The ham bone looked almost insultingly bare.
Martha Bell turned it slowly in her broad hand, examining the pale strip of meat clinging stubbornly beside the joint. A woman who had spent most of her thirty-one years measuring winter by the depth of a flour barrel knew better than to call something useless simply because the easy part had already been taken from it.
Outside, the Appalachian mountains had vanished behind snow.
Wind pressed itself against Thomas Vale’s cabin as though trying to force its way through every seam in the timber walls. Ice feathered the corners of the windowpanes. Beyond them, pine trees bent beneath the weather, their dark shapes appearing and disappearing in the storm.
Inside, however, the iron stove glowed.
An oil lantern burned above the rough kitchen table, staining the walls gold. Steam curled from a large black cooking pot. Dried split peas softened beneath the surface beside potatoes, carrots, onions, and the last pieces of corn Martha had saved from the previous evening.
She wore the same faded light sea-blue dress she used for most household work, loose through the sleeves and gathered comfortably over her nearly three-hundred-pound figure. A white apron crossed her waist and belly. Several strands had escaped the long brown braid resting over one shoulder.
Thomas stood beside her.
He seemed built for the mountains in a way Martha sometimes thought unfair. Tall enough that he ducked beneath one of the lower ceiling beams, heavily muscled from years of cutting timber and hauling traps, he wore dark trousers and a wolf-fur vest open over his bare chest despite the winter pressing outside.
His thick beard hid most expressions from people who did not know him.
Martha was beginning to know him.
That was dangerous.
Thomas held the stripped ham bone in one hand.
“There isn't much meat left.”
Martha continued stirring.
“There doesn't need to be.”
“You say that because you're not the one who has been thinking about ham since sunrise.”
She looked sideways.
“You ate ham at breakfast.”
“That was sunrise.”
“And again at noon.”
“Lunch is a separate institution.”
Martha tried not to smile.
Thomas reached toward the pot with a wooden spoon.
She slapped his knuckles lightly with hers.
“Thomas.”
He withdrew the spoon.
“I was checking the salt.”
“You checked it twice.”
“The salt could have changed.”
“It did not.”
“You don't know.”
Martha gave him the look she had discovered worked better than argument.
Thomas waited.
Then his mouth twitched beneath his beard.
He reached anyway.
This time Martha caught his wrist.
“You keep stealing from the pot and there won't be supper.”
Thomas looked down at her hand around his.
Neither moved immediately.
Martha became very aware of the cabin.
The wind.
The fire.
The space between them.
Thomas’s voice lowered.
“You keep feeding me like this, woman, and I may never leave this cabin again.”
Martha released him before he could feel the sudden quickening of her pulse.
“Careful, mountain man.”
She returned her attention to the pot.
“A woman might mistake words like that for courting.”
Thomas did not answer.
She stirred once.
Twice.
Then realized he had stepped closer.
“What if I’ve been courting you for weeks and you're the only one who hasn't noticed?”
The spoon stopped.
Martha’s cheeks warmed.
She refused to turn.
“That would make you a remarkably poor courtier.”
“Would it?”
“You haven't brought flowers.”
“Everything outside is dead.”
“You could have prepared.”
“I brought you a rabbit.”
“That was supper.”
“A good rabbit.”
“You also dropped it on my table with blood still on its fur.”
Thomas considered this.
“I could have tied a ribbon around it.”
Martha laughed despite herself.
Thomas’s expression softened.
That expression frightened her more than his rifle ever had.
People in Asheville had looked at Martha and decided things before hearing her speak.
Too large.
Too slow.
Too plain for romance.
Useful in a kitchen.
Good with children.
Comforting.
Safe.
But never the woman a man stared at across a fire as though he had forgotten what he meant to say.
Thomas did that sometimes.
Especially lately.
Martha turned.
“Then perhaps you should stop hiding behind that beard and tell me what you want.”
Thomas went very still.
He set the ham bone down.
His hand, rough enough to split kindling without gloves, reached carefully toward hers.
He touched only her fingers.
“You.”
Martha stopped breathing.
Thomas swallowed.
“You still standing beside me when this winter is gone.”
The fire popped behind them.
Martha stared into his pale gray eyes.
No man had ever said anything quite so simple to her.
Perhaps that was why it hurt.
She tried to answer.