motion with his hand.
“It’s late and dark. I was going to stop here at this clearing for the night.” She sounded quite sure of herself, or perhaps she was just a really good liar. Grady would put good money on her being the latter.
“What clearing?” Grady peered around, still trying to focus on where they were.
She pointed to the left up ahead of them. “That one there. I hear a source of running water, and there is a line of boulders to block the wind.”
Damned if she wasn’t right, the little vixen. It was the perfect clearing to stop for the night. He’d be a fool to continue on with throbbing balls in the pitch dark. She turned her back and retrieved her horse, leaving him standing there beneath the tree.
“Suit yourself.” Grady limped over to his horse, and by the time he made it over to the clearing, she’d already settled in and somehow unsaddled and hobbled her horse. The schoolmarm was currently building a ring of stones, presumably to make a fire.
He stepped toward her and she stopped, looking up at him with those spectacles winking at him. “Are you planning on sharing my campsite?”
“I’m planning on stopping for the night and resting my balls. You kicked them clear up to my throat, woman.” He ignored her disapproving cluck and hobbled his horse. As he uncinched the strap around the saddle, he kept an eye on his strange companion.
She created a perfect circle from the rocks, placing them so tightly together no sparks could get under or over them. Then she set about gathering twigs, and he was so amused, Grady sat down to watch her. Like a little chipmunk, she used her skirt to gather as many twigs as she could find in the moonlight clearing. She sat down on her haunches and built a triangular-shaped bundle in the middle of the ring of stones.
Grady wondered where the hell she’d learned how to make a fire. He’d never seen such a thing before. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
Again, she ignored him and continued on her task. She reached into a travel bag and pulled out what he recognized as waterproof matches. He honestly expected her to be there for at least another thirty minutes before she gave up and asked for help.
The fire flared to life, making his eyes sting at the sudden brightness.
Hell and damnation. She sure didn’t look as if she could take care of herself, but she’d just showed him that was untrue. Maybe she was much cleverer than he gave her credit for, or perhaps she was a confidence man, er, woman. Grady watched her with a new set of eyes.
There was still the matter of why she’d been following him, and why she was sitting there pretty as she pleased making camp with a man she didn’t know, alone and unprotected. It was the strangest situation and it didn’t sit right with him, which meant it was wrong.
“What’s your name, honey?”
This made her stop in her twig gathering to stare at him. “Pardon me?”
He leaned back against a rock and folded his arms, assessing the little wren. “Your name? Or is that a secret?”
“You may call me Miss, uh, Eliza.” It was the first time he’d seen her ruffled. The hunter in him assessed his prey, and she was not as confident as she appeared.
“Eliza what?”
“Just Miss Eliza.” She arranged her skirt in front of her, then began feeding larger sticks from the pile beside her into the fire. It flickered merrily enough to make him want to throw sand on it. “And you, sir, what is your name?”
“Wolfe. Grady Wolfe.”
She glanced up at him, pushing her spectacles up her nose. The firelight danced across the glassy surface so he couldn’t quite see her eyes. “As in the big bad?”
Grady couldn’t help the annoyance mixed with amusement that raced through him at her wit. The woman definitely had a brain and a sharp tongue. “None other.”
“I read the Brothers Grimm once. Perhaps I am the hunter instead of the helpless girl.” She continued to feed the fire, seemingly uncaring of the verbal game she was playing with him.
“You sure as hell don’t look like a hunter.” He watched her closely; her reactions would tell him a lot of exactly what his short charlatan had up her sleeve. “And more like a helpless girl.”
“Should I be afraid you’re going to swallow me whole then?” She rose to her feet and put her hands on her hips looking like the damn schoolmarm again.
Grady’s gaze raked her up and down, taking in the frumpy clothes, the dark hair, the ugly shoes. He didn’t know what to make of Just Miss Eliza yet, but he would. She could count on that.
“I’ll be grabbing some shuteye then. Much obliged for ah, building the fire.” He pulled his hat down low and blocked her out.
Eliza thought for certain he could hear her knees knocking together. She never thought herself a thespian, but after that performance, she was ready for Shakespeare. Her heart thumped so hard, her throat vibrated from the force of it.
Various parts of her body ached from the tackle and then the fall. The man had a body harder than an oak tree, she could attest to that fact. Grady Wolfe was larger than life, and he scared her to pieces. Eliza had dug up courage from somewhere near her feet to pretend she was unaffected by him.
However, that was far from the truth. She shook with her body’s reaction, whether it was fear, excitement, or just plain shock. Thank God she’d read the book on how to start a campfire. It was the only thing she remembered as she stood there quaking like a little girl in front of the exceptionally tall, strong man. The closest she’d ever come to touching a man was handing her father his clean shirt. Yet she’d been pressed against Grady Wolfe from head to toe, and it had frightened her as much as it excited her.
She must’ve convinced him that she had been planning on stopping at the clearing. It was blind luck there had actually been a clearing and that it was a good spot to stop for the night. Eliza had been miserable enough to stop an hour earlier, so the clearing was a gift she was quite thankful for, and glad it was suitable.
When a lizard darted near her foot, she bit her lip to the point of pain to keep the screech from popping out. Mr. Wolfe had apparently decided to sleep, and she didn’t want him to wake up anytime soon. It would take her most of the night to recover from her first encounter with the man.
She needed to keep up appearances, to convince him she was simply a fellow traveler so he would maybe offer to travel with her. That was her master plan anyway; whether or not it would work remained to be seen. What good would she do Angeline if she gave up so easily?
She fed the fire with some larger wood, still surprised it was crackling so nicely. Doing mundane chores almost as if she was keeping house definitely helped, too.
She retrieved her blanket from the saddle and a book from her bag. Reading always relaxed her, and she certainly needed relaxing. Eliza picked her favorite, Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth. It transported her to a world outside her own, and Professor Von Hardwigg reminded her of Ephraim Monroe, her mentor and friend who had taught her so much. She laid out her blanket up against a smooth rock and sat down, stifling a groan. After she managed to get her boots off, she couldn’t control the sigh that escaped. It felt
