After a good half hour of this, my nose and fingers feel
frozen, my socks are drenched, and my hat fell off and is lying somewhere in
the snow. I form one last ball, which I
hurl at Jake with all my might. It hits
him square in the face. Naturally, I was
aiming for his shoulder.
“Jesus, you’re out for blood.” He wipes snow off his cheekbones. His eyepatch goes slightly off-center for a
moment, but he quickly fixes it.
“You’re soaked, you know,” I say. “And you’ve got snow all over your coat.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.” I step
toward him, even though I risk getting hit with another snowball at close
range. I brush some snow off his
coat. “What do you call this?”
“Snowman droppings?”
I laugh and shake my head.
“You know what? This was really
fun.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, blinking as if surprised. “It actually was.”
I’m close enough that I have to look up to see his face
now. He looks down at me, blinking ice
crystals from the eyelashes of his good eye.
His beard casts a shadow over the lower half of his face.
God, why does he have to be so freaking sexy?
“We should probably go back inside,” he says, breaking the
spell. “It’s starting to get dark. And you’re soaked.”
He’s right. My hair is dripping ice water. I follow him back
into the cabin, and I’m starting to shiver.
I would give anything for a hot shower.
I don’t know how he does it out here.
I think the lack of hot water is worse than the lack of electricity.
Jake rifles through the linen closet and pulls out a towel
for me. It occurs to me he must do his
own wash without the benefit of a washing machine or even hot water. That must be quite a task. I’ll bet he doesn’t get bored out here.
I wrap the towel around my hair and my shoulders, trying to
keep my teeth from chattering. “How
about soup for dinner?”
He nods. His hair is
damp from the snow, and again, the effect is really sexy. I need to stop thinking this way. I’ve got a
boyfriend, and even if I didn’t, Jake is a random guy in a cabin who I’m never
going to see again. I’m not a one-night
stand kind of girl. “Yeah, I got plenty of soup.”
I check out the pantry and he’s right—he’s stocked with two
shelves packed to the brim with soup.
Chicken noodle, beef stew, chicken and dumplings, chicken pot pie, beef
and vegetables, tomato, onion… he must have soup at least once a day. I can’t even imagine having canned soup as
one-third of my meals. The salt content
alone would probably give me a stroke.
“You know,” I say, “we could make it a little tastier with a
few tweaks…”
His face lights up. I’ve been cooking a long time for a lot of
different people, and I have to say, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone so
excited by my cooking. I guess I
shouldn’t be too flattered, considering he’s been eating food from cans for the
past few years. Still, it’s nice to be
appreciated. Chase would rather have
takeout than my cooking.
I grab a bunch of cans from the pantry, including stewed
tomatoes, green beans, beef stock, and refried beans. Jake watches me carefully, as if memorizing
every step for later.
“Can I help?” he asks.
“I can do anything that doesn’t involve too much… um, dexterity.”
I look down at his fingers when he says that. He ducks his head down as he stretches out
what remains of the fingers of his left hand.
“You seem to be able to manage okay with most things,” I
comment.
He nods. “I’ve taught
myself to compensate. But it definitely
makes things harder. And I realize it’s
not… you know, nice to look at.”
“I don’t mind,” I murmur.
“It’s just a few fingers, right?”
I want to ask him what happened to him. How did a guy so comfortable with the
outdoors end up with a case of frostbite?
And what about his noticeable limp?
Also, you don’t lose an eye to frostbite. Something really bad happened to him, but I
have a feeling it would be easier to get him to cook a gourmet meal than to get
the story out of him.
“So the trick to making perfect soup is you have to be
patient,” I tell him. “You want to
simmer it a long time and keep tasting.
And make sure you season properly.”
“Right.” Jake grabs
the salt shaker and I flinch. I yank it
out of his hands. “What? You said to season it!”
“Stuff that comes out of a can is really salty already,” I
say. “You are not allowed to use this without my permission. Got it?”
“All right, all right!”
He grins at me. “Are you always
this bossy when you’re cooking?”
“Yes.” I may as well
be honest—I take great pride in my food, so I want to make sure everything
comes out perfect. “But it’ll be worth
it. I promise.”
