Page 13 of Trapped with the Mountain Man

Before I can even register Abby’s presence on the opposite side of the door, all of her weight slams against me as her arms wrap around my neck. It catches me off guard and I stumble backward a step. Once I’m steady again, I tentatively return her embrace. My hands land on her waist with a couple of tense pats. It’s the lamest move imaginable. When she doesn’t ease up on her death grip, I let my arms wrap around her waist fully and pull her tighter to me. I relax into her and feel all my tension evaporate.

It’s such a foreign feeling. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a warm greeting like this in my entire life. Certainly not from my family, and I’ve never had a woman to come home to.

Not that IhaveAbby.

She releases me just as quickly as she grabbed me. Her cheeks flush with pink as she tucks her hair behind her ear.

“I was getting worried,” she says by way of explanation. “I was just about to call the station.”

I shrug off my waterlogged coat and turn to hang it on the hook near the door. “I’ll have to go back out there tomorrow. Didn’t have any luck finding the missing hiker.”

“Oh, they found him, actually,” she says.

“They did? Did you talk to Gary?”

“Yes? I mean, I’m not sure. It was the same man who called you earlier.”

“Yeah, that’s my boss, Gary. What’d he say?”

Abby catches her lower lip between her teeth and glances away.

“Bad news?” I ask.

“Yeah, I guess he slipped and fell down a cliff. Sounds like he’s in bad shape, but alive. They took him to the hospital.”

I nod in response, thankful that someone found him and that I won’t have to spend another day trying to track him down. It’s not the best outcome, but it’s not the worst I’ve heard either.

Abby and I linger in the doorway. Neither of us is sure what to do with the limited space. Even though it’s my space, it feels different with her in it.

“Are you hungry?” Abby asks. “I made some chili.”

“Yeah, that’d be great.”

While Abby warms up some food, I change out of my wet clothes in the bathroom. When I come out, two steaming bowls are sitting on the table with crackers fanned out on the plates below them. Abby is standing over the sink washing the pot she used to warm up the chili. I watch her for a minute before making my way over to the table.

I’ve barely eaten all day and I probably hiked a good ten or twelve miles, so my bowl is half empty before I remember to thank Abby for cooking. She stops blowing on another dainty spoonful and smiles up at me. I scarf down the rest of the bowl before she is even halfway done. All I want to do is go collapse on the bed and sleep for the next ten hours, but I sit there silently while Abby finishes her meal. By the time she reaches over to take our bowls to the sink, I can barely keep my eyes open.

“Leave ‘em,” I say as she reaches for the faucet. “I’ll get to them in the morning. Right now, I just want to go to bed.”

The dark forest has a way of making it seem later than it is, especially in a storm like this. It’s still an ungodly early hour for bed, but I don’t care.

“You tired?”

“It’s 8:04,” she laughs.

“Yeah, well, it’s been a long day.”

“Do you mind if I keep the light on and read for a bit?”

“Not at all,” I say, already beside the bed and pulling my jeans off. I don’t have the energy to fake any sort of modesty right now. When I return to the bed after brushing my teeth, Abby is standing over the kitchen sink brushing hers. She’s wearing one of my t-shirts again, so she’s all bare legs as she pads over to the bed and crawls beneath the covers. I throw an extra log on the fire and peel my shirt off before joining her in the bed. She hasn’t deployed the chastity pillow – at least not yet – but she won’t need it. I’m too tired and she made it pretty clear last night that she thinks it would be a mistake. I’ll keep a safe distance tonight with or without the damn pillow.

Abby has the comforter pulled up under her arms and the pillows propped up behind her back. I can feel the tension radiating off from her. I get it; she can’t be comfortable sharing a bed with me. I’m basically a stranger. A stranger who mauled her in her sleep last night.

I recognize the back cover of the book as soon as she grabs it from her bag.

“You are not reading that shit in my bed,” I groan as I snatch that fucking book out of her hands. She rolls over and tries to grab it from me, giving me a face full of her breasts in the process. Realizing this, Abby sits back and blushes.

“What is your giant problem with this book?”

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