“Why don’t we let her stay in there until the morning? She might feel safer venturing out in the daylight,” TJ suggested as he started up the path.
“I’m not leaving her locked in there!”
“Hey, don’t bite my head off, bro. I wasn’t the one streaking in the moonlight. This time. And the only time I did try it those rotten twins, Rachel and Beth, stole my clothes and I had to climb in the back window of the pack house…” TJ’s voice trickled away to nothing as he realized that Keil was still standing by the door. Shaking his head, he called in a singsong voice, “Helloooo. Earth to Keil. Hey, I thought we were going to write a note. What is the matter with you, man? You’re acting like you’ve never seen a woman before and that’s not true. You have the chicks all over you, all the time. In the pack and out of it. Not that you take advantage of your opportunities like I think you should. Leave her alone. She’ll be fine. It’s not like she’s going to freeze or anything.”
A loud snort followed him. “Look,” Keil said, “I’m not leaving my mate locked in a sauna all night because I was too stupid to figure out how to fix a misunderstanding.”
TJ stopped in midstride. “Your mate?”
Keil sighed, his head turning to the sauna as if drawn to it. “Yup. I think so.”
“Oh shit.”
Robyn watched as the two men disappeared from sight and candlelight appeared in the windows of the cabin.
Well, that had been just peachy. Great going, Robyn. Way to use your brains. What a stupid, idiotic thing to do, walk outside in the buff without checking around first. She knew better than to assume people wouldn’t show up. She hadn’t even thought about animals, although right now she wished she had wandered up against a bear.
This was the kind of accident Tad had warned her about. Why he didn’t like it when she did trips without him or their core group of friends. She was capable of taking care of herself in a survivor-type situation, but adding people to the mix always made it tough. The fact she was deaf kind of guaranteed that when meeting new people in the wilderness something was going to go screwy.
She dropped back on the sauna bench and tried to relax. She was still holding her knife, and twisting the handle in her palm, she rubbed the carvings with her fingertips like a worry stone. The familiar sensation calmed her to the point that she could begin to see the humour in the situation.
I bet they never expected to get flashed, she thought as she poured some of the now-hot water over her skin, cleaning off the sweat and rinsing down her hair. She wondered if the men would want the sauna once she was done. She wouldn’t stock the stove, but leave a bed of coals.
Because she had to go back inside. It would be monumentally silly to spend the night in here just because she’d had a bit of a shock.
Besides, now they knew she had a big knife.
She toweled off in the sauna then dressed in the annex. A piece of white against the window caught her eye, and she lifted a candle up to examine it.
We apologize for frightening you. We are Keil and TJ from Haines, Alaska, and operate the wilderness excursion company Maximum Exposure. We are members of the Granite Lake pack. If you are afraid to come to the cabin, please put two candles in the window, and we will bring your sleeping gear and food/water to the door and you can retrieve it when you feel safe. But we promise you are safe to return. If you want, approach in wolf.
Robyn read the note with some puzzlement. Well, the first part was nice but what were they talking about “approach in wolf”? It must be some kind of backcountry code she hadn’t picked up yet. They were from Haines, maybe it was an American slang. Sometimes the small differences between American and Canadian vocabularies caused weird things to happen.
Hanging her wet towel in the sauna, Robyn wrapped her hair in a dry one and faced the door. Squaring her shoulders she drew a deep breath. She could do this.
Walking toward the cabin she peered in the window, checking it out before approaching the door. One of the men sat on the edge of the sleeping platform, his face out of sight as he spoke, his hands wild as they swung in big circles.
Great, a waver. All that energy saying nothing.
The other leaned back against the table, his arms supporting him, his gaze roaming around the room. Suddenly his eyes stopped and looked straight at her out the window. Even though she should be invisible to him, a person in the dark while he was in the light, he’d seen her. He stood a little straighter and lifting up his arms, he crossed them over his heart and dipped his head.
Robyn stopped in shock.
That was the ASL sign for “love”.
Robyn’s last straw broke and she stomped the rest of the way up to the cabin and threw open the door. Dropping her things on the bench, she kicked off her boots and marched up to him and started the deaf equivalent of shouting with her hands and body in his personal space.
“You do not insult me like that. Asshole. I accept your apology for the mistake before, but you go too far. You are rude. What does…?” She pulled the paper she’d retrieved from the window and pointed to the line “approach in wolf”. “What does this mean?” She stepped back and crossed her arms while she waited for his response.
The look on his face was priceless.
Confusion, complete and utter confusion.
Robyn spun toward the waver as he stood and she caught the last thing he said. “…using sign language?” She nodded, bicycling her hands in front of her while mouthing “sign language”.
The larger of the two men made sure she was watching him before he spoke. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand sign language. I think I’ve upset you and I didn’t mean to. Is there a way we can talk?”
All the bluster drained out of Robyn like sand through a sieve. Typical. She came to get away from the drain of communicating with people and instead she was going to have to use extra energy.
Oh well, maybe they’d eat a few pieces of her cheesecake and save her the calories.
She held up a hand with a lifted finger, a signal she’d seen many hearing people use to ask for a minute. Going back to the door, she cleaned up her boots and went to her backpack, tucking away her gear and tidying up her hair. She turned to get a drink and found the man she’d yelled at standing with a glass in his hand.
“Would you like some water?” He offered it to her and she touched her fingers to her mouth then opened the hand toward him before accepting the glass. She drained it in one shot. Robyn grinned at the funny expression on his face as she returned the glass. It had been hot in the sauna, and she wasn’t going to be ladylike and sip when she was thirsty.
He smiled back at her. Dark brown eyes, so dark they were almost black, twinkled at her.
“Would you like some more?”
She nodded and made a circle motion over her chest with her hand.
“Was that ‘please’?” he asked.
Robyn gave him a reluctant smile. She nodded and sat at the table. There was something fascinating about the man, and she watched as he went to get her some more water. She’d placed snow-filled buckets here in the main cabin before her sauna, and the men knew the routine. They had one of the buckets on the side cupboard for cool water, and the other simmering on the stove to melt snow and keep the air moist.
She let her eyes wander over him as he added more snow to the hot bucket. He was big. One of the biggest men she’d ever seen, and perhaps rushing into the cabin and shouting at him hadn’t been the smartest thing to do.
His dark brown hair hung in a braid almost to his hips. Broad shoulders covered with a dark T-shirt, he had a tribal tattoo that wrapped around his left arm at the biceps. She was tempted to move closer and examine it, but he returned with her full glass and she tried to hide the fact she’d been staring at him with a quick shift to face the table. She spotted the notepad and pencil she’d left out earlier. She tapped it and motioned for him to sit beside her.