She’d have to move out of her father’s house. He certainly wouldn’t want her there if she wasn’t going to marry whatever man he picked next.
But if she was going to be honest, she was tired of living with her father and Heath anyway. There were multiple boarding houses for women in Washington, DC. Surely she could find a room in one of them. And she had enough money put by to pay for the first month or two of lodging before she started getting paychecks from whatever job she found.
She looked down at the journal sitting beside her on the log. While she still wasn’t sure what she’d end up doing with this one, maybe now that Richard was dead, she’d get all of the royalties from her previous field guides, not just half. In fact, if what Mikhail said was accurate and Richard had been keeping more than his share to begin with, she might get an even larger sum than she’d previously thought possible. Would that be enough money to...
What?What would she do with extra money? She couldn’t exactly gallivant off on an expedition by herself to write another field guide, not as a single woman.
So where did that leave her? With enough money to buy a house? Was that what she wanted to do with anything extra she earned?
Maybe she was being too maudlin. After all, whatever government agency she ended up working for, the office was sure to be filled with men. Perhaps one of them would take a fancy to her. He would have honey brown hair and golden eyes and a smile that he only showed every now and then. But that was all right. She wouldn’t care, because he would treat her with such kindness that...
No. She pressed her eyes shut, well aware of the image that was filling her mind. It wasn’t of some handsome stranger. It was of the man sleeping by the fire. The man who had risked his own life that very morning to save hers.
She shook her head, her throat tight, then reached for the brush a third time.
It took her a ridiculously long time before she was finally able to free the brush from the vicious, snarled knot by her shoulder, but even after that, her hair didn’t want to be brushed. Every stroke fought her, getting stuck multiple times no matter how gentle she tried to be.
She was back to contemplating lopping off her hair and throwing her brush into the river, when a hand closed over hers on the handle.
She whirled around, her heart hammering against her chest.
But there was no Tlingit warrior standing behind her with a gun drawn. It was Mikhail, with his own hair brushed and pulled back into one of the queues he often wore. He wore his fur parka but had left it unbuttoned, leaving the front open with his cream shirt and the little V of skin showing over his collarbone.
“Let me help.” His voice sounded deep and rough.
Because he’d slept for most of the afternoon? Surely that was it.
He tugged the brush away from her. “This is the biggest mess I’ve ever seen.”
“You want to brush my hair?” No one had ever offered to help brush it before. Well, besides the nanny she’d had for a few years after her mother died.
He didn’t answer, just sat on the log beside her and started moving the brush down her tresses in slow, gentle strokes. “The river made a mess of this earlier, but I’m surprised you leave it down at all.”
Oh, that. She let out another sigh. “I don’t have anything to pull it back with. Father forgot some of the supplies he’d meant to bring and ended up using most of the ties and hairpins I brought to dry specimens he didn’t want pressed. They’re in the box at the bottom of the trunk.”
“So you gave everything to him... and resigned yourself to spending extra time each day untangling your hair in the wilderness?”
Was Mikhail angry? He looked that way with the way his brow was drawn down and his jaw was set in a stern line. But his hands were gentle as he worked through the snarls.
“My father needed them. What else was I supposed to do?”
“Save a handful of them for yourself so you didn’t have to spend months taking forty-five minutes to work the tangles out of your hair at the end of each day.” Again, Mikhail’s voice sounded deep and rough, but there was nothing rough about how he brushed her hair. In fact, the rhythmic pull of the bristles through her locks felt calming.
“I did. They lasted until after Jack died. I tried making a fishing pole so we could eat fish for our meals, but I must not have done something right, because I broke the last handful of ties trying to hold different parts of the pole together.”
“Of course you did.”
Silence stretched between them for a moment, nothing but the sound of the river and wind filling her ears.
Then he reached behind his head and pulled loose the leather tie holding his own hair in place. A few strands of his golden brown hair fell forward, brushing against his brow as he handed her the strip. “Use this. My hair isn’t nearly as long as yours, and it won’t tangle as much. Besides I have more ties in my pack. I thought you left your hair free because you wanted it that way. Otherwise, I would have said something sooner.”
She blinked, not quite sure of what to do as she held out her hand for the strip of leather. It was warm from being tied in his hair. “It’s your job to keep me alive, not to help me manage my hair. Honestly, I was contemplating cutting it off when you walked up.”
The brush stilled on her head, and he leaned forward, his breath brushing her ear. “Don’t cut it, angel. It’s far too beautiful.”
Angel.He’d called her that after the Tlingit men had found her. Where had the name come from? Certainly he didn’t think she was some type of heavenly being or savior.
And did he really think her hair was that beautiful? She drew in a shaky breath and shifted to see him better, even though he was still brushing her hair.