I give Jake the task of stirring the soup intermittently,
while I chop up some bacon I find in the fridge. I love food, but if I absolutely had to pick
a favorite food, it would be bacon. I
subscribe to the theory that everything is better with bacon. If I wrote a cookbook, that would be the
title: Better With Bacon.
“Doesn’t it smell insanely good?” I say as I lean over the
pot of soup, allowing the aroma to waft into my nostrils. Jake gives me a funny look, and my cheeks
grow warm. “Sorry. I just love food. Probably too much.”
“No, that’s…” Jake gives me a crooked grin. “I respect that. I really do.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet…”
“No, I really mean it.
My mom… she loves to cook too.” Jake gives the pot a stir, a distant
look in his eyes. “Bake, actually. She
has this chocolate cupcake recipe that’s better than anything you could get in
a bakery. I told her she should go into
business for herself, but… well, she’s not like you.”
I look up from the bacon pieces in front of me. “What does that mean?”
“I mean, she didn’t want to take a risk on something she
loved.” He dips a spoon into the
simmering broth and blows on it. “She
spent her life as a receptionist, and… well, there’s nothing wrong with that,
but it wasn’t her passion. I always thought she should have gone for it with
the baking. I mean, her table always
sold out first at the school bake sales.”
I smile to myself, thinking of a school-aged Jake at a bake
sale, touting his mom’s cupcakes. “Are
you an only child?”
“Yeah.” He takes a
sip from the spoon. “They wanted more
kids, but they couldn’t have any. So it
was just me.”
“They must miss you a lot then.”
His dark eyebrows bunch together. “Yeah, but—”
“I mean, you said you don’t talk to anyone in the outside
world. You don’t even have a phone,
right?”
He places the soup spoon down on the counter and the clang
it makes reverberates throughout the room.
“So? What is that supposed to
mean?”
“Nothing,” I say quickly.
I don’t want to get him riled up, and maybe this is all none of my
business. Okay, it’s definitely none
of my business. “I was just making conversation.”
Jake glares at me for a good thirty seconds before he goes
back to tending the soup. The soup
probably doesn’t need quite this much attention, but I like having him next to
me. And it’s warm by the stove—he’s just
as wet and cold as I am.
We do our tasks in silence for the next fifteen minutes or
so. I get the bacon in a frying pan, and
Jake steps aside to let me work. He
watches the bacon sizzle in the pan.
“I miss my parents a lot,” he says out of nowhere.
I look up at him.
There’s a sad look on his face. “Do
you ever see them?”
“No. Never.”
“Why not?”
He closes his good eye.
“It’s complicated, Natalie. But…
they know I love them. They
understand. So…”
He reaches out with his good hand to stir the soup. I wish I knew what brought him out here. I’d give anything to know. Why would a person leave their family and
friends and live out in the wilderness?
The only thing I can think of is that he’s running from
something. And there’s no chance he’d
tell me what it is.
“By the way.” He
glances up at me. “You can have my
bedroom if you want tonight. Like you
saw, it’s just a twin mattress on the floor—not particularly comfortable—but
you can have it. I’ll take the sleeping
bag.”
I’m oddly touched. I
don’t want to take his bedroom, but at the same time, I’m still achy from
sleeping on the floor last night.
“Okay,” I say. “I
appreciate that.”
“No problem,” he says, and he goes back to stirring the
soup.
After dinner, the hours stretch in front of me. I can’t believe Jake lives here all on his
own with no company, no electricity, and no television,
for God’s sake! I’ve been reading my
book with my itty bitty booklight, but I’m aching to do something else.
Anything else. I know going out to a bar is off the table, but there must be something to do around here.
I’ve got games on my phone, but I don’t want to play them
because they’ll drain the battery, and there’s no way to recharge. If I ever get reception again, I don’t want
my phone to be dead.
I lay down my book on the kitchen table and wander through
the living room, which is now lit only by the embers of the fireplace. I stand over Chase, who woke up briefly after
dinner to have more soup, then went right back to sleep. He’s waking up intermittently, so I guess he
must be okay. It doesn’t seem like he’s going to die, but I’m still worried he
might need hospital attention. What if
he needs… fluids? Or antibiotics. Or…
insulin?
I don’t know. But I’m
not a doctor and neither is Jake.
