Page 30 of Mountain Mens' Curvy Obsession

“Do you get stuck up here often during the winter?” I ask.

“Once or twice every year,” Booker says with a half-smile. “It’s why we always pack the pantry and the basement with reserves of everything for at least three weeks. It’s a lot of canned food, mostly, and gasoline for the backup generators, should the main grid fail.”

“Has it failed before?”

Nico nods as he goes back to shoveling as well. “Once. It was horrible. We were working with a third of the usual power input just to keep the lodge and the running water warm.”

“And yet you still live up here,” I mutter, looking around in genuine fascination.

“It’s far removed from the world,” Chance explains. “It’s quiet. The air is clean. The townspeople are decent folks who mind their own business. We go into the city quite often, too, though. The winter usually keeps us up here, for the most part. But we like it.”

“We like the peace and quiet,” Booker adds. “After you deal with what we had to deal with, you tend to appreciate the peace and the quiet a lot more.”

I give him a curious look. “You’re talking about your Navy SEALs service, right?”

“Yes,” he replies. “Up here, everything is simpler.”

“What about the townies? Isn’t there an administration or a local council in charge of these roads?” I ask.

Nico takes a moment to inhale deeply. I can tell it’s quite the effort to process this much snow with three shovels and not enough daylight during these winter days. “They’re severely under-funded, but even if they had all the staff and the equipment they needed, we would still need to wait out a blizzard like this before anybody can do anything. There’s simply too much snowfall in a short time.”

“You don’t mess with Mother Nature,” Booker quips.

“It’s the law of the land. We knew that when we decided to move out here,” Chance adds.

“How did you end up moving out here?” I ask.

Booker gives me a soft smile. “Our grandmother on our father’s side came from these parts, Helena, Montana, to be specific. She met our grandfather while on a trip to the area. They fell in love, she followed him to New York, and the rest is history.”

“More like she saved his ass during a blizzard,” Nico chuckles. “Our grandfather damn near died on this mountain. His buddies, too. Grandma managed to get them out of the snow before they all froze to death. She knew the land like the back of her hand, while the fellas were just winging it. Big men from the big city, thinking they were cool and unstoppable.”

“Sounds like quite the lady, your grandmother,” I reply, genuinely impressed.

Chance’s gaze warms me up on the inside. “You would’ve loved her. And I know she would’ve loved you. She passed away long before we met you and Aleks.”

The sound of snow crunching and twigs breaking causes the four of us to instantly turn to find its source. From between the trees, a nimble figure clad in a pale pink ski suit comes out, her long red hair; frizzy from the inherent humidity, jutting out from under a white woolen hat. Her grey eyes light up when she sees us.

“I cannot believe my eyes!” the woman exclaims, rushing to greet us.

She struggles with the high snow and ultimately slips and falls, but Chance is the closest and manages to catch her. “Breonna,” he says, though he doesn’t sound anywhere as excited as she is to see us. “What are you doing all the way out here in this snow?”

“I’m pretty close by, actually. My cabin is just down there,” she says, pointing somewhere behind her. I can’t see much because of the trees and copious amounts of snow, though, but I believe her. “Fancy running into you, gentlemen.”

“We had no idea you were out here,” Nico mutters, then gives me a quick, nervous glance. “Anya, this is Breonna Jackson, one of our few neighbors up on this mountain.”

“Nice to meet you, Miss Jackson,” I say to the woman, who wears too much makeup on top of an exaggerated spray tan.

I’ll bet she’d look a lot more beautiful with a more natural complexion. The vibrant red hair, the grey eyes, the lips and high cheekbones create quite the picture. She’s skinny underneath that ski suit, but her breasts struggle against the zipper. Pretty sure those are implants, but hey, to each their own.

“And who are you?” Breonna asks me. “Please, call me Breonna.”

“Breonna, sure,” I reply with a smile. “I’m Anya”

“Anya is staying with us for a while,” Nico says.

Chance and Booker keep stealing glances at each other. They seem uncomfortable. Nico is trying to be amenable and polite, but I sense the tension oozing from him, too. There’s history here, I can tell. And now I want to know more.

“How nice,” Breonna says, shifting her focus back to Nico. The twinkle in her gaze unnerves me. She would tear the clothes off him if she could. “You look great, Nico. I can’t even tell you’ve been stuck up here in the snow for more than a week.”

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