People were always saying someone was tougher than he looked. It seemed to be true about Zachariah Todd.

She opened the cottage door and, still saying nothing, walked back to the kitchen and began to make an ice pack out of a plastic bag wrapped in a thin cloth.

“Appreciate it. I’ll get the dishcloth back to you.”

She’d already lifted the kettle to make tea. She blinked at him. “Where are you going?”

“To walk off what I can of this mad.”

Seeing no choice, she set the kettle down again. “I’ll go with you.”

“You don’t want to be with me right now, and I don’t want to be with you.”

It was quite a discovery to learn that there were times a slap was preferable to words. “That can’t be helped. We have things to talk about, and the longer it’s put off the harder it’ll be.”

She opened the kitchen door, waited. “Let’s try the woods. We can consider it neutral territory.”

He hadn’t bothered with a jacket, and the rain that had swept in the night before had left cool temperatures in its wake. He didn’t seem to mind. She glanced up at him as they headed into her little wedge of forest.

“That ice isn’t going to do any good if you don’t use it.”

He pressed it to his aching jaw and felt mildly ridiculous.

“In the summer when I came here I wondered what it would be like to walk through the trees in autumn, with all the color and the first bites of cold. I’d missed the cold, the change of seasons, when I lived in California.”

She let out a little breath, drew one in. “I lived in California for three years. Los Angeles primarily, though we spent a lot of time in the house in Monterey. I preferred it there, but I learned not to let him know that or he’d have found ways to cancel trips north. He liked to find little ways to punish me.”

“You married him.”