Cole wasn’t difficult to find. Just a few feet from the cabin, down a sharp incline was a wide, deep stream. He was standing in it, naked from the waist up, a fishing rod in his hand, and concentrating on what he was doing. The sight of him nearly took Kady’s breath away. He was one beautiful man! His upper body was sculpted with muscle over broad shoulders and a deep chest, all of it tapering to a waist that couldn’t be more than thirty-two inches.
“Ever done any fishing?” he asked softly, not turning, but showing Kady that he’d known all along that she was there.
“I’m more familiar with what to do with them after they’re caught,” she said, trying to sound as though she wasn’t affected by the sight of him. With her eyes averted, she went down the hill to stand on a flat, grassy spot by the stream, then spread the blanket and put the basket down.
When she looked back up at Cole, she could not control her involuntary gasp. What she had not seen from up the hill was that there were at least half a dozen ugly round scars on his torso that had to have been made by bullets.
As though he didn’t know what could have caused Kady’s gasp, he looked down at his chest, then back up at her. “Hand me my shirt and I’ll put it on,” he said, looking at her in question.
“No, that’s all right. I didn’t mean to stare,” she said, turning away, but she couldn’t contain herself and turned back abruptly. “Who did that to you? Those men who tried to hang you?”
Cole was looking at the water, pulling on his fishing line, but she could see by his little smile that he was pleased by her concern.
“No, it happened when I was a kid. When my sister and friend were shot, so was I.” He hesitated. “I made it, they didn’t,” he said softly.
Looking at the scars, Kady didn’t want to think of the pain he must have gone through to recover from wounds like those.
“I’ve been told that kisses heal all wounds,” he said and when she looked at his face, she saw that he was teasing her, his eyes sparkling.
“Doesn’t look like they’ve done any good so far,” she said, turning away from him.
“I figure the kisses were never from the right woman.” He’d left the water and walked up behind her. “What’s in the basket?”
He was standing too close, so she stepped away. “Just bacon and biscuits and—” Her voice lowered. “A peach cobbler.”
“Oh?” He stepped close to her again. “Washed your hair, didn’t you? Like the soap I got for you?”
“Very nice.” She turned on him, glaring. “Get on that side of the blanket and don’t come near me.”
For some reason, this declaration made him laugh as he walked to the stream and pulled out a long string of trout.
I shall smoke them, Kady thought, then corrected herself. She was going home and wouldn’t have time to smoke fish. “Build a fire; I’ll go get a skillet and some wild onions I saw, and we’ll have lunch.”
“Yes, ma’am,” she heard him say as she raced up the hill, grabbing the onions as she went. What a cooking challenge, she thought as she ran. Here she didn’t have every ingredient known in the world at her fingertips, as she did in Virginia. No lemongrass, no star anise, not even any olive oil. Wonder if I could make—she thought, then made herself stop. She wasn’t going to be here long enough to make anything.
Be firm, Kady, she told herself. You must demand that Cole take you to the rocks tomorrow. And if he refuses, you must go by yourself. Even as she thought this, she realized that she didn’t know the way back to town, much less the way to a bunch of carved rocks.
By the time she got back with the skillet, Cole had the fire going and was lounging on the blanket, eating what looked to be his third buttered biscuit. Right away she noticed that he hadn’t bothered to clean the fish, but that was all right as Kady had her own way of cleaning and deboning trout.
“What do you need?” he asked when, minutes later, she had the fish in her hands and had glanced back up the hill toward the cabin as though dreading the necessary climb.
“A knife.”
“What blade?”
She smiled at his question. Considering the lazy way he was lounging, it was very nice of him to offer to return to the cabin and get a knife for her, not that she’d seen anything there except a rusty old paring knife. “An eight-inch boning knife, long, thin blade,” she said, smiling smugly. Let him try to find that!
A second later, a knife with a long, thin blade twanged as it stuck in the ground inches from her hand. Startled, she looked up at him, silently questioning where it had come from.
Cole looked away, his smile telling her that he expected her to ask.
But Kady would have died before she pleaded for information. “Thanks,” she said, then set about boning the fish and slicing the potatoes.
Working in a restaurant for so many years had taught her to be fast and efficient. Within minutes she set a skillet before him that was filled with sautéed potatoes flavored with wild onions and perfectly cooked trout, touched with a splash of vinegar and raisins on top.
The look Cole gave her when he bit into the fish was all the praise Kady needed. Sitting down on the blanket, as far from him as she could get, she pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them. It was one thing to cook for the President, a man who was used to excellent food, but it was another to cook for a man who was used to a monotonous, bland diet. Cole had looked at her food as though it were ambrosia, fit only for gods.
She sat in silence, watching the clear, unpolluted water, while Cole gave the ultimate tribute to a cook by cleaning his plate.