Claimed by the Mountain Man (3 page)

He raised a brow slowly. “That’s kind of the point. Did you think you were over my knee for a good time?”

She shook her head. “No, and I will admit I deserved it. But… are you going to do it again?” Worry flashed in her eyes.

Her words softened him a bit. He could see she didn’t want to do anything to earn another punishment, and that would make their acquaintance a lot more bearable for him. “Not if you behave yourself and do as you’re told.”

She nodded her agreement. He turned his attention back to the frying pan. He only owned one plate, so he spilled her portion onto it and set it on the table, which only had one stool by it. “Sit there,” he said, pointing at the stool. She scurried over to obey, buttoning the last button of the shirt as she did. Her immediate obedience pleased him. He noticed that she winced upon sitting, and that pleased him too. She would think twice before stealing in the future.

She stared at the plate of food in front of her, then looked up at him with her round eyes. They were blue, he noticed, and full of apprehension. He leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms. “What are you waiting for? Eat.”

“But what about you?” she asked. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

“Yes, just as soon as you finish. There’s only one plate, see, and one stool, so I’d be obliged if you got to chowing right quick. I have things that need doing this morning after we both eat, not least of which is figuring out what to do with you.”

Her eyes lit with understanding, and she obeyed. She dug into the scrambled eggs with her fork and chewed quickly. In between bites, she said, “I’m mighty grateful, Trapper Jack. I don’t feel right eating your chuck, especially before you.”

He didn’t acknowledge her comment. Instead he said, “You seem to know about me, at least what people in town like to say, and I don’t know anything about you. Who are you, and what are you doing out here in the woods?”

She swallowed her bite of eggs. “Same thing you’re doing. Surviving off the land.”

He scoffed. “Real fine job you’re doing.”

She looked up, and a wounded look crossed her face. “Mock me if you want, but I do what I have to. My husband never came home from the war. I was evicted from my house two years ago without so much as a penny to my name.”

This explained nothing, as far as Jack was concerned. She was a fool if she thought she could survive in the woods. Winter would come quickly, and he highly doubted she had shelter that would suffice. “You should find a job in Helena or remarry. It’s not practical for a woman to live out here.”

“I didn’t exactly get a lot of marriage proposals following my husband’s death. Besides, I don’t want to get married. Don’t care much for the idea. I only ever loved my husband.”

He didn’t budge in his opinion, though he could understand the feeling of only loving one person. He himself had only loved his wife and couldn’t imagine loving another. Still, the war had killed many a woman’s husband, and he didn’t see other women traipsing the woods of Montana stealing chickens and ending up in a hole in the ground, so his sympathy didn’t run deep.

Nettie stuffed a big piece of ham in her mouth. Jack raked his hand through his hair. “If you have to steal to survive, that means you don’t know how to catch food on your own. You can’t live here without those skills. Then there’s the matter of shelter.”

“I have shelter,” she cut in, speaking with her mouth full. She chewed the rest of the food quickly and gulped it down. “I found a cave about a mile west of here. I learned how to build a fire in just the right spot. Rain and snow can’t get to it, see, but the smoke still escapes without filling the cave and suffocating me.”

She sounded exceptionally pleased with herself as she relayed that information, and Jack closed his eyes with frustration. He tried to sound more patient than he felt when he responded. “I know that cave, and it’s a grizzly’s hibernating spot. She’ll be wanting it soon, and you’d best not be around when she does.”

Her eyes widened. The news seemed to shock her.

He shook his head at her. She didn’t seem stupid, but he didn’t know how she couldn’t have thought of that. She answered that question next.

“Where I come from, there aren’t grizzlies. I’m from Iowa, see, and I came out here as a mail-order bride. But then my husband went off to fight in the war not long after.”

Dunderhead
, he thought. Her husband would have had to volunteer to fight, since Montana was outside of the draft. “He should have stayed in Montana,” he muttered.

She nodded sadly. “I wish he had, but he felt a sense of duty. You were in the war too, weren’t you? That’s what I heard.”

