“That’s reindeer, you goof.”
“Reindeer. Regular deer. It’s the same family.”
He grabbed a rifle off the mantle — luckily Big Ben hadn’t eaten it — and stormed off, muttering something about how Daniel Boone had probably been nagged to death by some woman, too.
“My hero!” she said with a rueful laugh.
“I heard that,” he said from outside.
Less than ten minutes had gone by when Helen heard a rifle shot. Then silence.
She stopped in the middle of sweeping up the remaining broken crockery. “What could he be shooting so soon?” she wondered aloud, then, “Oh, my God! Rafe must have shot himself.”
She rushed out the door and across the yard, then came to a skidding stop. Her mouth dropped practically to the ground.
Rafe was dragging a ten-point buck across the stream, swearing some blue words, a few of which had her name attached to them. When she came up to him, he just glowered at her and continued to drag the dead deer — a bullet hole showed clean between its wide open eyes — up the incline toward the cabin.
“You actually shot a deer?”
“Yeah. Are you happy now? I shot Bambi.”
“That’s not Bambi. That’s dinner.”
He sliced her a blistering scowl. “I think I’m gonna puke.”
“Oh, Rafe, don’t be silly. Killing game for survival is a necessity. It’s not like you did it for fun or anyth — ”
“Fun? I’m gonna have nightmares the rest of my life about Bambi and reindeer — Oh, God, reindeer have horns, don’t they?”
“Antlers, not horns,” she corrected.
“I didn’t shoot Bambi. This is even worse. I shot Rudolph. Look at his nose. It’s red.”
“That’s blood.”
“Wonderful! I really am going to upchuck now.”
She patted Rafe on the back after he dumped the carcass near the front door. “Why don’t you go wash up?”
“I’m going to bed,” he announced. “Wake me when it’s time to go home. This is the worst thing I’ve ever done in all my life…. well, the worst thing I’ve done in a long time.”
She laughed. “Did I ever tell you that you’re my hero?” she called after Rafe.
He stopped in the middle of the doorway, took a deep breath, then turned around. His blue eyes were wide and vulnerable, questioning.
“It’s sort of like a lady sending her knight off to slay a dragon,” she explained quickly, “but you slayed me a deer, instead.” She smiled at him warmly. “My hero.”
“Your hero, huh?” The grin that spread across his delicious mouth could have melted the hardest heart, and hers was as soft as butter for him already.
She nodded, unable to speak over the lump in her throat.
“Good,” he said in a husky voice. “I’ll collect my lady love’s token later.” He turned again to go into the cabin and threw over his shoulder, “And don’t be thinking of offering me any scarf.”
She knew exactly what he had in mind.
Chapter Twenty-One
Rafe didn’t go to bed, after all. And he didn’t jump Helen’s bones, either. After three hours of helping her pull out deer guts, skin the carcass, then cut the animal into steaks and chops and roasts and other disgusting things, he’d lost that lovin’ feelin’.
Helen knew how to place the carcass belly-up on a slope so the blood would drain away from the meat. She’d shown him how to open the chest cavity by splitting the sternum and taking out the bladder intact so it wouldn’t contaminate the flesh. As if those were skills he ever expected to need back in L.A.! Geez!
“Where did you learn to do all this crap?” he asked, not impressed.
“Survival school. Didn’t you learn this, too?”
“You must have gone to a different survival school than I did, My instructor was big on eating grasshoppers and slugs. He never mentioned butchering Rudolph.”
“Would you quit with the Rudolph stuff?”
After a while, Rafe went back to the stream to prospect some more. It was only late afternoon. Although there was a decided chill in the air, he inhaled deeply of the fresh breeze.
The rain that morning had turned the stream bank muddy, but, nevertheless, he sat down and began to swirl a pan from the pile of gravel he’d dug earlier. The dull, repetitive motions gave him time to think, and a warm feeling of contentment passed over him as he reviewed the day’s events.