“I am not marrying you,” she said, carefully enunciating each word. “I didn’t marry you last night, and I sure as heck am not marrying you in a corny little chapel in Las Vegas.”
He shrugged. “It’s for your benefit, not mine,” he said, pouring the steaming soup into a bowl and bringing it over to her. He found two spoons, came back and sat down on the ground beside her, and ate what was left in the pot while she wolfed down her own soup in silence.
“I—I have to go to the bathroom,” she whispered the moment she was done, lifting her chin to counter the blush she knew was coloring her cheeks.
He set down the pot, stood up, and held his hand out to her. Winter ignored it and scrambled to her feet, sneezed twice, then strode out of the cave while wiping her nose on her sleeve again. He followed two steps behind her. She had just reached the edge of the woods when he stopped her by turning her around to face him. “Your word you won’t run, or I stay right beside you.”
She lifted her brow at him. “You’ll take my word?”
He smiled. “I took it last night.” He folded his arms over his chest. “I was under the impression you were a woman of honor. Was I wrong?”
“No,” she snapped. “And you don’t need to hide your brogue from me. Not anymore.”
He chuckled, shaking his head. “I’m not hiding anything from you, Winter. I told you it only surfaces when I’m…er, under stress.”
She spun toward the woods, but his hand on her shoulder stopped her again. “Promise me you won’t run.”
“I won’t run,” she said with her back to him. “I promise.”
He released her shoulder and Winter rushed into the thick bushes, going until she thought she was safely out of sight. She quickly took care of business, then moved even deeper into the woods, pulling out her cell phone as she looked over her shoulder to make sure he wasn’t growing impatient.
She stopped, opened the tiny phone, and turned on the power button to find two towers of signal. She put her thumb over the speed-dial for Gù Brath…but didn’t push it. What could she possibly tell her parents? Hi, I’m here with Cùram de Gairn on Bear Mountain. Why don’t you rush up here and kill him for being an unholy bastard and breaking my heart?
Winter hit the power button instead of the speed-dial, closed the phone, and tucked it back in her pocket with a sigh. As much as she hated him, as much as she wanted to find her stick and beat Matt Gregor to a bloody pulp, she certainly didn’t want his death on her hands, even though she wasn’t the one who would actually be doing the killing.
As perverse as it seemed, Winter realized she couldn’t be in love with Matt one minute and then hate him the next, no matter who he was or what he was planning on doing. She hadn’t given her love lightly, and it was going to take her some time to fall out of love with him.
Which gave Winter a whole new respect for Megan.
She turned and walked back through the bushes, stepped into the clearing beside the ledge, and saw Matt leaning against the cave entrance, his arms crossed over his chest, smiling at her.
“What about Snowball?” she asked as she walked up to him. “I need to check on him.”
“He’s fine. I took off his blanket this morning and sent him home.”
“No, you didn’t. That will only worry my parents.”
He lifted a brow, still leaning against the cliff. “Didn’t you just call them on the phone you always carry and let them know where you are?”
She shoved her fists in her jacket pockets and looked at his feet. “I didn’t call them.”
He said nothing, only held out his hand beneath her lowered gaze. Winter kept her own hands in her pockets and brushed past him into the cave. She immediately started straightening up by folding and replacing his clothes that she’d pulled from his duffel bag while she’d been looking for matches.
“Where’s my pinewood stick?” she asked as she worked.
“Up there, out of your reach.”
She turned to see him nodding toward a high ledge on the still-glowing granite and saw the tip of her staff peeking out over the edge. She zipped up his duffel bag, scooted over, and started folding the blankets.
Large, warm hands settled on her shoulders. “Leave that and come over here,” he said, helping her stand by pulling on her jacket, then leading her over to sit near the far wall next to the fire.
“W-what are you doing?” she whispered when he sat down directly behind her with his back to the wall.
“I’m going to brush out your hair.”
She shot her hand to her hair, gathered the knotted tangles together in her fist, and pulled them over her shoulder away from him. “I can brush out my own hair,” she said, raking her fingers through the tangles.
He reached around her, pulled her hands down to her lap, then slid her hair back over her shoulder. “But I want to,” he said softly. “You just sit quietly while I tell you a little story. Then when I’m done, we can discuss our wedding plans.”
Winter closed her eyes, going utterly still as a shiver raced along her spine when Matt’s hands slid under her hair. Up the back of her scalp, then gently down through her curls his fingers moved, until they got caught in the tangles. Then she felt the gentle tug of a fine-bristled brush as Matt slowly started working free the knots near the ends of her curls.
Chapter Eighteen
“O nce upon a very long time ago,”Matt began softly, “in a land far away, lived a young boy with dreams of becoming a mighty warrior. He lived with his mama and papa, and a younger brother and baby sister in a cottage high on a mountain.”
Matt separated a thick lock of Winter’s hair and started brushing it out, working his way up from the end. “As a bairn, the boy didn’t think it strange that they lived so far from the village, or that he never got to play with other lads. Nay,” Matt said, his voice lowering, “he was quite content to run through the forest with his brother as they fought mock battles with their wooden swords. The boy was too young and carefree at first to even wonder why he’d been told to avoid people and never form bonds with anyone other than his brother and sister.”
Winter wanted to speak, to ask why, but a lump had started to grow in her throat.
“It wasn’t until the boy began to feel the first stirring of manhood that he questioned his papa’s refusal to let him train to be a warrior with the other lads in the nearby village.” Matt stopped brushing.
“Each day he grew more determined to be a warrior, getting into shouting matches with his papa that made his mama cry, his sister cower in the corner, and his younger brother hide in the woods.”
Winter felt Matt pick up another knot of hair, and he again started gently brushing out the tangles. “By his sixteenth birthday he’d had enough. He ran away from home to the shouts of his angry papa and the desperate sobs of his mama. He ran as hard and as far as he could, traveling on foot for days, until he reached the sea and couldn’t go any farther. There, wandering up the coastline, he found a village of hardworking but poor sheep farmers. One of the families took him in despite their poverty, and by day he worked tending their sheep and by night he trained with a group of old warriors who were desperate to protect what little their village had from reaving neighbors.”
Matt stopped brushing again, and Winter felt him ball his hands into fists in her hair. “The boy couldn’t understand why his parents had been so against him having anything to do with people. The village that had taken him in was populated by good folks. Generous and kind people.” He started brushing again. “He lived with them for ten years, quite content with the new life he’d made, until one moonless night an army of thieving marauders sailed up the coast and landed on the village beach.”