I stride across the living room to Jake’s room. The door is ajar this time, which I take as a
more welcoming sign than earlier today. I
peer into the room, where he’s lying on his bed, staring up at the
ceiling. There’s an unreadable
expression on his face, and for a moment, I feel like I shouldn’t have
interrupted him. But then he rolls his head
in my direction. “What’s up?”
I push the door the rest of the way open and stand awkwardly
in the doorway. “I’m just… I’m worried
about Chase.”
He looks unimpressed.
“He’s waking up. What’s the
problem?”
“He’s not himself.”
“Yeah? Seems like
that might be an improvement.”
I roll my eyes, even though… well, he’s sort of right.
“Look,” Jake says as he sits up in bed, “if he’s still so
out of it by tomorrow, I’ll try to get him to a hospital. Okay?”
“Okay,” I mumble.
It’s not like I have much choice in the matter. I linger at his door, reluctant to go back to
my book.
He frowns. “Anything
else?”
“No.” I glance back
at the living room, then back at him. “I just… it’s sort of…”
He raises his eyebrows.
“It’s a little… you know…”
“What?”
“It’s boring,” I manage. “It’s just a little boring
here. That’s all.”
His mouth falls open.
“You’re bored?”
My cheeks burn. I wish I hadn’t said that. I want to take back my words, but I
can’t—they’re already out there. He
saved my life yesterday, and now I’m whining that I’m bored. I can see any respect I earned with my gourmet
cooking flying out the window. “Well,
you don’t have television.”
Lame, Natalie. So
lame.
At first, I’m certain he’s going to snap at me. But he doesn’t, which says a lot about how
grateful he is for my cooking and how much we bonded over that snowman. Instead, he laughs. I have a feeling it’s not a sound he makes
very often out here, which is a shame, because he has a nice laugh. I love the
way his eyes crinkle.
“I have a deck of cards,” he says.
Cards. I’ve played hundreds
of games of Spider Solitaire on the computer, but I can’t remember the last
time I’ve played with a physical deck of cards, rather than on a computer. But this sounds like fun.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s
play.”
Jake hops off his bed and rifles around his drawer until he
finds the pack of playing cards. The
binoculars I saw earlier have vanished.
I’m still not sure what to make of those, but I’m not going to ask. I’m just going to assume he’s an avid
birdwatcher. In the middle of
winter. In a blizzard.
“What do you usually play?” I ask Jake as we settle down at
his rickety dining table. I’ve already
gotten a splinter from this damned table.
“Usually?” He pulls a
rusty lighter from his pocket to light the large candle in the middle of the
table. “Solitaire.”
“Oh.” Stupid
question.
“What do you want to play?” he asks me.
I think for a moment.
“How about gin rummy?’
Jake stares at me with his good eye. “Gin
rummy?”
What’s so wrong with gin rummy? “It’s a really fun game.”
“Yeah, if you’re eighty.” He snorts.
“Why don’t we grab some tiles while we’re at it and play a game of
Mahjong?”
I know he’s being sarcastic, but my grandmother taught me
how to play Mahjong when I was a kid and it was pretty fun. But I’m assuming he doesn’t actually have the
tiles, in spite of his comment.
“Fine,” I say. “What
do you like to play when you have company?”
He doesn’t hesitate.
“Poker.”
I lean back in my seat.
“Okay, fine. Let’s play poker.”
A smile plays on his lips.
“You know how to play?”
“Of course I do.”
Drew taught me how to play poker when we were
teenagers. I didn’t play it very often,
but I know the rules. I could get
through a game without humiliating myself.
Probably.
Jake looks at me appraisingly. “All right then. We’ll play Five Card Stud.”
“Don’t we need something to bet with?”
He nods thoughtfully.
“Yeah, I got a bunch of coins.”
He leaves the room, then returns lugging a big jar of
coins. In spite of the fact that he made
fun of me for liking an old lady game, he collects coins the same way my
grandma does. We sort them on the table,
distributing an even number between the two of us. I’m getting a little excited now—this is much
more fun than my boring book.
