more about you that strains my nerves.”

The wind rattles the shingles overhead. “Like what?”

“You pace,” I say, the words spilling out. “You’re driving me half mad with the noise. Every time you pass the table you knock my elbow when I’m trying to read. Three times already. I lose my place.”

He exhales, slow. “You sigh every time I move. An annoyed little huff, like the very fact I’m breathing offends you.”

“You breathe loud with your mouth open, like a dumb ape—swinging from the rafters.”

He laughs a cocky laugh. “And you love it. It’s all right, wild. Ain’t gotta be embarrassed about it. You ain’t expect to get so wound up over a man like me, and you find it fascinatin’.”