Page 6 of A Heart of Winter
Certainly not some psychotic human with an axe.
Certainly not . . . except that when I trudged my way into the small clearing the noise was coming from, it wasn’t just a human with an axe. He was something magic—had to be. There was no other explanation for this man.
Shirtless and sweaty even in the snow, he was tall and golden, the muscles in his back flexing with the motions of wood chopping. He was working on the trunk of an old tree that had been mostly cleared, splitting logs, then tossing them into the back of a shiny black truck. The thing looked new, and while carrying was what trucks were for, I’d gotten used to men driving them as symbols of their insecure masculinity, not so much the work they’d been built for to begin with.
This guy? Surely he didn’t need anything to remind him he was a man.
Six feet tall if he was anything, with unblemished golden skin and hair as black as a raven’s wing, with the same iridescent sheen. I wondered, for a wild moment, if he was a raven. There were witches who could shift into creatures. Morwenna, for one.
But as magical as this man was, with the sun shining off his skin through a sheen of sweat that made him seem like hewas sparkling, he wasn’t performing magic of any kind. He had some, inherently, as all humans did, but not terribly much. Not many had enough to become witches, but life itself was a kind of magic.
He paused in his work, wiping his forearm across his brow and rolling his shoulders back, and I must have made an involuntary squeak at the display, because he whipped his head around to look at me, deep dark eyes wide.
For a moment, we both just stood there, taking each other in. When he’d clearly inspected me and found me not a threat, he offered a smile that showed his teeth and . . . balls, the man could have been a model. Should have, maybe. Whatever he did for a living, it was a shame that it didn’t involve being ogled by me.
“Lost?”
It took me a moment to parse what he was saying. Was he lost? Talking about the old TV show,Lost? He did look a tiny bit like the actor from that show, with those gorgeous eyes and that jawline that could probably cut diamonds. To say nothing of his perfect chest when he turned his whole body toward me.
The man was a masterpiece.
But no, he was asking me if I was lost. I shook my head. “No. No, I’m staying in my friend’s cabin, it’s right over there.” I motioned in the direction of the cabin, and his eyes widened. “I just arrived last night, and when I heard you working, I thought I should come out and talk to you.”
“Your . . . friend? I thought all this land probably belonged to the state since Mr. Malone died. He never had a problem with us taking the old wood to use, but I—I didn’t even think to check if someone had bought it, I’m so sorry?—”
“No, no, you’re fine. Morwenna wouldn’t have a problem with people using firewood from the land.” I waved at where he was clearly chopping up logs that were long dead and dried out.“You clearly know what you’re doing, though, and I don’t have a clue.”
He cocked his head and glanced down at the log he’d been working on. “I used to, ah, do this for my parents.” His voice gave a hint of a crack at that, and he took a deep breath, shaking himself before he looked back up at me. His eyes were a bit glassy, but he moved on. “I’m just going to be in town a few weeks, and it turned out it’s going to be colder than I expected.”
I scrubbed a hand down the back of my neck and couldn’t meet his eye. Great, I was inconveniencing people even in the middle of frozen nowhere.
Not that he would believe me if I told him that.
“Yeah. It’s, um, it’s probably going to snow a lot for a while. Thing is, there’s some wood at the cabin, but I”—I held out my hands, covered with suede gloves, then frowned at them—“okay, that doesn’t make the point I meant to. I meant to show you these soft hands that haven’t done an honest day’s labor in a long, long time. I just . . . I don’t work. That is, not at things like this. I thought maybe I’d try to find someone to chop wood for me.”
Just that, and his grin was back. “Then you’re in luck.” He motioned to the back of the truck, sitting open. “Turns out I like guys with soft hands. Have a seat and keep me company while I work, and I’ll chop some for you too.”
My mouth fell open and I gaped like a dying fish. “Oh I—I didn’t mean to put you out or?—”
“Put me out?” His deep brown eyes slid down my body like a physical touch. As though he could see anything through the heavy wool coat and gloves and boots and such. “You’ve got to be better company than my own head. Hang out and talk to me, and I’ll be happy to chop you some wood. I should do more of it, honestly, I’m starting to get out of shape in the city.”
“The city?” I perked right up at that. Maybe he lived in New York, and I could make a new friend back home while surviving this disaster. Without another word, I followed his previous suggestion, picking my way across the snow and pulling myself onto the tailgate of his truck. “What city are you from?”
“Currently, San Francisco,” he said as he turned back to chopping. I wanted to be disappointed, but the ‘currently’ part gave me hope. “I’ve been working for a law firm there for the last few years, since I finished law school at Berkeley.”
“Tell me you’re not moving to this frozen hellscape,” I demanded. I didn’t love San Francisco like New York, but almost anything was better than Minnesota. Yes, I’d decided that after being there less than twenty-four hours.
His laughter reminded me of Morwenna’s, rich and deep and full of genuine joy. “Hellscape, huh?” He glanced around, cocked his head, and gave a shrug like ‘yeah, maybe you’re right,’ before going back to chopping again. “No, I’m only here because—This is where I grew up. My parents lived in a house a couple of miles from here.”
Lived, he’d said. Combined with the sadness on his face earlier, my brain caught up with what he was saying. His parents had died. “I’m so sorry.”
He smiled back, a little bittersweet this time. “Thank you. They, um, they were in a car accident in June. It’s been almost four months, and part of me hasn’t quite taken it on board yet. Like, I keep waking up in my childhood bed thinking I’m just here to visit, and silly dad once again didn’t order enough firewood for the whole winter, so I have to come out here to try to fix it for them.”
I understood the feeling all too well. “I wish I could say it gets better. It’s been—well, my mother died when I was five. I don’t even remember what she looked like anymore, and sometimes I still think I can hear her singing for a moment when I wake up.”I sighed and leaned back, staring up at the sky. “The pain doesn’t ever really get smaller. The rest of life just gets bigger around it.”
“That’s beautiful. Are you a poet?”
“Me?” I couldn’t hold back a bark of laughter at that. “Not even a little. Just a rich layabout with too much time on his hands.”
