Page 98 of Major Love

I stare at it without blinking before glancing over my shoulder toward the front door.

Jason went out… and he left his cell phone at home?

Should I… ignore the messages? Or should I check them, in case it’s something important?

I keep my eyes focused on the boiling kettle until I can’t take the incessant buzzing any longer, snatching Jason’s phone up so quickly that I accidentally punch my knuckles against the counter.

And then my jaw is dropping to the hardwood as I scan through his endless scroll of messages.

The earliest ones are from really late last night, from the guys on his team discussing their plan of action for this morning.

Then there’s one from his brother, informing him about an urgent call this morning. And the fact that they’re going to be doing roof-workin the snow.

And if that wasn’t bad enough? The next texts are from awoman.

Okay, so honestly, could this get any worse? First there’s the idea of Jason doing risky construction work up in the snow, and then there’s the idea of a sexy small towner asking him to ‘fix up her porch’.

And from the amount of kisses on that message I know that it isn’t just her porch that she wants seeing to.

I narrow my eyes at the name Halle – which, annoyingly, is really cute – my blood thundering as I wonder ifthat’sthe job that Jason went to this morning. If that’s why his truck is still here – because maybe she picked him up on her way to, like, a lingerie store, and now they’re screwing in the backseat while I’m wearing his stupid sweater.

But it’s the most recent thread of messages that have my heart halting in my chest.

Because, as soon as I read them, I know exactly where Jason will be.

They’re SOS messages from Phoenix Falls’ search-and-rescue department, stating a situation up in the mountains and then dropping logged coordinates every couple of minutes.

My heart pounds as I stare down at the numbers, not knowing if they’re the coordinates for the people getting rescued or if they’re the coordinates forJason– logging his position every so often just in caseheis the one who becomes injured.

No. There’s just… no way that he went out to do a mission and didn’t tell me about it. Right?

I mean… did he know about it last night? Was this the job that he knew he had to get up early for? Or did he really only find out about it this morning, dropping everything else so that he could rescue campers from the mountains?

Thesnow-coveredmountains, that are dangerous at the best of times.

I drop his cell to the counter and then I’m racing to the back porch, throwing the door open and letting the snow-chilled air blast my cheeks.

My eyes flash straight to the wooden structure that Jason’s snowmobile has been parked beneath, the tracks in the snow leading north and leaving me looking at nothing but an empty shelter.

His snowmobile? Gone.

His cell phone? Still on the kitchen counter.

My right eye? Twitching, becauseI can’t believe that he would put me through this shit again!

I grab a pillow from the outside couch and bury my face into it, screaming. Birds flutter from deep in the evergreens, flocking away from my emotional outpouring.

Then I slap the cushion back down on the couch, chest pumping quickly as I stare at where the snowmobile is meant to be.

Perfect. Just perfect. Not only did Jason spend over a decade of his life doing the one profession that I both admire and fear above everything else, he then went straight into mountain search-and-rescue in one of the most snow-covered states in the continental US.

And, on top of that, after he finishes up his perilous ride in the mountains, he’ll go straight to scaling a roof in the worst winter conditions possible.

Oh, and when that’s over, he has a gorgeous small-town hottie to bang, most likely over that porch railing that he’s about to fix up for her.

I storm straight back into the kitchen, my cheeks on fire as I quickly mount the stairs.

We parted ways once before because I couldn’t bear to see him get hurt and, more than a decade later, I still feel the exact same way.

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