Jake takes the cards out of the deck, but he’s having a lot
of trouble shuffling them, which isn’t surprising, given what his fingers look
like. He tries to do a bridge, but it’s
clearly a lost cause. Then he tries to
just shuffle them between his palms, but he drops about half of them in the
process.
“You want me to do that?”
I ask.
“Uh…” He looks down at the cards scattered on the table,
then at his fingers. “Yeah, okay. Thanks.”
I gather the cards.
“What do you usually do when you play solitaire?”
He jerks his head in the direction of the bedroom. “I got a card shuffler. But I thought…”
He lowers his eyes, and he doesn’t complete his
thought.
I shuffle the cards, distributing them between the two of
us—five cards apiece. Jake separates the cards and slides each one just to the
edge of the table to pick them up. He
fumbles a little with them, but he manages to get them into his hand. I look at his single eye, trying to read his
expression, but it’s completely blank.
Then I look down at my own cards. Ooh, pair of aces!
Jake is destroying me at Five Card Stud. My little pile of change has been completely
decimated, and he allowed me a “loan” from the coin jar so we could keep
playing, but I quickly lost that too.
I’m now on my second loan, which is dwindling with every hand. Remind me never to gamble in Vegas.
“How are you doing this?” I grumble, as he claims yet
another pile of coins from the center of the table.
He shrugs and smiles.
“Lucky, I guess.”
“Bullshit.” Jake may
have gotten good cards, but there have been plenty of hands where I never even
saw his cards. I assume he must be lying
some percentage of the time, but I’ve never been in a position to call him on
it. Whenever I get really good cards, he
folds almost immediately. And every time
I’ve got bad cards, he seems to sense that too.
It’s so frustrating—I can get anything past him. “What’s your secret?”
“Secret?” He
laughs. “No secret. I’ve just played a lot, so I’m good at
it.”
“That can’t be all.”
His good eye meets mine.
“I’m also good at reading people.”
“A skill that I’m sure comes in handy, living in the middle
of nowhere.” I shuffle the cards,
reluctant to let my ass get handed to me yet again. “So you can read me?”
He leans back in his seat, considering my question. “Yes.
Usually.”
“In what way?”
He hesitates even longer before answering this one. Finally, he says, “You’ve got a tell.”
“A… tell?”
He nods, the shadows flickering across his face in the light
of the single candle.
I stop shuffling and narrow my eyes at him. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” he says, “there’s something you do that tips me
off that you’re lying.”
There is? “You noticed that while we were playing?”
“Actually,” he says, “I noticed it before we even started
playing.”
What does that
mean? “So what’s my tell?”
He shrugs.
I let out a huff.
“You’re seriously not going to tell me?”
He grins at me. “Then
how will I know when you’re lying?”
I glare at him across the table. “You’re really irritating sometimes. You know that?”
He shrugs again.
“Fine.” I slam the deck of cards down on the table—a
reaction that seems to only amuse him.
“Don’t tell me.”
“Okay.”
I want to try to forget about it, but it’s impossible. Is there really something I do that tips
people off that I’m lying? If there is,
that seems like it could be a major liability for me. I don’t want people to know whenever I’m
lying! If nothing else, it will make it
impossible to plan surprise birthday parties.
Does my eyelid twitch?
Do I blink? Wink? Cough?
Sneeze?
Oh my God, what is
it?
“Gah!” I want to smack him. “Come on. Just tell me.
What do I do?”
He laughs. “Okay,
calm down, Natalie. I’ll tell you what
it is.”
“Please do.”
He traces a line on the table with his thumbnail. “You play with the earring on your right
ear.”
My right hand instantly goes to the gold stud in my
ear. “Oh…”
“So… there you go.
That’s your tell. The earring.”
All right. That’s an
easy one. I can definitely control
that. “Thanks for telling me.”
He nods.
I study Jake’s rugged features in the candlelight, at his
blue eye staring directly at me. I may
not be any sort of expert gambler (to say the least), but I would bet the farm
he doesn’t have a tell. I have a feeling
he doesn’t allow other people to know anything about himself that he doesn’t
want them to know. I also believe him
when he says he’s extremely good at reading people.
My hand goes back to my earring. Do I really play with it every time I’m
lying?
He nods at the deck of cards on the table. “So now that you’ve lost your shirt in poker,
how about a little gin rummy?”
