Page 5 of Fearless Mountain Man

CARTER

Getting Ana into the kayak was the hard part. She warned me that she wasn’t all that coordinated, and the fact that she wore a pantsuit didn’t help. In the end, she left her jacket on the bank and held my hand as she climbed in.

I can’t say I minded the handholding part.

Once she was seated, I just had to worry about getting the kayak around the pond without tipping both of us over. Ana had insisted on pouring her wine into a disposable tumbler she kept in her car. She only poured a small amount, standing at my sink in my kitchen after rinsing out whatever she’d had in there before. Now she held that tumbler between her legs, the straw sticking up as if begging her to wrap her lips around it.

“There’s an empty lot,” I said, forcing my thoughts away from the image of her wrapping her lips around something upright and rigid. Something that was not, in fact, a straw.

I cut the engine and let us float. I felt bad every time I fired it up. Not only could we not talk comfortably, but it was after eight o’clock. My buddies who lived in these cabins wouldn’t be in bed that early, but they probably wouldn’t appreciate me interrupting their downtime.

“Josiah lives there,” I said, pointing to a cabin to the right of the empty lot. “He’d make a good neighbor. Probably wouldn’t mind you plopping a house down almost on top of his, either. He just might feel the need to add on to his house to make it bigger.”

Josiah was competitive. Everyone knew that about him. Our poker nights sometimes lasted well into the morning hours because he was determined to beat whichever guy happened to be winning. Sometimes he did. Sometimes he didn’t. He was a good sport about it either way, but I got the feeling he beat himself up more than anyone could.

“The view isn’t the same,” she said.

I looked to my left. Yeah, I knew that ahead of time. Too many trees. Even at my place, the mountains were far off in the distance. They were only visible because the pond happened to stretch pretty far when viewing it from my back porch.

“You can’t build a boat ramp anywhere on this pond,” I blurted.

It was part of a new plan, gurgling to the surface of my brain. I’d talk her out of this, giving her all the reasons the property would be a bad investment for some wealthy dude in Nevada just looking for a quick buck.

“Most people interested in living on the water want to be able to walk out their back door, hop in a boat, and go,” I said.

“Isn’t that what we just did?”

Good point. I actually bought my motorized kayak for that reason. I wanted to be able to walk out my back door, hop in a boat, and motor around the pond without having to do a bunch of manual labor myself. Not that I minded rowing. But after a long day of hauling lumber around, I just needed to relax sometimes.

“The view was more what I was after,” I said. “And a lap pool to cool off after a long day. My guess is your client isn’t looking to sell to a guy interested in working on the logging crew.”

She hesitated before answering. She even stopped and took a long sip from her tumbler of wine.

“My client doesn’t have anyone specific in mind,” she finally said. “I probably shouldn’t be honest with you about that, but I believe in full disclosure.”

Now I was the one eyeing her without speaking. Honesty. That was all part of the game, I was sure. But I wanted to believe that she was opening up to me because of the personal connection we’d made.

At least I felt a personal connection. Okay, so it was mostly physical. But that counted as personal, didn’t it?

The truth was, this woman had my brain all tied in knots. Normally, I’d be running from any involvement with a woman. But I found myself running toward Ana instead of away from her.

“So, he plans to just plop a house on this property and see what happens?” I asked.

She took a deep breath and looked toward the line of cabins pressed together like houses on a Monopoly board. “He wants to build a badass house. Classy, but also with all the bells and whistles. Something a wealthy retiree would want to call home.”

“Him?”

She shook her head. “No. Someone like him. He can’t relocate here full time. He has a wife and grandkids nearby. And he doesn’t want to just buy a vacation home. He wants to make some money so his own kids and grandkids will be well taken care of long after he dies.”

He had plenty of money for that, I was guessing. I’d never had anyone take care of me like that, so I admired it. My wealthy uncle had taken me under his wing after my dad abandoned my mom when I was a baby. He showed me how to save for my future, but from there, I’d done everything for myself. I guess I had my parents to thank for that. They’d given me no other choice but to figure things out on my own.

“And you’re going to make a pretty penny off this deal, I assume,” I said.

She was here to convince me to sell. She wouldn’t have come all this way if there wasn’t a big payday in it for her.

“I’m not greedy,” she said. “I just need enough to live on. Things have kind of dried up lately. Crap. Why am I telling you this?”

She looked down at her tumbler like she was about to blame it on the wine, but she’d barely had any. She’d gone through her glass at the bar—that had been over an hour ago. I’d only seen her take one long sip from that tumbler. No way was she even slightly tipsy.

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