Husband Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire #1)(17)

As if she could hear his thoughts, she said quietly, “When my uncle was alive and running this place, he had eighty cattle. It’s hard thinking about losing any more of his herd.”

“It’s not about the meat, Elyse.” Ian banged the extra stew off the spoon on the side of the pan and moved the boiling meal off the burner. “I looked at your hay, and if we cut it at peak time, when it will give the most nutrition to your animals—”

“Our animals.”

Ian sighed and leaned against the natural wood counter. “It won’t be enough to get a herd that big through the winter. Honestly, we need to butcher one or two and maybe even sell off a couple more. If you want to build the herd next warm season, then we need to figure out how to purchase more later, but we can’t feed what we have now. Not with that little hay.”

“I worked my ass off to plant that. Josiah helped, but most of that was me.”

Ian hated the disappointment on her face. He got it. Right now she was thinking about how hard she’d worked. She’d probably bled and sweated all over that field, and here he came, telling her the work wasn’t enough. “Next year will be different,” he said softly. “If you still want me around after this winter, we’ll get more hay planted, and I’ll buy you more cattle, okay? Between you and me and Josiah, we’ll get you where you want to be.”

Elyse’s hair was down and still damp from her shower, and as she picked at a little piece of masking tape on the counter, she’d let her tresses fall forward, hiding her face. He couldn’t stand not being able to see her eyes right now, so he reached forward and tucked a strand behind her ear, then lifted her chin with a hooked finger. “Okay?”

“You’re a good man,” she said so softly he wouldn’t have heard it without his heightened senses.

God, he wished that were true. If she knew her ex boyfriend’s blood was on his hands, though, Elyse wouldn’t be looking at him so gratefully right now. She was the good one. He was just here hoping some of her decency rubbed off on him.

Ian focused on pouring stew into the two wooden bowls Elyse pulled from the upper cabinets.

“Are you feeding an army?” she asked twitching her chin toward the vat of canned stew he’d heated up.

“Oh. I should tell you now. You’ll have to accept and get used to the fact that I eat a lot.”

“We’re going to eat all this in one sitting?”

“Look, I can’t explain why, but my body needs a lot of food to sustain itself. I’ll get sick as all get-out if I don’t eat constantly.”

Her delicate, sandy-colored eyebrows arched up in surprise. “Constantly?”

Ian handed her a bowl and settled his hip against the counter to tuck into his meal. But Elyse had other ideas about the way meal-time should go and made her way through the small kitchen to the table. She even pulled a chair out for him before she sat in the one right next to it.

“I usually eat standing up.”

“Why?”

Ian took a bite to stall as he mulled over why he was so damned comfortable avoiding tables outside of restaurants. After swallowing, he shuffled to the chair and sat down beside her. “I guess because I’ve always been alone. Tables are for families.”

“Well, now you have me.”

Now you have me. Her words lifted the hairs on his arms, and he sat there stunned, watching her eat. He had someone. Really had her. Elyse was wearing his ring as proof.

Ian Silver wasn’t a lone grizzly anymore.

Elyse was wrong, though. He wasn’t the one who had her. She’d had him since the day he’d woken up on Afognak Island with her picture tucked into that envelope. He’d wanted her. Feared her for what that attraction could mean for him. Deep inside, there was this warm tendril that unfurled like a fern frond a little more each time she spoke to him, or each time he learned something new about her. It wasn’t love yet, but if she kept declaring things like that, she was going to own him, heart and soul. A dangerous game for both of them.

“Where are you from?” Elyse asked between bites.

The temptation to tell her the truth was overwhelming. He was from a dark den in a dark cabin in a dark cave made for long sleeps. In his mind, he’d always called it the Monster House. That had been home base until Miller had burned it. She didn’t need to see the darkness of his life, though, so instead, he answered, “Everywhere. Here and there.”

She stopped eating and stared at him. With a slow blink, she said, “You know we’ll have to actually get to know each other at some point.”

“Alaska.”

Elyse pursed her lips. “Where in Alaska?”

Stifling a growl at her getting too close to his secrets, he leaned back in his chair and listed off the places he’d stayed this warm season. “Fairbanks, Coldfoot, Nome, Kodiak Island, specifically Port Lions and Larsen Bay, Afognak, Trapper Creek—”

“Okay. I get it. You don’t want to talk about where you’re from.”

“I’m from everywhere, like I said.”

“Or you’re from nowhere.” Elyse cocked her head with a challenging look glinting in those gorgeous green-gold eyes of hers, then went back to eating and completely ignored him.

Nowhere. A good place to hail from for a ghost.

“What about you? Where are you from?”