I raise my eyebrows at him.
“You know how to play?”
“Sure I do.”
“You said it was a game for old people.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t know how to play.” He leans forward and I get a jolt of
electricity down my spine. Why does he
have to be so damn sexy? It’s insane how drawn I am to him. I can’t remember ever feeling this way about
a man before—even handcredible Chase at the height of our relationship. “What’s
wrong? You scared of my gin rummy
skills?”
“No way!” I scoop up the deck of cards. “Prepare to have your ass handed to you,
mister.”
“We’ll see about that.”
I deal out the cards, all the while watching his face. It makes me uncomfortable to realize he might
know me better than I know myself.
To be continued...
Nice update. I'm just so, so curious why hes alone. And yeah, how does he do laundry?
ReplyDeleteTc
Maybe he has one of the camp laundry things that you hand turn to agitate the laundry and don’t require electricity? Like one of the ones found here? https://laundry-alternative.com/
DeleteI imagined just in the sink? :)
DeleteVery sweet interactions. I love these two together.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
DeleteI love this story. Every Sunday I wish I could purchase the book already and continue reading.
ReplyDeleteI hope there are still many chapters left when the book is published.
Yes, there will be! And there's a bunch of chapters at the beginning that I cut.
DeleteThank you for the new chapter! You do a wonderful job peeling layers off from Jake to reveal his pleasant and appealing self - the way he refers to his parents and him offering his bed to Natalie was really sweet! (Although I tend to agree with Natalie that he might be on the run from something... So I'm relying on you, Annabelle, not to have Jake as a mass murderer or animal torturer or something else that shows that his kindness here was just an act... :) :) )
ReplyDeleteI'm also enjoying their interaction and especially the funny bits: the best lines in this department: "“He’s not himself.” "“Yeah? Seems like that might be an improvement.” " :D
Can't wait for the next chapter! Thanks for writing and sharing!
Love your comments! Don't worry--you won't be disappointed!
DeleteHmmmmmmmmm
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't really make sense for someone to live in a remote location like this without power. It just really, really doesn't, unless... Well, I've got an idea, but it's a supernatural one. After the line about Jake's parents, it's really the only thing I can come up with. Love how far you've come from predictable scenarios, Annabelle! Your stories have always been engaging, even when they are about ordinary folk doing ordinary things, but I love that I never know which way it's going to go! I have my theories about this one tho :)
Oh no, nothing supernatural in this story! I learned my lesson.
DeleteAw that's too bad! It really seemed like you were setting Jake up to be a ghost or hallucination or... something. That's how much I just can't reconcile living with no electricity out in the wilderness away from loved ones. I can't wait to see where you ARE going with this. It seems so far fetched but I'm confident you can pull it off.
DeleteOut of curiosity, did your vampire novel not do well?
Here in Michigan living without electricity or running water is considered a vacation! We flock up north to do just that.
DeleteYeah, I researched people who live off the grid before writing this. I would hate it, but some people make it work.
DeleteAw they are so cute! I'm not finding this story super devy yet, I'm hoping Jake is more disabled then he seems (haha, bad girl I know), but I'm assuming your building up to it...but i am getting impatient
ReplyDeleteThanks! It does have some devvy moments, but I don't think it's going to be MUCH more than what it is now. So if that's what you're waiting for, you might be disappointed :(
DeleteDon't worry, i won't be disappointed! but i will temper my expectations about him secretly being an aka...your writing is boss as always i will read to the end
DeleteGlad to hear it! :)
Deletei think he needs a telescope pirate style not binoculars. loving your work as usual... hanging til Sunday.
ReplyDeleteThat is a really good point!
DeleteSo many questions!! I love the suspense and these two. Chase on the other hand needs to get eaten by wolves.
ReplyDeletelol!
DeleteAlso thanks so much for the audiobook of My Perfect Ex-boyfriend! I'm enjoying it now, and I hope more audio books are to come!
ReplyDeleteSo glad! The audiobook was published by Tantor, so it's up to them if they want to take on more of my books!
DeleteI really hope they do! I have always wanted someone to read me a devvy story...
DeleteLove all of the interaction this chapter. Thank you for posting!
ReplyDeleteThanks!
Delete