Page 2 of Caught with the Mountain Man

He looked around and seemed to realize there were no curtains in my cabin. Curtains had gone out of style a while ago, I was pretty sure. My dad didn’t have curtains. My grandmother did, but her condo décor was stuck in the nineties.

“Or the carpet,” I deadpanned.

I waited for him to laugh. His back was to me, so I couldn’t see if he was smiling. Maybe he didn’t get the joke. He might think the bedroom was carpeted. The door was closed so he wouldn’t know there wasn’t a scrap of carpet in this place. Not even rugs. I’d pulled up the bear-shaped rugs that had filled the place and hadn’t had time to replace them yet.

But I did have clothes. Could clothes absorb smoke? What about walls and ceilings and hardwood floors?

Oh, crap.

I rushed to the living room windows and began nudging them open—not an easy feat since this cabin had stayed closed up for most of its existence. My parents bought it as an investment before my mom died when I was in high school. We’d spent a few summers here when I was a kid, but not nearly enough to justify what they paid for it.

When I graduated college, I proposed the idea of renting it, and that was exactly what I was doing right now. Destroying it with smoke was better than burning the whole thing down, but only slightly.

“At least it’s a nice night,” the guy commented as he worked to pry open the kitchen window. Finally, it slipped up with a swoosh. “You might want to open the ones in the bedroom.”

He gestured toward the bedroom door. For a moment, I wondered how he’d known that was my bedroom, then I remembered the floor plans were fairly standard here. His bedroom would be in the same place as mine.

That thought filled my stomach with butterflies. I rushed to my bedroom, closing the door behind me. Then I leaned against it, shutting my eyes and letting out a breath. Images of him sleeping naked just feet away from where I slept filled my mind.

Maybe he didn’t sleep naked, but in my imagination, he did. And the fantasy broadened from there. In it, he had the sheets off and was stroking himself, eyes closed, chest rising and falling with each deep breath.

Now that he’d met me, would he think of me when he came?

I squeezed my legs together and was alarmed to find how wet I was. That happened sometimes, but I never did anything about it. Eventually, it went away.

But what would happen if my gorgeous neighbor wanted to sleep with me? We could even do it right here in the home my dad owned. As overprotective as he’d always been, it had never occurred to me to rebel, but suddenly that was all I was thinking about.

“You okay in there?”

I jumped away from the door, my heart racing for another reason suddenly. His voice, so close, had scared the crap out of me. I tiptoed away from the door to the middle of the room.

“Fine,” I said. “Just opening these windows. They’re a little stubborn.”

“Let me know if you need help.”

If I were really intent on having sex with him, I could tell him I needed help. Lure him in here. Maybe even take off my clothes while he was opening the window. No man could resist a naked woman, right?

Wrong. As comfortable as I was with how I looked, attraction was a weird thing. Everyone had a type. Just because he was my type didn’t mean I was his.

With a sigh, I headed to the window and flipped the latches. It looked like I’d have to settle for sleeping alone in my bed and imagining him naked next door. Maybe I’d even try touching myself. I just might be able to make myself come now that I had a good visual to focus on.

2

GRAYSON

I’d always been a sucker for a damsel in distress, but tonight, it wasn’t a damsel I was saving. It was some burnt taco meat.

My plan had been to help her air the place out and head back to my cabin. There, I’d dive into the pizza I’d picked up on the way home from my long day working to restore a tornado-damaged house. We’d made most of the houses habitable after the destruction caused by this summer’s tornado, so we were now focusing on little repair jobs like siding that had holes in it and windows that needed new weatherstripping.

But it had been clear from the taco shells and seasoning packet on the counter that Simone, as she’d introduced herself, had been preparing dinner when the fire broke out. And her dinner was now a heaping scrap of blackened nastiness. So I headed over to my house and grabbed the pizza while she warmed up the oven.

And now we sat on her couch, each with a slice of pizza on a paper plate. She had a glass of wine that she’d barely touched, and I’d already gulped down half a beer.

“I’m a technical writer,” she said in answer to my question about what she did for a living. “I can work from anywhere, andmy parents own this cabin. I’m renting it from them while I save up to buy something.”

I munched my pizza and tried not to show just how impressed I was. Technical writing sounded like something that required a high level of intelligence. She was drop-dead gorgeous and smart. I’d never been able to resist that combination.

But this was more than sexual attraction. I’d been thinking about getting her naked since she opened that door, for sure. But I was also drawn to her. I’d never been drawn to anyone in my life. And it was kicking my commitment phobia in the ass.

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