Нора Робертс - Year One

She noted the shotgun propped in the corner, respected his choice to keep a weapon close while he slept.

She didn’t find him downstairs, so she looked out windows until she spotted him working in the garden. Sweat dampened his shirt as he hoed between rows. The dogs slept under the apple tree, by the grave markers, and the horses watched him with their heads over the fence.

Her first thought was to go out and offer to help, but she noted the dishes they’d used that morning sat, clean, dry now, beside the sink. She saw no other signs he’d made a meal while she’d showered, slept, explored.

So she’d earn her keep by scouting through the kitchen and making him lunch.

When he came in, hot and hungry, the dogs bursting in ahead of him, he saw her at the stove. Something smelled damn good, and some of that, he realized, was woman.

She’d wrapped her hair up somehow or other, and it shined like butterscotch candy. When she turned, her face struck him. Quiet and wary beauty.

The wariness for him, he thought, as the charge of the dogs, their manic tail flapping didn’t appear to bother her.

He kept it light. “What’s cooking?”

“Stir-fry—vegetables and rice. I thought you could use lunch more than a hand in the garden.”

“Good thinking.” He moved to the sink, washed the dirt off his hands and arms. “Where’d you cook? For a living?”

“New York.”

“Big city.”

“It was.” She plated the food, added one of the cloth napkins she’d found in a drawer, handed him both. “I saw some sourdough starter in your refrigerator.”

“Yeah, my father liked to bake bread. He couldn’t cook anything else worth a damn, but he liked baking bread. I’ve been feeding it, but…”

“I’ll bake some bread if you want.”

“That’d be good.” He sat. “Aren’t you eating?”

She nodded, but didn’t get a plate, or sit. “I want to thank you—”

“You already did.”

“I haven’t had a real shower in … I’ll apologize if I get emotional. Some of it’s hormones. But being able to wash my hair … I used your mother’s shampoo, and her shower gel. And she has—had—skin cream. It was open, and I used some. I just used it without…”

“You could do me a favor and not cry over that.”

He looked at her as he ate with annoyed hazel eyes. Eyes that blurred green and gold together. “It’ll put me off this stir-fry, and it’s damn good. She wouldn’t care, and I sure don’t. Look, I dealt with my dad’s stuff like that. I couldn’t seem to go through hers. So use what you want.”

“She has backups. Unopened. You could barter them.”

“Use it.” This time his tone snapped a bit. “If I’d wanted to barter her damn face cream, I would have.”

Understanding pain, and loss, she said nothing more until she’d plated some lunch for herself and sat.

“If you’d tell me if there are any off-limits rooms in the house while I’m here.”

“Other than the locked room in the basement full of the mutilated bodies of my victims, no.”

She scooped up some stir-fry. He was right. It was damn good. “All right, I’ll stay out of there. Do you have any food allergies?”

“I’m temperamentally allergic to spinach.”

“Then I won’t put any in the meatloaf.”

* * *

Simon gave Lana plenty of space. He expected she’d stay for a couple days, pull herself together. He didn’t have a problem giving her that time and space, especially since, Jesus, the woman could cook.

Plus, she carried her weight, no question, during those couple of days. Maybe he hadn’t noticed the dust and dog hair—but he noticed when it was gone. Maybe he hadn’t had a problem snagging clothes or towels out of a laundry basket, but it didn’t hurt his feelings to find them all folded and where they belonged.

The dogs liked her. He’d walked by the library late one night and had seen her sitting in the dark—grieving for her husband—with Harper’s head on her knee, Lee sprawled over her feet.

He figured to take her into the settlement once she’d gathered herself, turn her over to one of the women he knew. Any one of them would know more about dealing with a pregnant woman and delivering a baby than he did.

As for her insistence that the baby she carried was both special and a target of dark forces, he’d reserve judgment. While he couldn’t deny he’d gotten used to looking out for himself alone, and the farm, he couldn’t just turn her out.

He’d been raised better than that. He was better than that.

She wasn’t much for conversation, and that was fine, too, as he’d grown accustomed to the quiet.

He thought of her as a kind of temporary, live-in farmhand who put together three solid meals a day, and dealt with the house so he didn’t have to.

One who didn’t look to be entertained, one who wasn’t hard on the eyes, especially since after a couple of days she’d lost most of the living-on-raw-nerves edge that had haunted her eyes.

In truth, he had to admit he’d miss knowing he’d come in after the early chores to a hot breakfast—and having someone who knew their way around tending crops.

She wouldn’t go near the cornfield, and he didn’t ask why.

By day four, they’d fallen into a routine, one comfortable enough it worried him. Routines led to depending on each other.

Best thing all around? Nudge her into moving to the settlement, nesting there until she had her kid.

He started to ease her in that direction over a dinner of fried chicken and potato salad—his request.

“I’m going to take a load of produce into the settlement tomorrow.”

“If you’re bartering, you could use more flour.”

“You’ve got a better sense by now what we’re low on in the pantry. You ought to come in with me. It’d give you a sense of things.”

Her gaze shifted up—deep, sad blue—met his. “I can make you a list.”

“You could. There’re probably things you need. Personal things.”

“I don’t need anything. If you’re ready for me to move on—”

“I didn’t say that.” Thought it maybe, but that was different. “Look, there are women in there who’ve been through what you’re going through. Who’ve, you know, had babies. Plus, people pass through. Some stay. Maybe somebody’s come in who has medical experience.”

Her fingers moved restlessly over the ring she wore around her neck. “I’ve still got time. I can do more until—”

“Christ, Lana.” He rarely used her name, and did so now in pure frustration. “Give me a small break. I’m saying you’d be better off with people who know what they’re doing when the kid decides she wants to come out. If you’re not nervous about that, you’re made of fucking steel.”

“I’m scared to death. Terrified. Even knowing, absolutely knowing, she’s meant to be born, meant to live and shine and do amazing things, I’m terrified.”

Studying her face, he sat back. “You don’t look scared.”

She kept her gaze steady, laid a hand on the baby mound. “Before I looked down, saw the farm, whenever I was tired and hungry, I couldn’t let myself be scared. If it snuck through, I had to shove it away again or I’d have stopped. Just stopped and given up. I told myself I’d find a place, a safe place to bring her into the world. Then I looked down, and saw the farm. The house, the fields, the animals—like a painting of before the world stopped.”

Now her hand made slow circles over the baby.

“Still, I didn’t let myself hope. It was just the immediate. Tomatoes on the vine, bees humming, chickens clucking. I thought, Food, because I needed it. I didn’t let myself think shelter or rest. Until you spoke to me. You told me to come inside and eat, and then I began to hope.