Page 2 of Taming the Wild Mountain Man

I put the vase and photo album down on the floor and peer through the curtain. Hume is standing in the same spot. He hasn't moved.

I know that's his name because Annabelle Walters, the famous hotel heiress in her sixties who personally headhunted me to run her family's original lodge—the one that kicked off an empire of boutique lodges around the world—as she prepares to retire, told me. She also said that before he showed up in town seven years ago, Hume Rockwell used to work as a stuntman in Hollywood. He also served in the military, volunteers at the local search and rescue, and runs his own construction company, BDE—Big Deck Energy.

I didnotsmile when she told me that.

When I enquired, in a polite neighborly way, about Hume's love life, all she said was that he's single and didn't strike her as the 'settling down' type.

A scratching sound from the direction of the back door pulls my attention away from gaping at my shirtless neighbor. I snap my fingers. "Sabine Wren," I say to myself, then walk to the back door, where, as suspected, Hume's beautiful yellow Labrador—and not the skilled Mandalorian artist and weapons expert fromStar Wars Rebels—is waiting patiently to come inside.

I open the door and she leaps in, greeting me with a series of playful licks, her eyes sparkling, and her tail thumping against the counter.

"It's good to see you, too, Leia Organa," I say, scratching her behind her ears.

So here's the thing. I don't actually know this dog's name, so I'm cycling throughStar Warscharacters until I land on one that sticks. "Have you been a good girl?"

She looks up at me with those warm brown eyes that pulled me in the second she came over for the first of many visits the day after I moved in, as if saying,Of course I've been a good girl.

"All right, then." She trots behind me to the pantry where I've stocked up on organic treats from the local vet. "Sit," I say, and Rey Skywalker obediently sits. Ooh,Rey. I like that. It suits her.

I break the treat into a few smaller pieces and feed them to her, smiling as she munches away noisily. It's better than her tearing into the discarded crumpled newspapers I had lying around when she came over on that first visit.

I return to my living room and peer out the window. Hume is gone, which means it's safe for me to resume cleaning up the mess in my front yard. Rey sticks by my side the whole time like the good girl she is.

The dog, I love. Her owner, not so much.

2

Hume

The dizzying nausea hits me again as I wander up and down the street, searching for Chewy, and the ringing in my ears gets louder and louder. It's painful, but it'll pass. It always does.

After a few minutes, Chewy totters out of the bushes a couple of houses over.

"There you are!" I barely hear myself, the words muffled, sounding like they're coming through a wall. Relieved my dog is safe, I take her back home and settle in for the night, hoping the sensation will pass. It's been occurring, on and off, for the past few months—sudden episodes of severe dizziness accompanied by hearing loss, my ears feeling like they're about to burst, and there’s a loud ringing sound.

It happened on the day my new neighbor moved in. I was out doing some gardening, trying to push through another dizzy spell when I saw her waving to me. I figured she may have shouted something over the fence, but I couldn't be sure since I didn't hear it. A wave of nausea hit me right at that very moment,so I said nothing in response and hastily retreated inside. Not exactly the ideal first impression.

And it's happening again now. My vision has suddenly gone all wonky as everything around me starts to spin. I grip the trunk of a sturdy Douglas fir to stay upright.It'll pass, I remind myself. I just need to breathe through it, so I suck in some big gulps of fresh mountain air.

I've been scared a few times in my life—realizing the intel supplied by local allies was a potentially deadly setup, struggling to breathe as an oxygen tank malfunctioned while shooting a complicated underwater scene for a big budget action movie, and of course, the thing that left the biggest scar of all: being a powerless child, witnessing my mother bear the brunt of my father's drunken rage.

This is different, but it's up there, and I'm starting to get worried. Something is not right with my body, and as much as I'm ignoring it and trying to act like it doesn't exist, it's not going away. Sooner or later, I'm going to have to deal with it. Most likely, later.

"You okay, Hume?" Brock, the newest volunteer on the Cedar Crest Hollow Search and Rescue Team comes up behind me.

"Yeah. Fine." I push off the tree, glad the dizzy spell is passing, and resume walking to where we've set up our gear to do some high-angle rope rescue training. My days in the SEALs and as a Hollywood stuntman are well and truly behind me. This is how I get my adrenaline fix now.

"Are you sure?"

"I am."

"Okay." He doesn't sound convinced as he walks in step beside me. "Because if I'm going to make fun of you for peeving off your new neighbor, I want to make sure you're at full strength."

"Wait." I stop walking. "How do you know I have a new neighbor?"

He grins, and it's the type of grin that belongs to a man who's recently fallen in love. And also inherited fifty million bucks while welcoming his first child into the world. The guy is flying high, and it shows. I'm happy for him. He's a good man who deserves all the happiness in the world. "Is her name Tenley, by any chance?" he prods.

I shrug. "Wouldn't know. She's been living next door to me for a month, but we haven't gotten as far as exchanging names yet."

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