“I went out looking for her. She hadn’t come home,” Eve’s voice caught as she studied me. Her expression stayed closed, if a little frazzled at the edges. Which was most likely exhaustion, I reasoned. “And I didn’t want to lose any—her,” she finished, looking down, but not before her cinnamon dark eyes glazed with unshed tears. Her flushed cheeks took on a whole new meaning.
The Eve I knew loved her animals to the point of crazy, but even when she lost a fawn, she’d been upset, but not like this.
“Frustrated, much?” I asked, kneeling next to her in slush that seeped straight through my jeans. “You’ve made a real mess,” I said to the doe, trying not to peek up at Eve, tracing over the twisted wires wrapped around her thin legs that connected her to Eve. “And you must be freezing,” I added to the rancher who watched me.
She shrugged when I glanced up at her, the light leaving her eyes. “I was, to start with. My butt is numb. But she’s really quite a warm blanket.”
“How long have you both been here?” The words fell out of my mouth. I shut it with a clack of teeth. What a pathetic greeting after all this time. I wanted to hug her, kiss her, but with Eve, jobs always came first.
Not unlike myself.
Still, I couldn’t bring myself to push Eve just yet. Something in the tight line of her shoulders warned me away, though that could have been the bone-numbing exhaustion that exuded from her form, as though the doe's gentle tremble, almost invisible, passed on to my girl.
“Are you asking me if I was dumb enough to get stuck under a deer all night and risk a case of hypothermia and death outhere?” Eve’s perfectly arched eyebrows rose in a facade of royal indignation.
I want to know how you got this far out on your own, firecracker.
But I tucked that question away for later, once I had her safe back at the house with a fire blazing after a hot shower and wrapped in her nightclothes. When she was back in my arms. But first, the deer.
I brushed my hand down her back, gauging the thinness of her shirt. I doubted she wore anything beneath it. “I’m asking if this stubborn, sexy as hell rancher stayed with her stock last night. For comfort.”
“Was that a joke?”
“Best I can make after four days on the road.”
Eve studied me, her smile dimming a little. “Just this morning. I’m not stupid, Archer.”
Ahh. We’re back to surnames.
“All right, Miss Beaumont. Let’s get your deer freed.” I took the rear of the animal, studying the mess it had made of itself while Eve shuffled herself closer to its head. There were no obvious breaks, just a distressed doe trussed in wire that it must have trailed from who knew where. We could find that later. But we would see the full extent when she stood and tried to run once she broke free.
“She panicked,” Eve started without my prompting. “I went too fast, made too much noise, and she freaked out. She was already tangled. I have no idea where the wire came from. I’d just checked that boundary, looking for her.” She caught my eye, and I remembered checking that same fence line with her, to find Peirce on the other side, having dropped a tree straight through it.
“Weren’t there bison up here?”
Eve shook her head. “We sold them. I let the fields sit for months after Dad died.” Her voice caught, and she coughed into her shoulder. I held back from touching her, barely. “It’s just deer, now, and some elk in another field, well away from them.”
“Natalie.” I remembered meeting Eve’s doppelganger back at the yard, and Jude laughing with her about the mixed herd.
Eve looked up, her fingers paused in their untangling. “You met her?”
“She and Jude were at the house when I arrived.” I paused, staring through her, trying to eke out the information I needed to help her fix whatever the hell had happened to her. “Eve, what’s going on?”
Eve dipped her head, concentrating on her task. “I had some staffing issues.”
Too fast, Eve.
Alright. I could play that game. “I know all about those.”
The corner of her mouth quirked, and I wanted to lean forward and kiss it.
She flicked her head and a curtain of chestnut curls with a hint of garnet fell forward to obscure her face. “I’ll be you do,” Eve sighed. “Everyone went home for Christmas, and I can’t get any new workers.” She swiped the back of her hand across her face. Her hair pushed back as she smeared her cheek with dirt.
She would have said she looked filthy. I said she looked sexy as hell.
“That’s not unusual at this time of year,” I acknowledged, watching her carefully. I’d already put some of the bullshit surrounding the ranch together. I wondered if she had, or if she was too close to see it.
“No. It’s not,” she agreed, unwinding wire from around the deer’s forelegs with a small cheer. “But not even getting a promise of help from anywhere, not for next season… Rhys, the house is so empty.” The longing in her voice threatened tears.
