“You should have told me you were hungry,” he said.
She shrugged, took another bite almost before she’d swallowed the first. “We’re working on your schedule. Not mine.”
“Say something the next time.” He gave her a pointed look. “And don’t choke.”
She smiled guiltily, swallowed, and addressed what was most important. “There will be a next time?”
“Certainly, unless you don’t want there to be.”
“No, I’d like that.” She stared down at her sandwich, not at him. “I like this.”
“So do I.”
She simply nodded and took another bite. “Why didn’t you ask me to make our lunch? You didn’t yesterday either.”
“Northeast provides me with an allowance. It’s part of my contract. I made arrangements with Abe and Ellie Butterworth early on. I suppose I need to write a draft to you now that I’m taking most of my meals at your table. I should have thought of that on my own.”
“It seems to me that preparing meals for you is one of my responsibilities.”
He sighed. “You know, we might have rushed to come to terms. I’m concluding there are things we didn’t think through.”
Lily chuckled. “You’re only now concluding that?”
“Mm.”
“Bit of a slow top, aren’t you?”
“You’re not the first to say so.”
“Miss Headley, eh?”
Roen shook his head, grinning. “How did you know?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe intuition. You realize I wasn’t being serious. You’renota slow top. Just the opposite.”
“Well, Victorine meant it, and she wasn’t wrong. Not whereshe was concerned. I was slow to realize certain things.” He searched the canvas bag for the hard-boiled eggs Ellie usually packed and passed one to Lily. “Let’s not talk about her.” He cracked his egg against his knee and began to peel it, flicking the shell away from the blanket they were sitting on. “I’m going to write you that draft when we get back, but it will be for household expenses as well as meals. How did it work when you were married before? Should we do it the same way?”
Lily’s response was immediate and emphatic. “No!”
Roen blinked. “All right,” he said slowly. “How did you do it so wedon’tdo it that way?”
“I’ve managed well enough without your money. I don’t want to come to depend on it. Having one extra at the table is no hardship, and you just paid for everything I’m wearing except my coat and scarf, so there’s that. I’ve already cost you considerably more than you’ve cost me.”
Roen blew out a long breath. “Another condition we should have worked out.”
Lily finished peeling her egg. “We will work it out, just not right now. It’ll be fine. Pass me the canteen.” When he did, she tipped it and drank deeply before she passed it back. “Do you have experience with a gun?”
“What brought that on?”
“Thinking about Old Man McCauley taking aim from among the rocks.”
“Then we’re goners because I don’t have a weapon with me.”
“But you have one?”
“Two. A rifle and a piece that fits a shoulder harness.”‘
“You didn’t bring them with you to the house.”
