Page 30 of The One With the Mountain Man

She nodded, not taking her eyes off the rainbow. "A sister and a brother. How many brothers do you have? You said a lot, but not how many."

So she remembered our conversation as clearly as I did. That was good. "Four."

She finally turned. "You have four sisters and four brothers? There arenineof you?"

"Plus two spouses, one soon to be ex-spouse, and five nieces and nephews."

She winced at the mention of Julien. "Ex?"

"It's why I'm here. I'm helping Karis out with Gus while she gets her life sorted out."

"Karis? Oh, I like that. It sounds like the name my mom would have picked if Eric was a girl."

"I take it your brother is named Eric?"

She nodded and folded her arms in front of her as she leaned against the rail. It wasn't defensive, like it could be. It was more like she was just getting comfortable with a new person and didn't know what to do with her hands. "Like Prince Eric fromThe Little Mermaid. My mom has a thing with names."

"Is your sister also a Disney princess?"

"Sort of. Her name is Elora. As in Elora Danan in the movieWillow."

Well at least I'd never forget their names. "Aurora, Elora, and Eric. Got it."

"I might need a roster to learn your siblings’ names." Her grin widened.

"Our teachers used to sigh on the first day of school and say 'another Finn' before checking our names off the list. And there's no rhyme or reason to them. The first letters of our names don't match, there's no naming convention, just whatever they liked best as we came along."

Her eyes danced—which was oddly entrancing—as she pursed her lips to keep from laughing. "Do you all look alike? I'm fascinated by families that look alike. We don't. I look like my mother, Eric looks just like Dad, and Elora is both of them combined."

Why couldn't all conversations be this easy? When we ran out of family topics would we fall right into something else, or was that when the awkward silence would hit? "We're all different, but we all clearly belong to our parents." Colin probably looked the most like me. Maybe that's why he wanted to work with his hands in the great outdoors like I did.

"I can only imagine how loud your house is."

My shoulders locked out of habit, bracing against the noise that thankfully wouldn't come tonight. Mom was pissed that I bailed but I couldn't find it in me to care. "It's loud and chaotic. Which is why I usually wind up outside." Like the dog.

Marley nodded slowly, then turned to take in the last faint image of the rainbow before it disappeared. A softness came over her. The messy braid she'd added earlier was long gone. Instead her wild curls hung over her shoulder. I wanted to feel how soft they were as I kissed her. So I moved back to the rail beside her and waited.

And waited.

Until the rainbow was gone and she sighed. "So, what is it you do, Jackson Finn? What gives you the freedom to come and go as you please?"

She wouldn't be asking if she wasn't at least a little bit interested in me, so this was progress. "Travis would say I'm a professional outdoorsman." That fucker loved to flaunt his degrees whenever he could, but the point was valid. What he did at ODX and what I'd been doing for the last decadeweredifferent.

"Who is Travis?"

I rested my hip against the wood and crossed my arms over my chest. "He's my best friend. And Joanne's brother." I shrugged. "Small towns. You can't throw a rock and not hit relatives."

She laughed lightly and it sounded like music to me. Either her voice really was magical, or our pheromones were working overtime. "So what does a professional outdoorsman do? Is this like chopping wood and taking care of wildlife?"

People generally reacted in one of two ways when I told them what I did for a living. They either looked down on me like my wandering made me a leech on society or they were fascinated. I was really fucking glad Marley fell into the latter category.

"I've chopped plenty of wood and yeah, taking care of wildlife comes with the job, but no, that's not what I do." I didn't have Travis's degrees. Finns didn't have college funds. We all had to make our way into adulthood on our own. Not surprisingly my education matched the way I liked to live. A few semesters in an outdoor adventure major, followed by certifications and specialized programs. Over the years I amassed a hell of a lot of experience. "The outdoor adventure industry is exploding. You have businesses like Outdoor Experiences of Lost Creek," I waved in the general direction of town, "all over the country now. It's everything from guided hikes to whitewater rafting, to skiing, to the fly fishing we talked about earlier."

She perked up at this. "Oh, I see. Yeah, I grew up in an outdoor adventure epicenter of sorts, I suppose. It's just very different from this." She turned her gaze back to the mountains and sighed.

And I fell a little harder. Her world might be very different from mine, all flat and watery, but mine was just as dedicated to spending time outdoors. I took in her tanned skin and toned body and realized Marley might just love nature as much as I did.

"You picked this cabin because of the deck, didn't you?"

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