Page 13 of Mountain Man's Muse
He ducked his head a little. “Ain’t art.”
She lifted one eyebrow. “What do you call it?”
“Messing around.”
She shook her head. “You put your touch on these. Simple—” He snorted and she gave him a hard look. “But strong. Straightforward and true. Quite lovely.”
He straightened. “Definitely not me. Come on in here. We’ll eat at the counter where there’s an actual view.”
She wondered why he was so dismissive of the joy he obviously found in and gave to the work. As a musetta, she was irked that he would deny himself. She followed him to the small kitchen that looked out over a stand of birch trees, banded black and white against the blue sky.
“Every window shows something different,” she noted. The faedrealii had no windows, just frames where the illusions shifted at the queen’s whim.
Josh pulled out a stool tucked under the kitchen counter and gestured for her to sit. “A good reminder that every day is something different.”
She stared at him curiously as she sat and let him ease her closer to the counter. “You are a philosopher too?”
He took a seat beside her. “Hardly. Most people would say nothing here changes, but that’s only because they’re so busy looking for something else, they don’t see what’s right in front of them.” His jaw tightened a moment as he stared out the window, then he slanted her a wry grin. “So there I go, philosophizing. It’s taken me about as far as a rocking horse on an oil slick.”
Their thighs bumped in the close quarters. From a skillet between them, he served up a fluffy mixture of egg, potato, sausage, and bright bell pepper bits. She recognized all the ingredients, but when the first forkful slid into her mouth, her eyes widened.
Apparently the tongue was not as easily fooled by illusion. She was halfway through her plate before she realized Josh was smiling at her.
“Your kind don’t eat enough, do they?”
She took another defiant bite before she answered. “Where I come from, a lot is different from here.” In the faedrealii, every day was very much the same: food that sparkled—and tasted—like sand, views of nothing real, and the fear. Of course the fear.
He must have caught something in her expression because he put down his fork to brush her hair back from her face. “You’re here now, and you’re safe. Unless I recruit you to feed the chickens. The rooster is a cocky bastard.”
Adelyn leaned into his caress. “I think I can deal with one…rooster.” She gave him a slow smile.
He paused with his hand at her nape, then straightened her stool. “Finish your dinner like a good girl. I got dessert if you want it.”
She added a wicked slant to her lips. “I bet I know what it is. But it isn’t for good girls.”
To her delight, hot color stained his cheeks. Had any of her kind ever blushed? She couldn’t imagine a pursuit wicked enough to fluster a fae. No, she would only find such a gorgeous, riotous fever in her sun-touched mountain man.
He pulled a mock scowl and nudged her plate. “There are seconds if you want them.”
“I do want,” she confessed with another suggestive glance from beneath her lashes. “Maybe thirds.”
When they finished, he made her sit while he cleaned up. She had never seen dishes washed before. The plates from a faedrealii feast—spun with illusion from bracken leaves or shards of ice or nothing at all—were torn or smashed or disappeared when backs were turned.
She rather thought she preferred the fae method.
She brought herself up short. Of course she preferred the fae way. Shewasfae. And the only way to get back to her way of life was to end the hunter’s. The impossible compulsion pressed her harder than Wolly’s insistent stare at the back of her head.
Josh dunked the dishes in lemon-scented bubbles. “I’ll fire up the cell signal booster. I meant to do that as soon as we got home, but I was distracted.” He glanced at her over his shoulder. The intensity of his gaze sparked something in her; not quite a blush, but… “Maybe we can reach the Hunters and find out when they’ll be back.”
Curse the hunter, hiding in plain sight. Adelyn gripped the edge of the stool as the blood rushed out of her head. “Tell me about them.”
His brows lifted. “You’ve never met them?”
“No. We have…acquaintances in common.”
“They’re good people. They’ll help you.”
They’d kill her if they discovered her intent. And they weren’t people at all. Not that Josh could know that.