Jack had no desire to talk about the war. “Finish your breakfast,” he ordered gruffly.

She quieted and focused on eating. After she’d scarfed down her last bite, she stood from the stool. “I’ll get your portion for you, Trapper Jack.” She carried the plate to the oven and scooped the rest of the food onto it, while Jack sat on the stool. She placed the plate in front of him and stood nearby. She looked very small and vulnerable in his huge shirt. Her legs and feet were bare and pale. If she was aware of her immodesty, she didn’t show it.

Suddenly a memory came to Jack. The last time he’d been in town, he went to the saloon, ordered a beer, and sat alone at a table near the bar. He overheard a conversation.

“The carpet matches the drapes, if you get my meaning,” a rough-looking cowboy said with a smirk to the drunk man on the stool. “Red as fire. Sarah’s her name, but she goes by Slick Kitty. For a lick and a promise, she’ll take you in her mouth.”

The drunk guffawed and looked over at where the cowboy pointed, as did Jack. ‘Slick Kitty’ wore a hat with purple plumes, a purple satin dress, and a dour expression.

Trapper Jack’s mind returned to the present as he regarded the woman in his kitchen. Yes, it had to be her. Same fire-red hair, same mournful look about her. That explained her ease at being only half dressed around a strange man and why she looked familiar to him.

“I reckon I’ll have to shoot the bear,” she mused, gazing in the direction of the door.

He barely suppressed another scoff. The idea of her trying to shoot down a grizzly, when she seemed barely strong enough to lift a rifle, was so ridiculous that he didn’t bother responding. He ate another bite of eggs.

“Hey, which side did you fight on in the war?” she asked suddenly.

Jack didn’t look up. He was annoyed that she’d mentioned the war again. “Does it matter?”

“I’d say so. You could be a Reb. That means you could be the man who killed my husband, and here I am talking to you like it’s no big thing.”

“Well, let’s see here, Nettie,” he said sarcastically. “More men than all the people who live in this state fought in the war. I doubt I was the man who killed your Billy Yank husband, and I doubt he was the man who killed my brother, for that matter.” Jack drank some water, then said sternly, “That’s the last I’ll speak of the war.”

“But where did you fight at? If you tell me that, I’ll know if you were near my husband.”

He set his fork down and pinned her with his fiercest stare. “What did I just say? You must have a head of mush, woman. One more word about it, and you’ll wish you were still in that hole outside.”

She looked taken aback before she scowled. “Why? Because you’ll spank me again? Is that your solution to every annoyance?”

He sawed off a piece of ham. “Maybe,” he said evenly. “Do you want to find out?” He popped the ham in his mouth and gave her a quizzical look.

“Not especially,” she said, without sounding very concerned. She abandoned him and the topic and walked to the bed. She smoothed his quilt over it, then folded the fur blanket neatly at the end like only a woman would bother to do. He rolled his eyes but secretly appreciated the gesture, just like he had appreciated her serving him his portion of food. He also appreciated the peek she gave him of her thighs and ass as she bent over to make the bed. His shirt wasn’t sufficiently long enough to cover her unless she stood upright, and that was just fine with him.

Nettie looked around the room of his cabin and walked to the far wall, where she examined a photo that hung there of him and his brother, who was shot down in Gettysburg. She turned to face him. “People say you’re the meanest man to ever walk under the Big Sky, and I reckon you are pretty scary-looking and could use some manners. But now that I know you a bit, you don’t scare me, Trapper Jack.”

He stifled a smile. It amused him that she made that declaration from as far away as it was possible to get from him in the cabin, which was also right next to the door. “Come a little closer and say that, naughty Nettie.”

Her lips quirked up, and she cocked her head. “What did you just call me?”

“You heard me.”

She smirked at him for a moment, but then sobered. “As soon as my clothes dry, I’ll be out of your hair. I have no wish to depend on a man for any longer than I need to. Thank you for feeding me, though. I’m real grateful.”

