Lots of things.
She remembered how gently those fingers had explored the skin on the back of her neck. You’re sopping wet. Her cheeks grew hot over the thoughts that flickered through her mind. She drank from her glass of water, then picked up her interrogation where she’d left off. “Were you in the military?”
“What makes you ask?”
“Your tidiness. Everything folded uniformly, stored neatly. Boots lined up in pairs.”
“You must’ve given the place a thorough search.”
“Didn’t you expect me to?”
“Yeah.” He stretched his long legs out in front of him, at an angle to the table. “I knew you’d snoop.”
“So what did you hide in advance of my search? Handcuffs? Leather straps?”
“Only my laptop. Not well enough, as it turns out. But I didn’t think you’d have the strength to move the locker out from under the bed.”
“It took every ounce of energy I had.”
“You had enough to pounce on me.”
“But not enough to hold on.”
“You should have thought of that.”
“I did.”
“Oh, right. The butcher knife.”
“Little good that did me.”
“It poked a hole in my best scarf.”
He had the gall to look amused, which irked her. She tried to catch him off guard. “Tell me about the war.”
Her probe had found a sore spot. He pulled his legs in, sat up straighter, took a sip of coffee. Normal, inconsequential actions, but in this case, revealing.
“Well?” she said.
“What do you want to know?”
“What branch of the service were you in?”
Nothing.
“When did you serve?”
Nothing.
“Where?” When he didn’t answer that, she said, “Nothing to say on the topic of warfare?”
“Only that I don’t recommend it.”
They eyed each other across the table. In his steady gaze she read a warning that he wanted the discussion to end there. She didn’t press her luck. “The boxes of bullets on the shelf in the bathroom…”
“I thought they’d be out of your reach.”
“I had to stretch on tiptoe. If you have bullets, you must have guns.”
“My arsenal didn’t turn up during your search?”
She shook her head.
“Too bad. Otherwise you could have shot me instead of attacking with your fingernail and a butcher knife. It would have taken less energy.”
Again, he was making fun of her. She struck back. “Was yours a violent crime?”
His grin dissolved. No, not dissolved, because that denoted a gradual fade. His levity vanished in an instant, that corner of his mouth dropping back into place to form the firm line it usually was. “Extremely.”
His blunt reply filled her with desperation and a wrenching sense of despair. She wished he had denied or mitigated it. Still clinging to a vain hope, she said, “If it was something you did during wartime—”
“It wasn’t.”
“I see.”
He gave a harsh laugh. “You don’t see a bloody thing.”
He stood up so suddenly, she nearly jumped out of her skin. In reaction, she shot to her feet, sending her chair over backward. When it crashed to the floor, she cringed.
He stepped around the table, picked up her chair, and set it upright with angry emphasis, banging the legs against the floor. “Stop jumping every time I move.”
“Then stop scaring me.”
“I’m not.”
“You are!”
“I don’t mean to.”
“But you do anyway.”
“Why? I’m not going to hurt you.”
“If that’s true, then let me call my husband—”
“No.”
“—and tell him that I’m all right.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“We’ve been through this. I’m tired of talking about it. I’m also tired of going outside to pee against a damn tree, which I’ve been doing all afternoon so I wouldn’t disturb your rest. But now I’m going into the bathroom to use the commode and grab a shower. Make yourself at home. Snoop to your heart’s content,” he said, spreading his arms wide at his sides. “The place is all yours.”
He collapsed the screen with several loud claps of wood against wood and set it in its original position against the wall. “It stays here.”
At the door of the bathroom, he switched on the light, but before going in, he turned back. “You wouldn’t make it ten yards beyond the door before getting lost, and I don’t feel like going after you tonight. So deep-six any plans you have to bolt.”
Then he went into the bathroom.
As soon as he’d closed the door behind him, she retrieved the laptop from the sofa, where he’d placed it when he set the table for their supper. She sat down with it at the dining table, raised the top, woke it up, and placed the cursor in the box for the password.
Her fingers settled on the home keys. And stayed there. How could she possibly guess what his password was when she knew absolutely nothing about the man? Not his name, birthday, hometown, occupation, hobby. Nothing.
She tried dozens of combinations anyway, some with military themes, most of them ridiculous, but, as expected, none was successful in unlocking the computer.
“Damn it!”
“No luck?”
Startled, she turned around in the seat of the chair, not having heard him leave the bathroom. He was wearing only his jeans and was carrying his boots, socks, and sweater. If she’d thought he was intimidating before, he was even more so like this. Damp hair. Barefoot. Bare-chested.
Flustered, she turned back to the laptop, none too gently lowered the cover, and stood up. “Go to hell.”
“You said that already.”
“And I meant it.”
She walked around him and headed for the bathroom.
“I saved you some hot water.”
She slammed the door and went to flip the lock, only to discover there wasn’t one.
Longing for a shower, lured by the clean smell of his soap and shampoo but afraid of being naked, she settled for washing out of the basin with one of his damned neatly folded washcloths. She dabbed it against her blood-matted hair, but it did little to break up the scab and, besides, it hurt.
Hanging on a hook on the back of the door was the flannel shirt she’d slept in last night. She’d changed back into her running clothes before he’d returned that morning, but now she couldn’t resist replacing them with the shirt.
She also yielded to the temptation of using his hairbrush on the parts of her head not affected by the sore goose egg and scab. However, the intimacy implied by that was unsettling. She cleaned her teeth with her index finger.
She switched out the light before opening the door. He was sitting in the recliner, reading a paperback book by the light of the lamp. In her absence, he’d put on a plain white T-shirt and white socks. He didn’t raise his head or otherwise acknowledge that she was there.
She slipped between the sheets and removed her tights, then rolled onto her side to face the wall.
A half hour later, he turned out the lamp. She was still wide awake and acutely aware of him as he approached the bed. She squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath.
Wild with fear, she mentally chanted, Please don’t, please don’t, please don’t.
But alongside that silent plea for him not to molest her, not to kill her, was another, equally strong, that he not disappoint her. It was stupid and inexplicable, but there it was. For reasons that had nothing to do with fear, she didn’t want him to be a degenerate, a rapist, a murderer, or in any way deranged or evil.
“I know you’re awake. Look at me.”