Page 8 of Possessive Mountain Man

“You’d need internet.”

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and looked at the screen. Sure enough, there was only one bar. Cell service would be too spotty to even use a hotspot.

I sighed and set the phone on the ground next to me. “Well, I guess I’d just have to have a really nice outdoor area wherever I lived so I could work on the back patio or something.”

“So, you’re thinking about it?”

His question pulled me back to the conversation. I’d been daydreaming for a second there about a nice little patio with a view of the mountains. I’d plant colorful flowers in the yard to make the view even better.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Living somewhere like this.”

Somewhere like this. I was specifically thinking about living in this very town.

“I grew up in San Francisco,” I said. “I never imagined living anywhere else. It’s a beautiful city with access to everything, and as far as cities go, it’s not bad. There are plenty of outdoor activities, but it’s nothing like this.” I gestured to indicate the view in front of us.

“Home is where the heart is. I guess that’s a cliché.”

“It’s true, though. It doesn’t really matter what town or state you live in. It’s all about the home you make for yourself. We’re straight out of a greeting card, aren’t we?”

He didn’t say anything. The silence stretched out between us, and I was surprised to find I actually enjoyed it. I’d been nervous about impressing him before, but somehow, in the past few minutes, I’d become more comfortable with him.

“What about your friends?” he asked. “You think they’ll all stay in San Francisco?”

My friends? I hadn’t even thought about them since I texted them. They apparently hadn’t thought about me either, going by the total lack of vibrations indicating incoming texts.

“I know it sounds weird, but I think I’ve outgrown them,” I said, speaking as much to myself as to him.

“Why is that weird?”

“I just graduated college. I can’t possibly have outgrown them already. But something’s shifted.”

The shift had happened today. Actually, maybe it happened last night, at the ski lodge restaurant, when they’d displayed alevel of immaturity I hadn’t noticed before. That had probably flown by just fine in college, but we were adults now. It was time to act like it.

“I’d just have to find someone to pick up my part of the lease,” I said. “But I could pack up and be moved here in less than a month.”

I was saying all that mostly for my own benefit. I could do it. It would be my biggest adventure of all. I’d just need to find some kind of decent-paying hourly job until I could find a position in my degree—business administration—that I could do remotely.

“That’s kind of what I did,” he said. “I made the decision at the last minute. I was all mapped out to go home immediately after discharge. The more I thought of it, the more this just made sense.”

“Where’s home?”

“Nashville. It’s great, but it’s changed a lot since I left. It doesn’t really have the small-town feel I got used to on the military base. I like the fact that someday I’ll know everyone around here by name.”

“What does your family think of you moving here?” I asked.

I was thinking of my own parents, who wouldn’t like it at all. I only saw them once a month or so, but if I told them I’d suddenly decided to move to a mountain town in North Carolina, they’d think I’d lost my mind.

“It’s just my mom now,” he said. “And she got used to me not being around. I have a feeling the guys around here are going to become my family, though. That’s just how it is here in Seduction Summit.”

I liked the sound of that. I was an only child, so I never had siblings. My college friends had become my family. We were there for each other through all the college stuff.

But things had changed since graduation. We were all starting to go our separate ways. Amber and Sammie were still in school, and Catherine had landed an internship in Silicon Valley that had her super busy. She’d tried to get me on, but she was making less than I was making as a barista, and since my parents didn’t have the money to bankroll my lifestyle, I had to stick with what I already had until I could find something better.

“It just sucks, that’s all,” he said.

Once again, I’d gotten distracted by my own thoughts. “What sucks?”

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