Hunter's Season (Elder Races #4.7)(21)

That she could understand. She was unused to doing nothing as well. She looked at him sideways and gave him a sly smile. “It sounds as though you are beginning to feel better.”

He chuckled. “I must be, since my temper has turned so foul. What can I do to help?”

Shocked, her gaze flew wide. “Nothing!”

He advanced on her with a determined expression, and she backed up until her shoulders hit the wall behind her. “I do not accept that answer.”

“You are the one who was severely injured. I am perfectly healthy, and it is my job to look after you and do the work.” She hugged the armful of wood as he tried to take the top few logs. “Stop that! You’re still healing, and you might strain one of those wounds.”

“I am well aware of what my body can and cannot do, thank you.” He tugged and she pulled back, until he pointed out in a plaintive voice, “You know this tug of war can’t be good for me.”

She stared at him in wounded astonishment. Oh, that was playing entirely naughty. She stopped instantly, her hold loosening. As he took the top logs from her armload, she glared at him, mouth folded tight in disapproval.

He paused, and one corner of his mouth tilted up as he studied her. “You should see what you look like right now,” he told her.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she muttered as she hitched her remaining armload up higher.

He folded his mouth tight and glared at her.

Completely off kilter, she stared, and her own mouth dropped open. “I don’t look that bad!”

“No,” he agreed, the expression vanishing. “You are much prettier than me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” She scuttled sideways to get around him then rushed to the fireplace to throw her armload onto the hearth. It scattered wood debris everywhere, and the floor would have to be swept again. She didn’t care. Then her next thought just fell out of her mouth. “You’re the most handsome man I know.”

The instant the words left her lips, she would have snatched them out of the air if she could. Her face burned.

He moved up beside her and squatted to ease the logs he had purloined onto the hearth with hers.

She watched with round, unblinking eyes as he straightened and turned to face her.

He thinks I’m pretty?

He was smiling, and it looked satisfied and very male. “So you think I’m handsome.”

She scrambled to backtrack somehow. Heaven only knew where her poise had gone. The afternoon sun must have baked it out of her head. “Of course you look—distinguished,” she accused. “You know perfectly well you do.”

Of all the ridiculous things to say. She was going from bad to worse. She spun on her heel, retreated to put the table between them and began pulling food items off the shelves without really looking at what she was doing.

He followed at a leisurely pace across the room, almost as if he was stalking her.

Then he came all the way around the table.

He—what was he doing?

“You didn’t say distinguished before,” he pointed out. “You said handsome. I remember that fact quite fondly.”

“DidIIhadn’tnoticed,” she mumbled all in a rush. She had forgotten what she was supposed to be doing. If she had ever known in the first place.

“Xanthe, are you shy?” he murmured. “I didn’t know assassins could be shy. This realization is remarkable.”

“Don’t be stupid, I’m never shy,” she blurted. She had disrobed in front of dozens of other soldiers countless of times. She’d had sex with no more privacy than what the cover of a blanket might offer, and she had probably heard every crude joke or epithet the army had in its repertoire. “And I’m not an assassin any longer, I’m a guard.”

“Semantics, my dear.” His lean, angular features were lit with delight. All shadows and marks of pain had vanished. He looked like an entirely different man from the ill, unconscious man that Tiago had brought into her cottage. He glanced over all the items she had placed at random on the table. His sleek eyebrows rose. “So we are having honey, cheese, onions and tea for supper?”

“Of course not!” Her cheeks grew hotter. She scrambled for some kind excuse for her erratic behavior. “I was just going to dust off the shelves.”

He picked up the jar of honey. “Were you going to do that before or after you cook?”

She threw up her hands. “You are distracting me from what I’m supposed to be doing!”

He was laughing then, his face creased with open enjoyment, eyes dancing. “Is that what I’m doing, distracting you? I thought I was teasing you.”

Witnessing him in this unpredictable, playful mode was definitely much more composure-destroying than when he had winked at her. She rushed at him and snatched the jar out of his hands. “Get out of my kitchen, so I can have some hope of cooking something edible.”

He pointed out, “Your kitchen is half the cottage.”

She ducked her head. “You could go outside.”

“I’ve been outside for a significant part of the day already.”

“Go to bed then.”

“I have spent a significant part of the day there too,” he said softly. “And I feel extraordinarily guilty every time I lie in that soft bed. Inevitably I end up thinking of you, and this hard pallet on the floor that must be so very uncomfortable.”