Blue Moon Read Free Page A

the water.”
    “How do I get down?”
    “There are wooden planks nailed to the trunk.”
    “Am I anywhere near Illinois?”
    “You’re in it.”
    She appeared a bit relieved.
    “Are you hungry? I figure anybody with as little meat on her bones as you ought to be hungry.”
    What happened next surprised the hell out of him. It was a little thing, one that another man might not have even noticed, but he had lived alone so long that he was used to concentrating on the very smallest of details: the way an iridescent dragonfly looked with its wings backlit by the sun, the sound of cypress needles whispering on the wind.
    Someone else might have missed the smile that hovered at the corner of her lips when he had said she had little meat on her bones, but he did not. How could he, when that slight, almost-smile had him holding his breath?
    “I’ve got some jerked venison and some potatoes around here someplace.” He started to smile back, until he felt the pull of the scar at the left corner of his mouth and stopped. He stood up, turned his back on the girl, and headed for the long wide plank tacked to the far wall where he stored his larder.
    He kept his back to her while he found what he was looking for, dug some strips of dried meat from a hide bag, unwrapped a checkered rag with four potatoes inside, and set one on the plank where he did all his stand-up work. Then he took a trencher and a wooden mug off a smaller shelf high on the wall and turned them over to knock any unwanted creatures out. He was headed for the door, intent on filling the cookpot with water from a small barrel he kept out on the porch, when the sound of her voice stopped him cold.
    “Perhaps an eye patch,” she whispered.
    “What?”
    “I’m sorry. I was thinking out loud.”
    She looked so terrified he wanted to put her at ease.
    “It’s all right. What were you thinking?”
    Instead of looking at him when she spoke, she looked down at her hands. “I was just thinking …”
    Noah had to strain to hear her.
    “With some kind of an eye patch, you wouldn’t look half bad.”
    His feet rooted themselves to the threshold. He stared at her for a heartbeat before he closed his good eye and shook his head. He had no idea what in the hell he looked like anymore. He had no reason to care.
    He turned his back on her and stepped out onto the porch, welcoming the darkness.
    A little while later, Olivia lay in the stranger’s bed, trying to make herself small, trying to fade into the bedclothes so that he might not notice her, but as they were the only two people in the treehouse, that was impossible. Noah LeCroix was careful to keep his face turned away from her as she watched him move back and forth. He stoked the fire in the fireplace and then buried a potato in the hot ash. When she thought of how he must have carried each stone up the tree in order to build the small fireplace, she wondered at his accomplishment and marveled at the craftsmanship.
    Since he seemed to have dismissed her, she studied him freely, thankful that he had not asked any prying questions. She would not relish volunteering anything about herself, so she asked him nothing about himself, either.
    Now that she had recovered from the shock of seeing the deep indentation and puckered skin of his eye socket, the ragged line that ran from below his eye to the corner of his mouth, she had to admit he was not a bad-looking man. In fact, she could see he had been extremely handsome. His looks were dark, exotic. His build rugged.
    He had kept his distance, had not forced his company or any questions on her, had not pried. For that she was grateful. Still, she knew enough of men from raw firsthand experience to know not to let down her guard. Not even for an instant. She would remain wary, ready to flee if necessary, no matter how badly her head throbbed or her wrist ached. She would never let a soft-spoken, well-mannered man fool her again.
    Now as she waited while her host prodded