After a few seconds, he made a noise low in his throat. “Spit it out, Frankie.”

“Stronzo,” she muttered. Asshole it is, right to your face.

He didn’t react.

Fine. “My first night at your roadhouse, I went outside on my break, and there you were in the parking lot. You and your lover. And, Mr. Alaska man, I watched you gut her feelings like you would a deer. Then you strolled inside like you hadn’t left a woman bawling her eyes out behind you.”

He stared at her, then ran a hand over his shaved pate. “Fuck.”

There was an impressive explanation.

The sharp line of his jaw turned harder than the mountains behind him. “If I have to explain this shit, I could use a cup of coffee.”

He was inviting himself in for coffee? Che palle. How annoying. She pulled in a breath to refuse, but…she wanted that explanation.

“All right.” Her aikido workout could wait until later. She inclined her head. “Build me a fire, and I’ll make coffee.”

He nodded, smile totally gone.

Apparently, he did have a temper after all.

Crouching by the small woodstove, Bull heard the hiss of the coffee maker in the kitchen corner. Gryff had joined Frankie, having discovered that food frequently fell from the sky in kitchens.

As the fire caught, Bull took a seat on the armchair and scowled. Talk about his marriage. Right. He’d rather roll down a jagged slope and rip up his skin.

Even now, he couldn’t believe how thoroughly Paisley had snowed him.

Years ago, the sarge had said that most people concealed their true selves as thoroughly as a mama fox would hide her den. “But, with you, boy, what you see is what you fucking get.” Maybe that was why he could read people well enough but wasn’t inclined to be suspicious— especially of a lover.

Live and learn.

With a sigh, he glanced around the one-room cabin. Dante had remodeled last winter, smoothing the log walls and wood floor to a satiny patina. The back half of the room held the kitchen corner with new appliances. A movable divider sectioned off the bedroom corner.

In the cabin’s front half, a colorful green and brown rug, two brown overstuffed chairs, and a matching couch made up the sitting area. With a fire crackling in the woodstove, the room was nice and cozy.

The New Yorker had made herself at home. A bright sweater hung over a kitchen chair. There were books and an eReader on the coffee table. The kitchen table had bright wildflowers in a glass jar…and an empty wine bottle.

“How do you take your coffee?” Frankie asked.

“Black, please.”

She walked over and handed him a heavy mug.

A sip told him she knew how to brew coffee. “Thanks.”

She tilted her head in acknowledgment, then studied the fire. “You did it differently than what Dante showed me.”