Page 19 of Rescued By the Mountain Man

"What are you doing here, Jade?" The question comes out harsher than intended.

Her smile falters slightly. "Watching you. Learning."

"Learning what?"

"That you're the same man here as you were up there." She gestures toward the cabin's location high on the mountain. "That wasn't just some... isolated incident."

I zip my pack closed with more force than necessary. "And what was it, exactly?"

"You tell me." She moves closer, stopping just out of reach. "You're the one who's been avoiding me since we got back."

"I haven't been avoiding you," I lie. "I've been busy."

"Right." She doesn't bother hiding her skepticism. "Too busy to return a call? Too busy to stop by the resort when you dropped off the incident report yesterday?"

I sigh, rubbing a hand over my face. "What do you want from me, Jade?"

"The truth would be a good start." Her voice is steady, but I can see the vulnerability in her eyes. "Was it just sex for you? A nice distraction while we were stuck together?"

"You know it wasn't."

"Do I? Because from where I'm standing, it looks a lot like a man who got what he wanted and is now finding every excuse to disappear."

Her words hit like an avalanche, burying me in shame. Because she's right—I have been avoiding her. Not because I don't want her, but because I want her too much.

"I'm seventeen years older than you," I say, the same argument I've been repeating to myself since she left.

"I'm aware of basic math."

"I live alone on a mountain."

"Also aware of geography."

"I'm not the man I was before the accident."

At this, her expression softens. "That's kind of the point, Rhett. Neither of us is who we were before our accidents. That's why this works."

Hope, dangerous and fragile, unfurls in my chest. "This thing between us—it can't be simple."

"Nothing worth having ever is," she echoes her words from the cabin, stepping closer. "I don't want simple. I want real."

The last of my resistance crumbles like snow under boots. In two strides, I close the distance between us, my hands framing her face as I claim her mouth with mine. She makes a small, surprised sound that quickly turns to approval, her good arm winding around my neck to pull me closer.

I pour everything into the kiss—all the longing, the fear, the tentative hope that's been building since I first pulled her from the snow. She meets me equally, her response just as fierce, just as honest.

When we finally break apart, both breathless, I rest my forehead against hers. "I thought this would fade once we left that cabin. That whatever sparked between us was just circumstance."

"And?" Her eyes search mine.

"And I haven't thought about anything but you since you left." The confession costs me nothing, not when the reward is her brilliant smile. "I tried to talk myself out of this a hundred different ways."

"Let me guess—I'm too young, too reckless, you're too set in your ways, we're too different." She ticks them off on her fingers. "Did I miss any?"

"You covered the greatest hits." I can't help smiling back at her. "I've been an idiot, haven't I?"

"Monumentally." She rises on tiptoes to press another quick kiss to my lips. "But you're my idiot, if you want to be."

"I do." The certainty of it surprises me. "God help me, I do."

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