A few minutes later, she lifted the lid.
Tiny yellow flecks appeared.
Her face brightened.
“There!”
The Mountain Man leaned closer.
“Keep going.”
She did.
The flecks multiplied.
Gathered.
Soft golden pieces began clinging together beneath the pale buttermilk.
The Mountain Woman laughed.
Not politely.
Not quietly.
A full laugh of exhausted relief.
The Mountain Man watched her instead of the churn.
She noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You keep doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Looking.”
He did not deny it.
The Mountain Woman lowered the dasher.
Butter floated inside.
The job had finally turned.
She should have been thinking about draining the buttermilk.
Cold spring water.
Working the remaining liquid from the butter.
Salt.
Storage.
Instead, she looked at him.
The Mountain Man’s chest rose slowly beneath the open fur vest.
He was still too close.
The Mountain Woman said:
“If you’re going to stand that close, you could at least make yourself useful.”
His eyes warmed.
“I was trying to behave.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“You call this behaving?”
“No.”
He glanced at her mouth again.
“That’s the problem.”
Heat rose beneath her collar.
The Mountain Woman looked toward the churn.
“Maybe put a shirt on.”
“You haven’t looked at the churn in half a minute.”
She turned toward him.
“Maybe the butter isn’t the only thing getting too warm.”
That ended whatever restraint had been protecting them.
The Mountain Man went still.
The Mountain Woman immediately wished she could pull the words back.
Not because they were untrue.
Because now they existed between them.
The Mountain Man lowered his voice.
“Woman.”
She lifted her chin.
“Man.”
His mouth almost curved.
“You know what you’re doing?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“Why good?”
“Because neither do I.”
The Mountain Woman stared.
That honesty reached her more deeply than confidence would have.
For months, she had assumed he understood everything.
The woods.
Weather.
Animals.
Firewood.
Hunting.
Roof repair.
Fence repair.
How to tell when snow would fall by the way the clouds collected behind the ridge.
How to sharpen an axe.
How to find a lost cow after dark.
How to sit silently without making silence uncomfortable.
She had assumed he understood her too.
Apparently, he did not.
Good.
Neither did she.
Their arrangement had begun eight months earlier.
The Mountain Woman arrived in the valley during spring rain.
She came in a wagon belonging to an older widow traveling west to live with family.
The wagon stopped outside the trading post.
The Mountain Woman climbed down carrying one trunk.
One carpetbag.
One small sewing basket.
Everything she owned.
The valley was not where she expected to end.
Then again, very little in her life had gone where expected.
She had been born in western Virginia.