Page 81 of Claimed on the Ridge

I don't answer right away. Through the kitchen window, Alex is crossing the yard with an armload of wood. The size of him, the certainty, his body occupying space like it was designed to fill gaps other people leave open. The sight does the thing it always does to the base of my spine.

"I'm working on it," I say.

"That's enough."

I set the handset down and look at what I've built. Pages of intelligence turned into leverage. Four years of watching and remembering, weaponized in a single morning. The satisfaction of it runs through me like the first breath of cold air after walking out of a room where I couldn't breathe.

Outside, Alex is stacking the wood he hauled. The flannel is rolled to his elbows and the muscles in his forearms shift with the weight. I've been tracking this man's movements since the first week, and the anger doesn't erase that. If anything, the anger sharpens it. I'm furious with him and I can't stop watching his hands. Both of those things are true at the same time.

Gary would call that a contradiction.

I call it being a woman who finally knows the difference between fear and wanting.

He catches me watching through the glass. His stride doesn't change. He doesn't smile, doesn't nod, doesn't perform awareness. He just looks back, steady, and the weight of the look is the same weight that sat between us across the hearth last night. The distance and the hunger and the question of whether it's enough to close the gap.

I look away first. Not because he wins. Because I have work to do.

The morning passes. I build and he hauls. The lodge operates around us on its usual rhythm — coffee and firewood and the creak of timber in the cold. Alex sets a fresh mug beside my notepad without being asked. His hand on the pine, the mug placed exactly where I can reach it without moving my notepad. The same hand that had me pinned to a couch cushion two days ago. He doesn't linger. He doesn't wait for thanks. He leaves it like he leaves everything — placed and walked away from.

I drink the coffee. It's good. I don't tell him.

The second time he passes through the kitchen, I'm on the satellite phone with Morrow, clarifying a detail about the security firm's contract termination. Morrow adds something I didn't ask for — a rental plate number associated with one of Gary's freelance men, flagged at a gas station south of the ridge. I write it down.

Alex stops at the kitchen entrance.

He doesn't interrupt.

He listens to my side of the call the way I listened to his yesterday — through the parts I can hear, filling in the rest from what he already knows.

When I hang up, he's still there. Leaning against the frame with his arms crossed and his weight on one hip, watching me with the same focus he gives the tree line. Assessing. Patient.

With anyone else, that kind of attention would have put me on edge. With Alex, it feels like respect. Or hunger. With him, the line between those two things tends to get blurred.

"Morrow do what you needed?" he asks.

"He did."

He studies me another second. "Didn't hesitate."

"You told me not to."

"I did." His mouth twitches. "Still getting used to hearing people take my place when it needs doing."

The corner of my mouth moves before I can stop it. Not quite a smile. The man who once locked me out of every decision is standing in his own kitchen watching me carry part of the load. The cost is visible in the set of his jaw and the careful way he doesn't move closer.

"It suits you," I tell him. "Discomfort."

"Noted."

He pushes off the frame and walks out. His shoulder passes within inches of mine as he goes, and the heat of him travels down the left side of my body like a brush fire I can track by the damage it leaves. I don't step back. I don't step forward. I let him pass, then I sit down, pick up the pen, and write his contact's name at the top of the next page without letting my hand shake.

Bryan comes in late morning. He stands in the kitchen doorway with the stiff posture of a man performing a duty he finds unnecessary and delivers the patrol report directly to me. Road conditions, sight lines, the south access trail. His tone is professional. His body language says he'd rather be anywhere else.

"Anything on the north approach?" I ask.

He blinks. The question lands somewhere he wasn't expecting.

"Negative. Snow's stable. No tire tracks."