Ben waited until the whole sandwich was gone before he asked his next question. “Who built the lodge?”
Michael got up and went to the fridge, pulled out a bucket of ice cream, and put it on the counter. Then he got down two bowls from the cupboard and began to spoon a mountain of ice cream into each of them.
“Local tribes would come here and soak in the creek in winter, believing the mist held great medicine. That’s probably why the settlers built this old lodge here.” He gave Ben a cocky grin. “To lure city folks with tales of healing powers.”
Michael returned to the table with the two heaping bowls, spoons stuck in them like chimneys. He slid one in front of Ben and sat down with the other one. “Eat, Mr. Jenkins. The ice cream will feel good on your mouth. It’ll help the swelling.”
Ben stared at the bowl in front of him, wondering what small nation he could hire to help him eat it. “So your aunt bought the lodge and built the new cabins?”
“My aunt and my mother.”
The boy filled his mouth with a huge spoonful of ice cream. Ben wasn’t ready to go down the path of Michael’s mother yet, so he picked up his spoon and dug into his own monstrous bowl. And it did feel good rolling around in his mouth and sliding down his throat.
Between silent bites, Ben looked around the huge kitchen. Everything was aging but as neat as a hospital. There was a polished old wood-burning cookstove backing the great room, its pipe going into a massive wall of stone separating the rooms. There were yards and yards of countertops, worn patternless in places and chipped in others. A sink big enough to bathe a cow in sat under a bank of windows that looked out on Medicine Lake, making the water and nearest mountains appear almost touchable. And on the windowsill over the sink, running in each direction, was an eclectic assortment of rocks, moss, gnarled twigs, and Mason jars full of sand and broken glass and pebbles.
The old but obviously well-maintained lodge was more of a home than an inn, and a child’s gifts brought in from the wild had been lovingly kept and displayed.
Michael had arrived home from school less than an hour ago. He had built a small fire in the cookstove, and then he had begun the task of filling his tall growing frame with food. He hadn’t stopped eating since Ben had limped in and sat down.
“Your aunt doesn’t make dinner?”
He had to wait for Michael to swallow. “Sometimes. Usually I cook supper.” The boy suddenly smiled, as if he were comforting a worried child. “We’ll eat in about an hour, Mr. Jenkins. Nem usually forgets to have lunch, so she’ll be as hungry as a bear. I hope you like venison.”
Ben didn’t know which bothered him more—that Michael was expected to look after himself or that the boy took it upon himself to look after Emma. He should be playing football after school, not cooking dinner. Or he should be on the phone making plans with friends, not making meaningless small talk with a stranger.
“You got many friends around here?”
Michael gave Ben a look that said he was nearing a no-trespassing line. He pushed himself away from the table, unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves, then picked up his empty bowl and Ben’s half-full one. He took them to the sink and started filling it with warm soapy water.
“I’ve made friends of sports from all over the world,” he finally said, his back to Ben. “I still write to many of them. I’ve been invited to Germany next summer to stay with a family that vacationed here this past summer.”
“You going?”
“No. Not without Nemmy.” He turned and pierced Ben with serious eyes. “My aunt is all that’s important to me, Mr. Jenkins. I would give my life to protect her, and my soul to see her happy.”
Where in hell had that come from?
“Is this your standard warning to all male … sports?”
Michael shot him another serious look, then turned back to the sink and shut off the water. “Not all of them. Just the potentially dangerous ones.”
“You think I’m a danger to your aunt?” Ben couldn’t believe this. He might be a danger, all right, though not in the way Michael was suggesting. But how had the boy sensed anything at all?
“Yeah, I think you are, Mr. Jenkins. But I don’t think you realize just how much.”
Ben stood up, limped to the woodstove, and held his hands over the firebox. It had suddenly grown downright chilly in the kitchen.
Emma Sands was a beautiful woman, if a man liked glowing health and energy. And if he liked straightforwardness and courage, well, she fit that bill, too. The woman possessed nerves of steel. Hadn’t she pulled a loaded plane off a puddle of water last night only to land it on a darkened lake? A person wasn’t born knowing how to fly like that. Ben might have been scared as hell, but he had also been damned impressed.
So, how was he a threat to Emma Sands?
A sexual threat?
She had fit rather nicely under his arm for their trek to the truck yesterday. She had smelled like the forest, and gunpowder, and some animal he couldn’t identify. But that hadn’t stopped him from wondering what she would do if he took that shotgun out of her hand and kissed her.
Ben had marked the bizarre thought down to distracting himself from the pain. But he hadn’t been in much pain
