Read Online Cold Heart by Chandler McGrew - Free Book Online Page B

that. She and Damon had never been destined to be anything but friends. Damon didn't need a woman the way some men did. Damon needed a direction. A focus. Something he could lock on to the way he had once locked on to his practice.
    A pair of squirrels chittered overhead, playing hide-andseek with her along the trail and she thought of Aaron McRay. The old man was feisty and bright-eyed as one of those small animals. Micky never knew when Aaron was kidding or how he could say some of the wild things that he did.
    His dark eyes would flicker as he spit out some crude remark. Testing or teasing.
    Micky had been in town only three weeks—two longer than she'd intended—when Aaron had pounded on her door.
    “Buy the place or get out,” he'd said.
    “Excuse me?” She didn't know whether to invite the old man in out of the cold or slam the door in his face.
    “My cabin,” he said, nodding at the wall, not her.
    “You're Aaron McRay.”
    “No shit.”
    “I was invited here,” she told him. “I thought you knew. I'm sorry.”
    “Did know. You want it or what?”
    “Want what? The cabin? I'm only visiting.”
    “Don't give me that crap.” He spit tobacco juice onto the snow beside the stoop. A brown trickle ran through the whiskers on his chin. “You aren't going anywhere.”
    “Who told you that?”
    “They never do.”
    “They?”
    “The assholes that move into McRay.”
    She couldn't help herself. She laughed in his face.
    His scowl cracked a little. “Think that's funny?”
    “I have an odd sense of humor.”
    “Good. You want the fucking place, or what?”
    “I said I'm just visiting.” Had Damon mentioned the old man was a little insane? She didn't remember.
    “You crazy?”
    Was he reading her mind? “Excuse me?”
    “Heard you might be crazy.”
    Micky burst out laughing. “Just mildly psychotic.”
    “Cy what?”
    “Yes,” she said. “I'm crazy.”
    “Good. Women don't belong in the bush, though.” But his scowl definitely cracked.
    “Really.”
    “It's a fact.”
    “Says you.”
    “Says me.”
    He turned to leave.
    “Like some coffee?” she asked impulsively.
    He glanced back over his shoulder. “Any good?”
    “No.”
    “Sure.” He pushed past her and took a seat at the table.
    She couldn't help laughing at the absurd conversation.
    After that she had decided that laughter was the key to Aaron.
    He'd say something outlandish.
    She'd laugh.
    She'd laugh again.
    He'd glare and say something more crude or politically incorrect.
    He smiled. No teeth. Just a thin-lipped sneer.
    But she'd also discovered that Aaron could be incredibly thoughtful.
    That same winter, when Damon was off somewhere with Marty and Stan, Micky glanced out of her bedroom window one morning and saw snow halfway up the side of her outhouse. Her woodpile—purchased from Clive, who sold wood as one of his seemingly inexhaustible line of services—was covered in deep powder and a waist-high drift nearly blocked her front door.
    The firewood was twenty feet away. She hadn't stacked it against the building yet and, with a sinking heart, she realized it would take her all day just to dig it out.
    She was bundling up to do so when she heard the scrunch of a shovel out front. She glanced out of the loft window to see the back of Aaron's bright blue parka. He was digging out her woodpile. She zipped up her jacket and bulled her way through the drift, grabbed a shovel, and joined him.
    She said hello.
    He nodded.
    Two hours of silent work later, they both leaned huffing over their shovels.
    “You didn't have to do that.” she said. It was early afternoon but already the sun was long gone and green-and-yellow tendrils of Aurora Borealis ribboned over the peaks.
    “Gonna have fun getting your wood free, now,” said the old man, nodding toward the pile that was frozen together with thick ice.
“Cheechako
thing to do.”
Cheechako
was what all the old-timers called greenhorns.
    “I should have stacked it under the