Page 6 of The One With the Mountain Man

I would gladly take the spotlight if it gave my sister relief. Cheating and divorce were hot topics in every town I wandered through, but the smaller the town, the more fierce that kind of gossip could be. Lost Creek was no exception.

Which made my thoughts stray back to the mysterious woman I'd just met. Marley was fleeing something. Escaping. It could be anything and it was none of my business, so why couldn't I stop thinking about it?

"I've never seen you like this." Travis examined me. "What the hell is with this woman?"

"I wish I could tell you, man." She was beautiful, but it was so much more than that. She had this thick, wavy hair I wanted to to feel in my hands, and a killer body with plenty of curves, which appealed to my physical side. Maybe it was the worn jeans, tight tank top, and casually comfortable flannel? She looked like she could climb into my much dirtier truck and hold her own. She was funny and self-aware.

Genuine.

Fuck, that was it, wasn't it? The thing I kept chasing...and running from.

"She made me laugh."

His eyebrows rose as he slowly nodded. "And triggered that protective instinct of yours. You do love yourself a wounded animal."

I rubbed at my chest. It would have been so easy to take command, force her to tell me who upset her and fix it, but the sense that it was the exact wrong thing to do was palpable. This was a woman who had a story. Maybe several stories, and you had to earn every single one of them. She would only tell them when she was ready and to whom she could trust.

And I just instinctively knew I could earn it—if I was careful.

Of course seeing her a second time was pretty critical to any of that mattering, which was why I knew for a fact I'd fucked up by not at least exchanging information.

"I'm going to be watching for shiny black pickup trucks from now on."

Travis threw his head back and laughed hard. "Oh man. I hope you find this girl again. I want front row seats to this."

"You think I'm going to make a fool of myself?"

Travis nodded quickly with a big goofy grin on his face. "Absolutely. Combine that with your family? Priceless."

My stomach twisted. The last place I wanted to find Marley was Lost Creek. Which meant I needed to get Karis on her feet as soon as possible. I needed to get out of that town and back on the road. And hopefully I would run into Marley in a few weeks in some other town and figure out how I could make her laugh too.

Three

Marley

I think you're supposed to take your shoes off for that

This must behow Alice felt when she fell down the rabbit hole. Every single mile I traveled seemed to take me further from anything I had ever known. Sure the elevation was still killing me, but now the very trees, the roads,everythingwas different. I had left my former life entirely behind. This could be Narnia for all I knew.

"And you'll need to be in four-wheel drive." The very nice cabin rental lady had out a map. She was attempting to show me where I would be living for the next few months.

"Like, the whole time?" I used my parking brake never and four-wheel drive almost never.

"Yep, after you cross the creek just switch it over and take it nice and slow up the mountain. Don't stop or go too fast. Steady." She smiled like these instructions made sense.

They didn't.

Not to me. I licked my lips, wishing some of this nervous energy would dissipate already. "Is there any chance someone could guide me?"

"Oh, of course!" Her curly hair bounced as she spun around to her desk to grab a set of keys. "We do this all the time. You said you're from Florida?"

"Yep. Super flat. I grew up on an island and have been living near the coast in the Tampa area for the last few years."

She smiled kindly, which I appreciated since she could just as easily roll her eyes and make fun of me for being inexperienced with this kind of terrain. "That is a big difference. Do it once or twice and I'm sure you'll get the hang of it. You seem like the kind of person who catches on quickly."

Her coworker watched me intently from her desk. She kept glancing at her computer and back to me, which made me even more nervous than driving up a gravelly mountain road. Was she staring because I was a silly Florida girl who thought it was a brilliant idea to spend her summer in the mountains, or because she recognized me?

And if she recognized me, would I have to cancel the reservation and try to find an even more isolated spot than this? I chose Lost Creek for a very specific reason. There was the obvious: middle of nowhere. There was the less obvious: nature seemed healing.

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