What she saw was mainly pine forest. Trees towered above the cabin. One had fallen over, and its bristling branches were just a few feet from the front of the cabin door.
"Storm damage," Dane explained tersely.
The cabin had a small, narrow porch, really just a couple of boards making a platform in front of the door where some firewood was stacked. Two wood-block steps led down to the ground. Mira padded barefoot after Dane. He walked smoothly as if his feet were used to it, but Mira had to mince her way across the rocky, pine-needle-strewn ground after him.
They went around the side of the cabin, past a small woodshed with firewood neatly stacked inside and an axe in a block of wood, looking exactly like an illustration from a magazine about backwoods living. Or at least, it would have, if not for one corner of the woodshed having been knocked down by a fallen pine branch. Mira looked at it curiously.
"I'll clean that up," Dane said. He sounded a little embarrassed, like he'd been caught with laundry on the floor when guests came over.
"It's okay," Mira said. Looking around, she saw damage from the storm everywhere now that she was paying attention to it. Some of the cabin's wood-shake roof shingles were torn off. Tools hanging on the back of the woodshed had been knocked down. There were bits of pine branches and needles everywhere. From Dane's reaction, and the almost immaculate tidiness of the inside of the cabin, she guessed that he kept the yard equally nice most of the time.
Mira wasn't sure what to expect from the "facilities," but this was also very clean, and unexpectedly charming. There was the outhouse that she had expected, and there was also a grotto in the rocks with a pipe sticking over the edge. Water trickled steadily down the rocks into a spot with soft, clean sand where someone could stand and wash. A bar of soap and a tin cup were tucked into hollows in the rocks.
"You can get a stronger flow like this," Dane explained, and moved a rock to show her. Abruptly water spurted out of the pipe, almost like a shower.
"Oh, how nice," Mira said, and she meant it. She held her hand under the water. It was definitely not warm, but it felt refreshing, and it would get the salt off her body. It wouldn't be the first cold shower she had taken. She laid down the bundle and unfolded it.
"There's a towel," Dane said. "And the clothes are clean." He had brought a plaid shirt, a pair of jeans, and—he looked embarrassed by this—a pair of boxers. "Way too big, probably."
"But much better than nothing," she said, smiling at him. "Can I wash my clothes here too?"
Dane nodded and retreated swiftly toward the cabin, leaving her in privacy.
The outhouse was clean and nice, scented pleasantly of pine and boasting an ocean view. After using it, Mira stripped and quickly scrubbed herself under the pouring water. Her first reaction was a slight gasp of shock, but after she got used to the cool temperature, it was actually very nice. The sun was pleasant on her body, and there was as much water as she wanted, even if it wasn't warm. She scrubbed the salt out of her hair and cleaned herself up as best she could, then dried herself on the towel—also clean, with a very faint smell of soap—and dressed in the clothes he had brought her. He was right that everything was too big, but she rolled up the sleeves of the shirt and the legs of the jeans. They were tight on her hips and gapped at the waist, but it was a better fit than she had expected.
Mira washed her underclothes and draped them to dry on the sun-warmed rocks along with the towel. Finally she set the rock back in place to slow the flow of water to a trickle once again.
As she looked around, she saw that the grotto had been decorated with seashells. Some of them had been knocked down by the storm. Mira wasn't sure where they went, but she picked them up and set them on the rocks again, making it nice.
With everything as set to rights as she could get it, she padded barefoot around the corner of the cabin.
She found Dane out in the yard. To her regret, he had put a shirt on, red and blue plaid, identical to her borrowed one. He had left it unbuttoned with the sleeves rolled up, so it served more to accentuate the flat planes of his chest and stomach than to hide them. He had washed the salt out of the rest of her clothes in a bucket of water and draped them over some branches to dry in the sun. When she arrived, he was dragging the pine tree out of the way of the door.
Mira stopped and stared. She had guessed that he was strong, but she hadn't expected he wasthatstrong. It wasn't a huge tree, none of the trees on the island grew very tall, but it was definitely a full-grown tree and he was dragging it like it weighed nothing.
Seeing her, he stopped in mid-drag and just stood there for a moment, looking at her. She had the same feeling she'd had back in the cabin, as if he was absolutely captivated with her. Mira had no idea what he could possibly be looking at, since she was wearing borrowed clothes with straggling wet hair that hadn't seen a touch of shampoo or conditioner.
"Hi there!" she said brightly. "Your shower is great. I love it."
Dane let the tree fall with a crash at the edge of the yard. "It's not much."
"No, but it's incredibly charming." She ran her fingers through her hair in lieu of a comb. "I feel much better."
"Do you want lunch?"
Her stomach immediately decided that it was a hollow cave that had never been fed ever in its entire life. "Yes," she said enthusiastically.
Dane rinsed pine sap off his hands in the laundry bucket and led the way inside.
He had been busy, she discovered. The bed was neatly fixed, and he had uncovered a window over the table, which she hadn't even noticed before, flooding the cabin with bright sunlight that brought out the warm golden glow of the natural wood colors. The table was fixed up with a chair on one side, a crate to sit on at the other, and two plates and cups. The cabin smelled wonderfully of coffee, perking in an old-fashioned coffeepot on the stove, and of hot bread.
"It's just stovetop biscuits and camp food," Dane said.
"That sounds amazing."
It actually was. Dane dished up the two plates with beef macaroni, probably cooked up from a freeze-dried mix, but in her current state of hunger she would have been ready to eat pine needle soup, and this was full of rich salty flavor. The biscuits were perfect, crumbly and hot and fresh, with butter that Dane said he kept cool in the spring water.
Mira wolfed down two helpings and licked her spoon clean. Two cups of strong black coffee helped clear the remaining cobwebs from her mind.
