Husband Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire #1)(16)

He released her hand and walked beside her. “I was wrong for the things I said.”

“Great. Forgiven. Fight one down, only sixty more years of me pissing you off to go.” Water sloshed all over the leg of her jeans and, great gads, it was cold, but she was used to it. She always fatigued at the end.

Demon and Milo waited at the fence for her as she hoisted the water bucket to her hip and dumped it through the fence into their trough. “And just so you know,” she said, clutching the bucket handle to steady her shaking hands. “I have goats. I was working my way up to…you know…killing one.”

Ian ghosted a glance toward the barn where the goats lived, then nodded his head. “I shouldn’t make snap judgements on things. I just don’t like how thin you’ve become.”

“How thin I’ve become? You’ve only seen me one other time, and I assure you, I’m not much worse off.”

Ian opened his mouth as if to say something, then snapped it closed again. He ran his hands through his hair and admitted, “I don’t know how to talk to girls.”

“You never had one before?”

He shook his head, and if she didn’t know any better, she could’ve sworn his cheeks were turning red.

“Well, you’ve just shocked me to my bones.”

Ian leaned on the fence and watched the horses drinking deeply. “How so?”

“Because I thought a man who looks like you would’ve been with a dozen girls, at least.”

Scrunching his face up, he glanced over at the sunrise and murmured, “I didn’t say I haven’t slept with women. I just mean that I haven’t had one of my own.” He turned those bright eyes on her. “To keep happy. You understand?”

“Are you backwoods?” Being raised in the wilderness without access to girls was the only thing that explained why a big, strapping, sexy-as-hell man like Ian Silver hadn’t held down a relationship with a woman.

He huffed a soft laugh. “You could say that. And just so you know, you aren’t too skinny for my liking. I think you’re pretty enough. I just don’t like thinking you’re hungry. I’ve been hungry before. It sucks.”

“Yeah it does,” she said on a sigh as she rested her chin on the fence and watched the sinking sun beside him. “And thanks for saying that. You didn’t have to.”

“What, that you’re pretty?”

She nodded slowly, her chin rubbing her protruding wrist bone.

Ian shook his head, whatever that meant, then said, “Come on. I’ll put a few more buckets of water in the trough. You go wash up, and I’ll get dinner on.” He picked up the bucket, then turned and walked away. “You smell like chicken shit,” he said over his shoulder.

Elyse snorted, but bit her lip to hide her amusement. She really did smell rough after cleaning out the coop. Ian was one lucky man to have landed such a fine woman as herself. “Sorry I almost shot you!” she called.

She couldn’t tell for sure from here, but his cheeks looked like they swelled with a smile as he walked away. “Forgiven. Only sixty more years to go.”





Chapter Seven


Ian had hurt her.

A few hours here and, already, he’d made her tear up. Even though she’d let him off the hook, his guts still felt all ripped up that he was the cause of any more hurt. This is why men like him had no business taking on a woman. They were soft, and he was all claws and teeth and grizzly moods.

He dumped a second giant can of beef stew into the pot and stirred.

The woman had taken to nesting worse than he did right before hibernation. While he’d unpacked the pallets of food he’d brought with him from the bed of his pickup, she’d swept the floors and thrown out the dead flowers from the vase that decorated the kitchen table. He was pretty sure she’d even cleaned the outhouse. There was running water here, but just barely since, according to Elyse, it was fed by a natural spring that wasn’t a huge producer. There was enough for a quick, trickling shower, but not enough for toilet flushes, so the outhouse was going to be part of life now.

“Is your heat oil?” he asked. Lame. God, he didn’t know how to talk to women.

Elyse bent down with the dust pan and scooped a mound of dirt into it. “I couldn’t afford the three thousand a year to do oil, so I’m all wood burning. I mean we’re. We’re all wood burning.” She stood, cheeks flushed in the soft glow of the lanterns hung around the room.

“I’ll need to start cutting as soon as possible then. You only have enough chopped to last you the first couple of weeks of snow. And I think we’re going to have to butcher at least one of your cows.”

“What? Why?” she asked as she dumped the dustpan’s contents out the back door. “I need those to sell. That’s where my money comes from. I’m not totally off the grid or subsistence. I buy some of the things I need, and I only have fifteen head of cattle left, if no predators have run off with any of them.”

“I thought you said your brother was watching them.”

“Part of the time. More like checks on them, but Josiah’s no range rider. He has a life of his own and a little piece of land he’s managing close to the summer grazing range.”

“Hmm,” Ian said low in his chest. That wasn’t good. Predators were thick around here, thanks to all the wilderness around them. Galena was nothing like Anchorage. It was population five-hundred, and other than sitting on the bank of the Yukon River, it was surrounded by the Alaskan wilds. It was a wonder Elyse had any cattle left.