Another smile formed on his lips, that curve of the muscles growing increasingly familiar and common in her presence. “Actually, this is the one time I’m not.” He discovered a new appreciation for Myrtle at every turn. It is only because she is unconventional, not because of anything . . . more. “I’ve never known a lady capable of starting and keeping a fire going.”

“I didn’t start it,” she pointed out.

“No, but you’ve kept it going, which is no small feat.” He crooked his fingers. “Must you always be this obstinate?”

“Yes.”

They remained with their gazes locked, neither speaking. One thing he would always win out on where this one was concerned was silence.

But not stubbornness.

Not this time, however. “Please,” he said quietly. He’d not have her tending fires on her birthday, and certainly not on the birthday when her family had left her alone.

A curl tumbled over her brow. And he had the overwhelming urge to brush the strand back. To take that curl in his fingers and feel the silken softness. “Very well,” she said grudgingly, and relinquished her hold.

Setting down the pile, he collected the poker and added a log.

As he worked, she knelt beside him, warming one hand beside the fire, while the other she used to pet Horace.

“There,” Val said when he’d finished and stood. He reached a hand down, that gesture coming effortlessly, as if he were once again a polite gentleman given to assisting young ladies and not the surly, mournful, empty man he’d become.

And Myrtle placed her fingers in his with a similar ease, the level of which both confounded him and terrified him out of his mind, and allowed him to help her to her feet.

He should release her. It was the proper thing to do. He’d no place touching her in any way. Even so, he couldn’t break that connection; he couldn’t stop himself from reversing the lay of their grip so that his fingers covered hers, or from stroking that curve between her right thumb and index finger.

“Your hands are hard,” she murmured. His fingers curled reflexively, and he made to pull it back, reminded by her innocent admission that he wasn’t that man.

But Myrtle brought her other palm up, keeping him there.

“No, it isn’t a bad thing,” she said matter-of-factly, retaining her hold upon him. She turned his hand up and raised it close for a deeper inspection. “My father’s are soft. And I’ve never noted my brothers’ hands before, and that is the extent of my knowledge of them.”

She was innocent. So very innocent.

Too innocent to be with a cynical, unsmiling bastard like himself.