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 so good to sit and not be bouncing up and down on a horse.
“You know if a man hears a woman sigh like that in bed, he’d know he did something right.”
Eliza squeaked before she could stop herself. It sounded so silly and childish, bringing a heat to her cheeks she could only hope he attributed to the fire.
“I don’t think that’s a subject we should speak of.” Eliza nearly cringed at how prim she sounded, almost like the mothers in her ward who used to chastise her.
“Obviously you ain’t spent a lot of time around campfires and cowboys then, have you?” He peered at her from beneath his hat. “Bedsport is what they jaw about.”
“Ah, well, it’s a very good thing I am not a cowboy then. I didn’t mean to bother you. I just wanted to read before I retired for the night.” Her mouth was drier than sand, and she wondered if she would ever feel comfortable around Mr. Wolfe.
“Are you a schoolmarm or something?”
Eliza couldn’t stop the chuckle that erupted from her throat. “A schoolmarm? No, definitely not. I am a student, not a teacher.” She had no patience to teach anyone, especially the LDS teachings she didn’t agree with.
“Who is your teacher then?” He pushed up the brim of his hat to stare at her, his dark eyes more intense than the deepest embers of the fire.
“He-he died a while back. I continue on learning though.” She again tried to distract the man. His unceasing perusal made her want to squirm, so she looked away and loaded the fire with wood. “I’ll just put my book away so we can both get some sleep then.” She managed a weak smile and tucked the blanket around herself, turning her back on Mr. Wolfe.
His gaze was palpable, burning into her skin like the fire she’d built. It seemed like hours until her eyes finally closed in exhaustion, and her dreams were plagued with uneasy images of dark creatures and danger.
Chapter Two
“You’re going to have to wake up some time, so it might as well be now.”
Eliza started awake, momentarily confused by the cold morning air, the unfamiliar surroundings, the hard ground beneath, and the man standing over her with the biggest knife she’d ever seen.
A gasp flew from her mouth, and she was instantly and completely awake as if she’d had a bucket of cold water thrown over her. Heart pounding like a bass drum, she finally got a clear view of Grady Wolfe. He was tall and whipcord thin, with wide-set shoulders and long limbs, likely giving him a great reach, agility, and speed.
She stared at his face. Each piece was nothing special, but together made Grady absolutely striking. He had the darkest eyes she’d ever seen, barely a distinction between the pupil and the iris. They were velvet pools of dark ice set in gaunt cheeks with at least three days’ worth of whiskers. A dirty hat covered waves of brown hair brushing his collar. His lips were set in a tight line, almost as sharp as the knife in his hand.
Grady Wolfe was positively frightening.
“Mr. Wolfe?” Eliza didn’t know