Unbound: (InterMix) Read Online Free PDF Page B

of.
    He entered the cottage quietly but found her awake. She offered a dozy wave from the
     rocker, and the hand towel wadded beside the basin told him she’d had a wash while
     he’d been gone. She’d changed as well, her magenta top replaced by a butter-colored
     zip-up.
    As he peeked in at the waning fire he asked, “Stomach still stable?”
    “It is.”
    “I thought I’d make oatmeal for supper. If you think you can keep that down . . . ?”
    She smiled, the gesture as warm as the stove before him. “We’ll find out.”
    He most certainly wouldn’t be smiling in Merry’s position—guts churned up, trapped
     in some stroppy bastard’s cottage, dehydrated and sick. He managed to smile back,
     hoping the result didn’t appear too disingenuous.
    Merry didn’t look quite so poorly as before. There was color in her face, life in
     her eyes. It boded well, making it likely she had a virus and could probably avoid
     a trip to hospital.
    She had one foot on the floor, hugging the other leg to her middle and staring at
     the hills to the south. Rob fetched an armful of logs from the shed and stoked the
     fire, then settled in the free chair, joining her in gazing out the window.
    It was chilly for late September—or was it October now? Rob knew better how to guess
     than he had last year, but he still had much to learn about the rhythm of everything.
     The first ground frost had come only a week earlier, and he suspected that meant it
     was still September.
    The day was clear and bright but with the unmistakable bite of the approaching winter
     on the wind. It smelled of a dozen trips north with his father and older brother,
     stalking red deer, forgetting for a weekend the stresses of childhood and the sting
     of whatever words his mum had last lashed him with. Playing tourist in some simpler
     life out of a history book, imagining his rifle were a bow and arrow. Imagining he
     was Rob Roy or Robin Hood, any Rob other than some lanky outcast from West Yorkshire
     with no mates.
    These days he stalked to keep meat in his diet, and though the taste of venison had
     long lost its novelty, the hunt thrilled him just as it had twenty-five years ago.
     He always felt a touch sad after a successful stalk, knowing he’d have no reason to
     do so again for months. Fly fishing didn’t offer quite the same rush.
    “I can’t get over how quiet it is,” Merry murmured. “Even after two weeks.”
    “After two years out here, I can’t get over how noisy it is in the village.”
    “Whose home was this, originally? Who built it?”
    “A tenant sheep farmer and his family, or so I was told. Sometime in the 1840s.”
    “Wow.”
    “It’s been well maintained, but never modernized like most of the surviving cottages.”
    “No electricity, I’ve gathered.”
    He shook his head.
    “What about water? How does the tap out back work?”
    “The previous owner had a pump system installed, fed from the creek. Though you still
     have to boil whatever you drink or cook with.”
    She smiled. “You’re kind of a badass.”
    He looked to the floor, unsure how to process the compliment, and shrugged. “You get
     used to the hassle.” The hassle was comforting; the rituals of preparing things as
     essential as water and heat. And who needed mod cons if they were never in any hurry
     to be anywhere, ever? It was a luxury in itself, Rob thought, having the time to do
     all these things in his antiquated ways.
The luxury of endless, ready distractions.
    “Though come December,” he said, “I do miss an indoor bathroom and hot water on demand.
     The stuff that comes through the pump is dead cold, and you have babysit it to make
     sure it doesn’t freeze.”
    Merry made a face, possibly impressed, possibly confused why anyone would want to
     live this way. But caught on a sudden realization, all at once Rob didn’t care what
     her expression said.
    She was . . . she was beautiful.
    He’d missed it at first, so consumed by