Page 3 of Her Mountain Man Veteran

The girl nods and reaches for her suitcase, but I get to it first, hoisting it up by the handle as I open the front door.

“I got it,” I tell her.

“Thank you. Sorry it’s so heavy.”

I’m used to hauling giant logs around, so the suitcase feels featherlight as the girl follows me out of my cabin and into the woods. I shorten my strides so she can keep up, blood thrumming hard through my veins as we head off together.

Fuck, what’s happening to me?

I’ve never felt like this before. It feels like I’m losing my goddamn mind. My body is hyper-focused on this beautiful girl, aware of every breath, every movement she makes, and when her arm brushes mine slightly as we walk, it feels like the whole world just fucking shifted. It doesn’t make any sense. I just met her. She’s a stranger. A beautiful stranger who got lost looking for her brother’s cabin. That’s it.

“I’m Celeste, by the way,” she says from beside me, her voice making my pulse jump.

God, even her name is pretty. Angelic.

“Dane.”

“Nice to meet you, Dane.”

Then she smiles at me again, and I know for sure that I’m a total fucking goner.

3

CELESTE

I’m stillraw with embarrassment as I follow Dane through the woods. I can’t get the memory of his naked body out of my mind, and it sure doesn’t help that he looks just as sexy in flannel and jeans, his muscles bulging beneath the fabric in a way that makes my heart flutter. He doesn’t seem fazed that I saw him naked—the embarrassment is all mine—but there’s still something gruff and guarded about him. He’s a man of few words, and every time I look at him, he angles his face so that his scars are turned away from me. I’m not sure he even realizes he’s doing it, and I can’t help wondering what this man’s story is.

“It’s beautiful out here,” I say as we pass a creek, the water sparkling like diamonds in the sunlight. “Brody said it was remote, but I still wasn’t expecting it to be this…wild.”

Dane’s lips twitch into the shadow of a smile. “Wild is how we like it on Cherry Mountain. How long has your brother lived here?”

“Only about a month. He used to live with me in Denver.”

Dane makes a noise in his throat. “Big change, moving here from a city.”

“He never liked it there,” I say. “This place suits him much better.”

“What about you?” I feel Dane’s eyes boring into me. “You a city girl?”

“Not exactly. I grew up in Vermont, right in the middle of the Green Mountain National Forest. I moved to Denver for college and then stayed for work.”

Dane nods. “You like it there?”

I hesitate. “It’s…complicated.”

Denver will always have a soft spot in my heart. It was my escape: my refuge from all the crap I had to deal with back in Vermont. But I’ve never fully embraced being a city girl, and I’m not sure I ever will. Part of me will always belong to the forest, despite the painful memories I have of my childhood home. But I’m not going to bore this handsome stranger with my life story, so I don’t elaborate.

“What about you?” I ask instead. “Have you always lived around here?”

He nods. “Grew up on Cherry Mountain.”

His answer doesn’t surprise me. I can’t imagine a man like Dane living anywhere else. He almost seems like part of the wilderness, as though he were carved from the mountain itself.

“Do your family live out here too?” I ask.

It suddenly occurs to me that this guy could easily be married with kids. There’s no ring on his finger, but that doesn’t prove anything, and I feel another rush of embarrassment for ogling him before.

“My brother has his own cabin back that way,” Dane says, gesturing behind us. “Our parents moved to Florida a little while ago.”

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