Page 289 of Silent Target

Chapter Five

JULIETTE

I've never cooked dinner for a man before.

That’s not to say that I haven’t sat beside random men at expensive dinners, time after time, at tables three times the size of Holt's tiny kitchen. But this is the first time I’ve stood at an unfamiliar stove making food for a guy because I wanted to. The memory of Monique’s cozy kitchen brings with it a pang of sadness; it was the one place I felt like I belonged. Mother put a stop to that and fired Monique when she found out about the diploma.

Holt's refrigerator is like a bachelor's museum piece: eggs, bacon, a giant brick of cheddar, multiple bottles of hot sauce, and enough elk sausage to survive a siege. I raid it along with the grocery bags and build a skillet dinner. I fry up the sausage, potatoes and onions and add a pan of drop biscuits in the oven, along with some gravy.

Six supervises by lying half-in, half out of the kitchen, his nose twitching at the smells. Holt comes in from the woodshed and raises his eyebrows. I hold up his plate, the butter melting on the biscuits. It's simple food, I hope he likes it.

“You cooked?”

“I did.” I pull out my chair before he can decide whether pulling it out for me is allowed. “Sit down and eat.”

Holt eats fast, clearing his plate. Then he has three more biscuits, and I feel like I've won a prize or something. Nobody in my family has ever eaten anything I made. Mother was always watching her weight and my father thought cooking was a servant’s job. Monique used to smuggle my cakes out to the gardeners.

“You really can cook. And are you sure about the job?” he asks, mopping his plate, “I'll drive you down for your shift. Roads'll be dark at half five.”

“I’m sure. I need to start earning my keep. But you don't have to get up at five for me.”

“I'm up at five anyway. And you’ll need this to keep in touch with Nora, it’s an old phone.”

“Thanks, are you sure?”

“No problem.”

After the dishes are done, he takes me out to the porch with a hatchet and a round of dry fir, because I asked at dinner how he makes the kindling so thin. The air is cool out here as Holt sets the round on the block and hands me the hatchet handle-first.

“It's a wrist motion, not a shoulder one. Nothing too fierce.”

My first swing bounces, while the second one sticks. He steps in behind me and adjusts my grip with two fingers, his big fingers warm over mine. He tips the angle of the blade, and his voice rumbles low behind me.

“You got it… let the tool do it.”

My third swing drops a thin, clean curl of kindling off the round and I laugh out loud. Holt makes a sound behind me which could be a laugh or a cough, I have no idea. I’m taking it as a compliment.

I split kindling until my wrist aches and I’ve made a small pile of it.

“My father would have a fit… his daughter, doing yard work.”

“What would your father rather you be doing?”

“Looking decorative and making small talk.” I say it lightly, even though the memory twists inside me. “Kind of like one of those ornaments that you wind up and they play an annoying, tinkly tune.”

Holt is quiet while he splits the rest of the round himself.

He shakes his head. “Would’ve been a waste of a great baker.”

We take the kindling in and he builds the fire. I sit on the couch with Six's head on my knee, watching Holt's hands stack the splits into a little cabin shape over the tinder. He has a long white scar across two knuckles. He strikes the match and the fire takes, and as the light moves on his face, I suck my breath in. He’s so handsome, but it’s more than that. I could watch his face forever and not get bored.

“How old are you, Holt?”

His shoulders tense. “Thirty-nine.”

“I'm twenty-four.”

He closes the stove door harder than it needs. “Yep.”