Page 46 of Claimed on the Ridge

This time I don't wait for permission. She turns her hand under mine, laces her fingers through, and holds on.

"Kendall Mitchell," I say.

"What."

"Gary Simmons isn't getting near you."

She looks at my hand wrapped around hers, then at my face, and whatever she reads there satisfies something the anger hasn't settled.

"Then stop deciding what I get to know," she says. "I'm done being managed."

My hand tightens on hers. Fair enough.

She doesn't pull away. The fury is still there, banked behind her eyes, but her grip tells a different story. She chose to stay. Her fingers laced through mine on purpose. The bag on the floor by her bed just became luggage instead of an escape plan.

I don't need her to say it. The grip says it.

"I want to see the report," she says.

"After breakfast."

"Now."

"After breakfast." I hold her gaze. "You haven't eaten. Neither have I. The report isn't going anywhere."

Her jaw tightens. Then she turns back to the stove, and the fact that she lets me win this one tells me she's already choosing her battles.

The fire burns. The coffee cools. Outside, the ridge is white against a sky that's clearing for the first time in days. The pass will open. The road will be clear. Gary Simmons will comelooking. He has money, reach, and the confidence of a man who has never lost anything he considered his.

He's never met a Sawyer.

11

KENDALL

Iwas standing at the stove when Alex took the spatula out of my hand. He didn't ask. He stepped beside me, lifted it from my grip, and pointed me toward the counter with a look that said sit down in a language more efficient than words. The eggs went into the skillet under his hands instead, and the competence of the gesture was so practiced that arguing with it felt pointless.

I sit at the counter with my coffee going cold and my real name still hanging in the air between us. The kitchen holds the aftermath of everything I said. He has it now, the ribs and the years behind them, my mother's money and a truck I bought in Fairbanks.

The words are out now, lying between us on the counter like wreckage. The man who is not going to let me skip breakfast is making it with the unhurried focus of someone who has already decided what comes next.

He slides a plate in front of me. Eggs, toast, bacon from the cast iron skillet.

"I'm not hungry. The report."

"After breakfast."

"You keep saying that."

"Eat."

The command works. I pick up the fork because he told me to and the telling dropped somewhere below my conscious objections. I'm going to process that later.

I eat. The eggs are good. The toast is the thick-cut bread Cameron keeps in the breadbox, and the butter on it is real, not the spreadable kind Gary stocked because the calorie count was lower.

Alex eats standing up, leaning against the counter across from where I'm sitting with his plate in one hand. He doesn't talk.

The cotton of his T-shirt pulls across his shoulders when he lifts his fork. The memory of those shoulders under my hands catches me mid-bite. I redirect my attention to the toast before the heat of it reaches my face.