“Look, I can’t explain why, but my body needs a lot of food to sustain itself. I’ll get sick as all get-out if I don’t eat constantly.”
Her delicate, sandy-colored eyebrows arched up in surprise. “Constantly?”
Ian handed her a bowl and settled his hip against the counter to tuck into his meal. But Elyse had other ideas about the way meal-time should go and made her way through the small kitchen to the table. She even pulled a chair out for him before she sat in the one right next to it.
“I usually eat standing up.”
“Why?”
Ian took a bite to stall as he mulled over why he was so damned comfortable avoiding tables outside of restaurants. After swallowing, he shuffled to the chair and sat down beside her. “I guess because I’ve always been alone. Tables are for families.”
“Well, now you have me.”
Now you have me. Her words lifted the hairs on his arms, and he sat there stunned, watching her eat. He had someone. Really had her. Elyse was wearing his ring as proof.
Ian Silver wasn’t a lone grizzly anymore.
Elyse was wrong, though. He wasn’t the one who had her. She’d had him since the day he’d woken up on Afognak Island with her picture tucked into that envelope. He’d wanted her. Feared her for what that attraction could mean for him. Deep inside, there was this warm tendril that unfurled like a fern frond a little more each time she spoke to him, or each time he learned something new about her. It wasn’t love yet, but if she kept declaring things like that, she was going to own him, heart and soul. A dangerous game for both of them.
“Where are you from?” Elyse asked between bites.
The temptation to tell her the truth was overwhelming. He was from a dark den in a dark cabin in a dark cave made for long sleeps. In his mind, he’d always called it the Monster House. That had been home base until Miller had burned it. She didn’t need to see the darkness of his life, though, so instead, he answered, “Everywhere. Here and there.”
She stopped eating and stared at him. With a slow blink, she said, “You know we’ll have to actually get to know each other at some point.”
“Alaska.”
Elyse pursed her lips. “Where in Alaska?”
Stifling a growl at her getting too close to his secrets, he leaned back in his chair and listed off the places he’d stayed this warm season. “Fairbanks, Coldfoot, Nome, Kodiak Island, specifically Port Lions and Larsen Bay, Afognak, Trapper Creek—”
“Okay. I get it. You don’t want to talk about where you’re from.”
“I’m from everywhere, like I said.”
“Or you’re from nowhere.” Elyse cocked her head with a challenging look glinting in those gorgeous green-gold eyes of hers, then went back to eating and completely ignored him.
Nowhere. A good place to hail from for a ghost.
“What about you? Where are you from?”
“Anchorage.”
“City girl,” he said, teasing in desperation to see a smile on her face again.
She scraped the bottom of her bowl, so Ian stood and refilled it for her. When he sat back down and settled the steaming beef stew in front of her, she said, “I used to spend time out here with my Uncle Jim in the summers when I didn’t have school. He and his woman, Marta, didn’t ever have children of their own, and my mom was overwhelmed raising me and Josiah by herself. She got the summers off of being a parent when she sent us here. And it was fine by us, because we got to help my uncle around the homestead.” Elyse ghosted him a glance, then returned to her food. “I fell in love with this place when I was seven.”
“Is that why you’re so hard on yourself for struggling here?”
“Yeah. When I stayed with my uncle, I thought there was nothing he couldn’t do, you know? He could fix anything and come up with a solution to every problem. I watched him dig a water filtration system to get water in this cabin, just because Marta wanted it. I saw him treat her like a queen as much as he was able, and he never got impatient with explaining how and why he did things around the homestead. My dad wasn’t in the picture, so Uncle Jim filled this void in me I couldn’t figure out how to fill up when I lived in Anchorage. Josiah always loved this place, but me? I loved this place.” She pursed her lips and shook her head, shrugging her shoulders. “It always felt like home, and my real home in the city felt temporary. I think my mom saw that, too, because even when Josiah started wanting to stay in the city and spend the warm months shooting the shit with his friends, she kept sending me here.”