Page 29 of Just Act Natural

“You got it?” he says, incorrectly assuming I’ve listened to all of his instructions.

“It seems pretty self-explanatory. Wood—cut.”

He chuckles and passes over the knife and wood. I make my first pass—and utterly fail to scrape off any wood.

I exhale a laugh. “The wood-cut process is harder than you make it look.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice.”

The second try, I get the knife lodged in the wood too deep to do anything and have to see-saw it out. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

“It happens.”

The third comes a little bit too close to my fingers. “Whoops.”

“Maybe it’s getting too dark to whittle.” He gently takes the knife away from me.

Seriously, good call.

“So this is the life of an outdoorsman?” I ask. “Exhaust yourself all day and let boredom put you to bed at eight every night?”

“What do you usually do in the evenings?”

“Take electricity for granted.”

“Addict.”

“I curl up in a blanket and read, mostly. I knew I should have finished the book I’m reading before the trip started. I gave myself a terrible cliffhanger.”

The gargoyle has finally revealed himself to the human he’s in love with, but will she accept a monster mate? Obviously the answer is yes, but I still need to know how it all plays out.

“What’s it about?”

“Oh, uh…it’s a romance.” I’m not sure how cool Grant is with the genre. Josh always treated my reading habits as a dirty little secret. I don’t want to give him too many details if he’s going to be a pain about it.

“You can borrow my e-reader. I don’t know if I have anything downloaded you’d want to read, though.”

I clutch at him. It’s happening a lot, and I should probably stop, but dang, dude.Biceps. “You brought an e-reader?”

“It keeps me from going insane from boredom.”

“I thought that was the whittling.”

“It’s a two-prong approach.” He unzips his tent, reaches in, and pulls out a naked e-reader two seconds later. He places it in my lap. “You can borrow it.”

“You said cards are useless weight. What’s this?”

“Vital to my mental well-being.”

I grin at him and pick up the slim e-reader. “You’d really let me scroll through your book library? That’s very bold of you.”

“Why is that?”

“Oh, you know…” It occurs to me he actually might not know. He probably has perfectly normal titles on his e-reader, unlike some people in this vestibule.

His eyebrows twitch. “Wait, what’s on your library you wouldn’t want people to see?”

I make a face. “Nothing. It’s all totally average and bland. Super vanilla.”

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