Because he figured out that she’d been a prostitute, he understood her reason for not wanting to depend on a man. He reckoned that she chose to leave town to avoid doing just that, and she probably thought he would demand her body in exchange for food and lodging if she stayed much longer. He wondered if she still planned to live in that blasted cave now that she knew about the grizzly, or if she would return to town and try living there again. He felt compelled to order her to leave the woods, but he could tell by the way she was speaking to him that she wasn’t in the mood to listen to reason. She had a determination and stubbornness in her tone.
Easy to be that way on a full belly
, he grumbled to himself.

It occurred to him that she could live with him. He didn’t dislike her company, not yet anyway, and he reckoned any trouble she gave him could be swiftly dealt with, judging by how punishment straightened her right up. He was surprised that the idea of her living with him crossed his mind. He wouldn’t have thought he’d be open to living with a woman who wasn’t his wife.

Sadness wrenched at his heart as his wedding night suddenly flashed through his memory. He could tell how nervous his lovely bride was when he took her to bed, but it wasn’t for the reason he figured, which was that she was about to know a man’s touch for the first time. When he moved inside of her and felt no barrier, the realization that she’d been with another man prior to him felt like a punch in the gut. It brought a wave of fury and nausea.

“You’re not intact,” he said, staring at her from his position over her.

Her legs tightened around his hips, drawing him into her. Tears formed in her eyes as she whispered, “Please don’t hate me, husband. I didn’t love him like I love you.”

He plunged into her roughly and took her that night in a frenzy of anger and desire. He loved her, but he couldn’t cope with the idea of her with another man. For the next six months until he left for the war, he made her pay for what he perceived as betrayal. He treated her like a whore every time he took her to bed. She enjoyed it. He could tell by the way she screamed his name and shuddered her releases. Her passionate responses to his bawdy actions fueled his anger and resentment, for he couldn’t experience her passion without imagining her having the same response with another man.

He could see the sadness in her eyes whenever she looked at him, waiting and hoping for him to forgive her. Before he left, he held her close to him. He loved her so much it hurt, but still he couldn’t bring himself to tell her that all was well and good between them. He walked away, leaving her alone with her shame. Jack never thought she’d be the one to die while he was at war. When he returned home with an understanding of what true immorality and betrayal looked like, along with a deep need to hold the sweet woman he’d left behind, she was already dead and buried.

Nettie folded her arms in front of her chest and spoke, bringing him back to the present. “I suppose I should thank you for saving my life and getting me out of that hole, but seeing as how it was your fault I fell in it to begin with, I don’t reckon I need to thank you for that.”

Of all the cheek
, he thought, shaking his head.

“I’d like to repay the debt I owe you for feeding me,” she continued. “I’m good at sewing, if you have something that needs mending. I’ll do as much as I can around here before returning to the cave.”

When he didn’t say anything, she walked to his dresser and opened it. She removed his clothes and draped them over her arm. He stared at her as she did this, not sure whether he was pleased or annoyed by her initiative. Then he felt sad again. It had been a long time since he’d been around a woman and her ways about the house.

Nettie found the sewing supplies, such as they were, at the bottom of one of the drawers and brought everything to the sofa, where she sat and got to work fixing the seams that were torn, adeptly plunging the needle and thread in and out of the material.

When Jack dunked his plate in the basin and grabbed a rag to wash it, she said, “Please, Trapper Jack, allow me to do the cleaning up.”

He hung the rag over the side of the basin. “Very well. I’ll be back,” he told her.

“Where are you going?”

He retrieved a length of rope from a hook near the door and placed his wool hat on his head. “Out,” he said, and left the cabin. He summoned Cager with a whistle, preferring not to leave him behind with the woman in case she was afraid of him.

Jack visited each of his traps. He’d trapped three rabbits and a small beaver, which wasn’t bad. He mostly used the box traps, since he disliked the cruelty of the clamps, reserving those for only those times when he wasn’t having luck with the boxes. Grasping each animal by its back legs and holding it upside down, he snapped their necks in less time than it took to reset the trap, giving them a quick death. He wound the rope around their legs and slung them over his shoulder.

Chapter Three: Talking Sense