“Very practical,” she corrects, but I catch the hint of a smile in her voice. “I steal leftovers from Eden. They’re beeswax.”
I watch her shuffle to a squat woodstove in the corner, open the door, and work on lighting it. Within minutes, she’s got a fire crackling, and I immediately feel the warmth.
“Better?” she asks.
“Much.” I watch her move around her house, closing curtains against the storm, adjusting candles. “You’re good at this.”
“Practice.” She settles into her chair, but there’s tension in her shoulders. “This city has shitty infrastructure. Just pray the water main doesn’t burst.”
I chuckle softly. I want to ask about earlier, about what she was going to say before the lights went out, but something in her posture wards me off. “My ankle feels better already.”
“The ice is working, then. Speaking of which…” She gestures toward the window where snow is piling against the glass. “There’s no shortage of that for the next few days.”
“Silver lining.”
“Always looking for the bright side, aren’t you?”
There’s something almost wistful in her voice. “I’m working on it I guess.”
She shakes her head with a smile. “You spend enough time with Eden and you’ll be sniffing daisies and smiling a lot more.”
The fire pops, and I watch Eliza’s profile in the flickering light. She looks younger somehow, softer, without the defensive edge she usually carries.
“You should get out of those wet clothes,” she says suddenly, then her cheeks flush. “I mean, you’ll catch hypothermia or something. I probably have something that’ll fit.”
She disappears upstairs, returning with an armload of fabric. “These are my brother-in-law’s. Not sure who left them here after a family dinner.”
I examine the clothes—flannel pants and a thermal shirt that definitely belong to someone broader than me. “Will I look ridiculous?”
“Probably. But you’ll be warm and ridiculous instead of wet and ridiculous.”
“Fair point.”
Changing clothes with a sprained ankle proves more challenging than expected. Eliza hovers nearby, clearly torn between helping and preserving my dignity. She closes her eyes, and I yank off my wet pants and shirt, trying to cover myself before this woman thinks I’m a total mess.
“I’m fine,” I insist, hopping on one foot while trying to pull on the oversized flannel pants. “I suspect you have these because the donkey attacked Koa or Nate.”
She giggles—an actual giggle. It’s charming, and my delight at the sound causes me to wobble.
Eliza sucks in a breath. “You’re going to fall over.”
“I’m not going to—” I teeter dangerously, still shirtless.
“For fuck’s sake.” She steps forward, steadying me with one hand while helping guide my injured foot through the pant leg. The heat of her palm on my skin is enough to make me forget what season we’re in. “There. Was that so hard?”
I cannot make a joke about her use of the word hard. The borrowed clothes hang loose on my frame, making me look like a kid playing dress-up. Yes, I’ll think about how stupid I must appear to distract from my giant boner.
“How do I look?”
“Like a scarecrow,” she says, but her smile takes the sting out of it. “A very cute scarecrow.”
I pause. “You think I’m cute?”
Eliza breathes in through her nose and stomps over to the kitchen, emerging with crackers, cheese, a few clementines, and …
“The soup is cold,” she says. “I can heat it on the wood stove and risk burning it, or we can just suck it up and eat it at room temperature. You’re the guest, so you choose.”
I settle on the couch, propping my ankle on a pillow. I want to talk more about her thinking I’m cute, but my stomach growls loudly, so I say, “Cold soup for the win. Like Gazpacho. Or something.”
