Page 42 of The One With the Mountain Man

I felt myself being pulled into Karis's orbit almost as quickly as I was Jackson's. There was so much warmth and love in this room, and I wanted to be part of it. "I'd love to."

Fourteen

Marley

You'd be amazed at how many improbable stories there are out there

"This isthe kind of stuff people don't believe." Karis shook her head slowly as she fed Gus in his highchair. "You randomly ran into each other at a diner, thinking you're never going to see each other again, and then you wind up living next to each other! Wild!Wild!"

We were all seated around her small dinner table, the meal mostly eaten. Jackson had just explained how we met...and then met again.

"I keep a note in my phone for stuff like this. You'd be amazed at how many improbable stories there are out there." It was something I visited whenever I was starting a new series. What weird, but actually true, coincidence could I incorporate into the new story?

In a mystery novel I wrote a few years ago the main character finally found the exact person he'd been searching for at a totally random event neither of them were supposed to attend. I got a lot of reviews that said it was a weak premise and too ridiculous to be believable, but that whole scenario was based on something that actually happened to my brother.

"Real life is often stranger than fiction," I murmured as I glanced at Jackson.

"It sounds improbable on the surface, but we were two people traveling in the same direction at the same time...because we were going to the same place."

"Theexactsame place!" Karis's voice went up an octave. "That's what's wild! Mack doesn't know what to do with all that property, so she put the cabin up for rent just to see if it attracted any interest, which it clearly did." She shot me a kind smile. "Then you end up coming home because of me and the barn is really the perfect place to hide you away from Mom and Dad. Boom, you're neighbors!" Then her eyes went wide again, landing on Jackson. "Don't ever tell Sharon or Maeve! We'll never hear the end of it!"

I cringed. "They kind of already know."

"Generally." Jackson squeezed my leg. "Not the details."

His hand on my leg was soothing. All we shared was one life-altering kiss, but I already felt comfortable leaning into his touch. "I'm certainly not going around telling anyone." Aside from the audience at the diner, I pretty much only spoke to Willow, and while she was easy to chat with, she didn't dig around for details the way the others had.

"Red knows."

"Red's a vault," Karis scoffed.

Travis blinked. "Red knew before I did?"

"I saw him before I saw you. Scottie knows too."

So many names I couldn't put with faces. And I was bad with names. "Can someone draw me a family tree or something? I'm getting lost."

Karis gave Gus a cookie and wiped her hands. "Give me one second." She swiped a photo album off the table by the coats and flipped it open. "This is Huk and his lost boys."

"You're mixing metaphors," I laughed.

"Ha. Ha. Huckleberry Finn and his troublemaking friends then? Scottie owns the saloon. He's dating Mack," she pointed at a man with longer, dark hair, "Digger is always trouble. Then you've got Travis and my brother."

Digger was more clean-cut than the other guys. It was hard to believe he worked in construction.

Karis flipped several pages. "This is the Finn Fam. Don't even try to learn all our names yet. You'll give yourself a brain hernia. Hell, I forget their names sometimes and I'm their sister."

I quickly picked out their parents and Jackson. None of them looked exactly alike, but he was right, they were all unmistakably the product of their parents’ genetics mixing together in new ways each time.

She flipped to another page. This one had a slightly younger Jackson beside a kayak. He had on a helmet and life preserver. One hand held the two-sided paddle and the other was slung over the shoulders of an older, graying, dark-skinned man. "That's Red."

Every photograph was beautiful, and they all had the same look and style. "Who took all these?"

"Me. Photography is my hobby. That's why I have a photo album in the age of cell phones."

Based on the overflowing shelf she'd gotten the album from; she did a lot of photography.

The moment Gus was done with his cookie he began fussing. Jackson scooped him up and took him to the sink to get cleaned up. Karis sighed as she watched him, then threw back her head and groaned. "I'm so tired."

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