Free Something Has to Give by Maren Smith

mouth-watering bite of hash halfway to his lips. “Used to be?”
    “The red shed.” Her eyes rose to his , and for the first time, her mouth curled up in the most evil of smiles. “It’s a goat shed now.”
    “You turned my tool shed into a goat shed?” Quint stared at her, that little smile of hers s tabbing in through all parts of him. The lust was mind-boggling, but there was aggravation hot on the heels of it, sizzling down his spine and out through his limbs the way the hash had sizzled in the hot pan. The buzzing, tingling effects of it were impossible to hold still for, and he couldn’t help it. He laughed, shifting and re-shifting in his seat. He honestly did not know whether he wanted to grab and shake the hell out of her, or kiss her good and senseless. And maybe spank her a couple hundred times because, damn, those were his tools !
    Shaking his head, he laughed again.
    “I’ll give them back to you,” she said, taking another bite. The look on her face was one of slow-savoring satisfaction, and he didn’t for a second think it had anything to do with the food.
    He snorted. “Sure you will.” He stabbed a bite of potato and stuffed it into his mouth, laughing, shaking his head, squirming and chewing all at the same time. What was wrong with him that he should want to kiss her over this? There were literally thousands—thousands—of dollars’ worth of tools in that shed and he was absolutely beside himself with the need to teach that sassy, smirking little mouth of hers a lesson. What in a kiss was going to teach her anything? And damn, but she could cook. This was really, really good.
    “I will. I have no use for them. I’ll be happy to give them back to you.” She took another bite. “For a price.”
    That very effectively killed his desire to laugh. Kissing her was still on the table, maybe; shaking her, definitely—but at least he wasn’t laughing. “I’m not leaving,” he said gruffly. “You leave. What could possibly be keeping you here?”
    “What ’s keeping you here?” she returned.
    “Everything. This house has been in my family from the day we homesteaded it. My grandfather was born in this house. So was my father, and so was I. We have farmed it, ranched it, and hunted it. Anyone driving down the highway might think this place nothing more than dust and sagebrush, but the day I relinquish my ownership will be the day they cart me out of here in a pine box. And that’s a fact.” He stabbed another bite of potato and stuffed it into his mouth, chewing viciously. Funny, how being angry made it taste not as good as it had a moment ago.
    “You have money,” she said, no longer smiling now either. A hint of desperation had leaked into both her face and tone as she leaned toward him. “You have credit cards and a truck. You could go anywhere you wanted to. You don’t have to stay here!”
    “I’m not leaving,” he bit out. When he picked up his beer and popped the top, her shoulders sagged. When he bent over his plate and stubbornly returned to eating, she fell back in her seat for a moment and just watched him. The hash tasted like the dust in his yard now, but he ate on anyway and he didn’t look at her again. Not even when she picked up her plate and took it into the kitchen.
    She ate her meal silently over the sink, with the only sound from that point on being the scrap e of silverware on his grandmother’s old brown stoneware plates and the occasional sniffle that may or may not have been her crying. He didn’t venture into the kitchen to check. He just left the table.
    With t he hash sitting in the pit of his stomach like an indigestible lump, he went outside to watch the snow fall and smoke his first after-dinner pipe since he’d been home. On every indrawn puff, he tried to tell himself he didn’t care if she was crying or not. On every smoky exhale, he failed miserably.
     
    * * * * *
     
    Like every other night since he’d been back, Quint adjourned himself