Chapter 17
“You thought you had missed everything,” Henrietta said, tugging the coat higher over his shoulder. “That was convenient for whoever wanted you to believe it.”
His mouth tightened. He disliked the sentence because he could not deny it. “I know cattle. I know land. I know what it costs to winter a herd and what a steer will fetch in Cheyenne if the buyer thinks you’re desperate. I never claimed to be an accountant.”
“No. You merely signed whatever Silas put in front of you and then rode away furious at yourself for not understanding it.”
“That is not what I did.”
Henrietta looked at him.
Calvin endured the look for three breaths before turning his face toward the storm. Snow hissed over the mouth of the shelter, erasing the marks their bodies had made when they crawled inside. “Not every time,” he muttered.
“An impressive defense.”
“Do you intend to quarrel with me until we freeze?”
“I intend to keep you angry enough to stay awake.”
He gave a weak, humorless sound. “You might manage that until spring.”
The wind howled down the ravine. Henrietta listened beyond it for the horse, for a bell, for anything human, but heard only the grinding rush of snow across stone. She had searched for Calvin believing that finding him would be the terrible part. Now, with darkness thickening beyond the ledge and his skin growing colder beneath her gloved hands, finding him seemed almost easy.
She folded the foreclosure notice along its old crease and pushed it inside her blouse where her body heat might keep it dry. Calvin noticed. Even injured, he noticed anything involving possession.
“Give me that.”
“No.”
“It’s mine.”
“It belongs to whoever survives long enough to use it.”
His eyes sharpened. “Henrietta.”
“Calvin.”
He stared at her until pain broke his concentration. His jaw flexed, then he lowered his head against the stone. “You are the most infuriating woman I have ever met.”
“And yet here we are.”
“Yes.” His gaze slid toward her. “Here we are.”
Something in the words made her still. He did not soften them into gratitude. Calvin Brooks seemed almost incapable of offering anything so naked. But the bitterness was gone, and without it, the simple acknowledgment carried an intimacy that unsettled her more than an apology might have done.
Henrietta turned her attention to his hands. The fingertips of the injured one looked pale even in the fading light. “Move these.”