“This is it.” Cale watched Raven closely to see her reaction to his cabin. It wasn’t much, but it was home. He tried to see it with a woman’s eyes, but it was all too familiar to him. He admired the table hand hewn from Douglas fir and the two chairs on either side of it. It was odd, he realized, that a man who lived alone would have two chairs. Had he unconsciously longed for company?
Well, there was only one bed. He hadn’t wanted a woman. But he had one. Or rather, there was one in his cabin. He didn’t think he was going to be having her anytime soon.
“What do you think?” Cale could have bitten his tongue as soon as he said the words. What did he care what she thought? She was just a woman come to spend a little time here. It was irrelevant whether his cabin met her approval. She would be staying here whether it did or not.
She still hadn’t said anything, and he found himself feeling anxious. Hadn’t he come up here to live all alone just so he wouldn’t have to worry about some woman judging the way he lived his life? So he wouldn’t have to bend over backwards to please a woman who would betray him in the end?
“Well?” he demanded. His voice was harsh with the disgust he felt that her opinion mattered, and he was angry with her for intruding on the privacy he had jealously protected for the past ten years. “What do you think?”
“It’s filthy,” Raven said. “And it stinks.”
Cale was stung by her condemnation. “You’ll just have to get used to it,” he snarled.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I will not live like this. Even a bear does not sleep in a foul den.”
“Is this some sort of excuse for you to break our bargain?” he demanded.
She looked right at him, and he was frozen by the scorn in her dark eyes. “I will abide by the bargain my father made. But I will not sleep in a hovel.” She headed for the door.
He grabbed her arm as she passed him and pulled her close so they were nose to nose. “It’s going to get mighty cold outside come dark,” he said.
“I do not plan to sleep outside,” she retorted.
“You just said—”
“I will clean this place and make it fit for human beings.”
As he started to release his grip she added in a soft voice, “You have lived alone too long, my beast.”
“What did you call me?”
He saw the flush rise under her peach skin to stain her high, wide cheekbones. Her eyes flashed, first with fear, then with defiance.
“Beast. I called you beast.”
He dropped her arm as though she had scalded him. He hadn’t thought a woman could wound him again. Especially not one he wasn’t in love with. One he wouldn’t give a pound of coffee for, let alone a pack of furs.
Only he hadn’t given a single pound of coffee. Or a single pack of furs, for that matter. He had given an entire season’s catch, nearly two thousand dollars worth of skins, for the privilege of being insulted by this woman in his own home.
Cale felt humiliated by her accusation that he lived like an animal. He wasn’t an animal. He was a man. Maybe his habits had become a little slovenly, but there had been no one to please but himself. And he hadn’t been a harsh taskmaster.
He looked again at his cabin. Instead of feeling pride for the strong, hand-hewn table and huge pine bed he had made with his own hands, instead of remembering the satisfaction he had felt the first time he lit the black, potbellied stove he had taken the trouble to cart all the way up into the mountains, he felt shame.
Dozens of beaver traps lay in piles on the floor. Willow frames for stretching fur hung haphazardly on pegs. The pot on the stove was half-filled with the stew he hadn’t finished before he had left the cabin. That must be responsible for at least some of the stench she smelled. The bedcover he had stitched around grass ticking was stained with mud, but he remembered having put his dirty moccasins on it a time or two. Of course, there was a layer of dust over everything. He often worked with the door open, and he considered dust a fact of life.
Even though he was willing to concede the place was a mess, he didn’t like feeling guilty for it. For a second he considered forbidding her to touch anything. But that would have been cutting off his nose to spite his face. After all, if she wasn’t going to offer him what he wanted, he might as well get some good out of her over the next few months. If she wanted to play maid of all work, that was fine with him.
“If you don’t like what you see, you can clean it up.”
“Will you help me?”
“Hell, no!” Cale was surprised at the force of his response. He couldn’t remember the last time he had shouted. He felt a little ridiculous when he realized who he was shouting at and how she had provoked him into it.
“You want it clean, you clean it,” he said emphatically.
“Where is your broom?” she asked.
“I—” He didn’t have a broom. Hadn’t seen the need for one. Until now. “I’ll make one for you,” he said between clenched teeth.
She nodded in that smug, superior, self-satisfied way a woman had of looking at a man when she had made her point.
“All right, so I live like a pig. Welcome to the sty!” With those words he marched out the door, unable to face the pitying, sympathetic look she plastered on her face, as though he were some poor, feebleminded simpleton who didn’t know any better. Well, he wasn’t quite simple yet. He was smart enough to get the hell out of here before she made him feel like an insect, instead of just an animal.