He stood, pulling her to him; grinding himself against her to show how much he wanted her. She wrapped her legs around his waist and licked at his ears while he walked up the bank, hissing out wicked words of retribution he planned to enact on her. Instead of dropping down to the grassy bank with her, as she’d expected, however, he stopped abruptly.
“What?” she asked, drawing her head back to look at him. He was still carrying her with her legs wrapped around his waist.
“Shhhh. Don’t move.” Backing away, he moved into the water and set her on her feet, drawing her over and onto the wide boulder on the other bank. Only then did she follow his gaze to the cabin, where a loud ruckus took place. A huge grizzly bear appeared in the doorway, their trout dinner in its mouth.
“I don’t suppose you brought a gun out here with you,” he asked.
She shook her head. “It’s in the cabin.”
Rafe looked at the pickax in his hand. A lot of good it would do against a thousand-pound beast.
The bear appeared again, and this time it was covered with flour and feathers from Effie’s goose-down pillows. Molasses dribbled from its snout.
For more than an hour, they sat perched on the rock watching helplessly as Big Ben trashed the inside of the cabin. They could only hope he found enough to satisfy his hunger and didn’t come seeking human fare. Or that Zeb and Hector wouldn’t come back onto this dangerous scene.
Finally, the animal loped out, stood on its hind legs, and let out a mighty roar, eying them across the too-short distance. The grizzly seemed to be considering whether to attack them when another animal roared in the forest — a similar but much shriller bellow. Probably its mate. The bear gave them one last glance and went down on all fours, trotting off into the sunset.
Helen thought about their near lovemaking then, the incident that had been a prequel, so to speak, to this mind-boggling spectacle right out of a Disney wilderness movie. “Well, that was good for me. How about you?” she quipped.
At first, Rafe gaped at her. Then he burst out laughing and pulled her to his side in a warm embrace. “Oh, sweetie, someday we’ll tell our grandkids about this.” Immediately, he stiffened at his foolhardy words. “I didn’t mean that,” he quickly amended, “about grandkids, I mean. I just meant that — ”
“I know exactly what you meant, Rafe,” Helen said tiredly.
Maybe they weren’t meant to be together after all.
Then again, maybe Rafe was all wet.
Yeah, she liked that idea.
Chapter Nineteen
By the following evening, everything was back to normal again. The cabin was relatively clean, and no one had been injured. Zeb said they should consider themselves lucky.
Helen sighed, putting aside her uneasy thoughts, and continued to read, “And the redskin’s arrow went straight and true through the evil villain’s heart, ending his miserable life forever.” She put a slip of ribbon on the page to mark her place and closed the book, The Last of the Mohicans.
“More,” Hector complained sleepily from across the table where he nestled in Rafe’s lap.
“That’s enough for today, sweetie,” she said, putting the worn leather volume on the shelf, along with Zeb’s three other precious books, the Bible, Edgar Allen Poe’s The Purloined Letter, and Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist.
Rafe stood with the child in his arms and admonished gently, “Helen said no more tonight, and that’s that.”
Hector made a whimpering sound of protest and nuzzled Rafe’s neck. Rafe laid the boy on his pallet near the fireplace, where he fell instantly asleep. Returning to the table across from Helen, he sipped the last of his coffee. Zeb continued to rock back and forth in Effie’s chair, puffing on an unlit pipe — she’d managed to convert him from the revolting chewing tobacco — and the only sounds in the cabin were the creak, creak, creak of his rocker, and the occasional hiss and crackle of the fire.
“This isn’t a very exciting nightlife for a hotshot lawyer,” Helen said, wanting to break the silence.