Page 4 of Trapped with the Mountain Man

There’s a pause, presumably while Ryan writes this all down. When he does respond, the amusement in his voice is obvious, even through the thick static of the radio.

“And you’re going to keep her there at the cabin until the storm passes? Have fun with that.”

There are about a dozen reasons Ryan is probably laughing right now. There’s the fact that I’m sort of a loner out here, and I like it that way. Even Ryan has barely set foot inside the station where I live. There’s also the fact that these women are notoriously irritating and emotional, neither of which is something I’m particularly adept at handling. There’s the fact that, on more than one occasion, a ranger has hooked up with one of these women.

Not me. Fuck that. But some of the younger guys who I call to come pick them up and take them back to town.

There’s also the fact that Ryan probably thinks this one sounds cute. He’s not wrong, but I’m sure she’ll be a hell of a lot less cute once she wakes up and starts talking. She’ll probably have plenty to say about that book and her hike. All I can do is hope that the storm passes soon so I can get her out of here. There’s no place for a woman, or anyone else, out here at my station.

She is still out cold when I go back to check on her. Even though this place is more of a private cabin than a ranger station, I end up with tons of promotional crap from the Forest Service. Boxes of it sit unopened in my dining room. I grab a couple of disposable water bottles from the stack and heat them up then dig a promotional Smokey the Bear t-shirt out of one of the boxes. They’re all kids’ sizes, but it will have to do.

It takes forever to wrestle the shirt onto the woman with her limp arms and her wet hair sticking to everything. The shirt is way too short on her. I shove a warm water bottle under each arm, just in case it is hypothermia. I heat up some broth in case she wakes up soon, and when I return to the bed, she finally starts to move a little.

I enjoy the last quiet moment I’m probably going to get today and brace myself for her blabbing and blubbering. They usually cry a lot.

Here we go.

If I have to rescue one more of these women from the trail, I’m going to go to the bookstore and burn every single copy of that fucking book myself.

Chapter 3

Abby

A fireplace crackles nearby. The heat of the fire dances across half of my face, while the rest of my body is pinned under the weight of a hundred blankets. The wooden rafters above me are dusty and unfamiliar. I tilt my head to take in the rest of my surroundings, but my muscles ache at the slightest movement.

“Try not to move too much,” a gruff voice says in the distance. The sound of heavy boots on a hardwood floor draws closer until a giant man is standing at the edge of the bed beside me.

“Where am I?” I rasp dryly.

“Ranger station.”

It starts coming back to me. I try to sit up and my armpits crunch loudly. The sound makes me jump, which in turn makes them crunch again.

“What’s happening?!?” I shriek, confused and frustrated by the noise, the pain, and the heap of blankets on top of me. My body feels like a block of ice shattering on the floor as I use every bit of strength I can muster to sit up.

The man reaches over and pulls something out from under my arm. “Hot water bottles. Wasn’t sure if you were hypothermic or just exhausted.” He makes a half-assed attempt to help me by holding a rough hand to my elbow.

When I finally manage to sit halfway up, the man nods at a steaming coffee cup from the bedside table and scoots it across the wood closer to me. A bit spills out of the top and runs down the side of the cup.

“Drink this,” he says.

With every movement and every word, this man’s annoyance with me leeches out of him. He doesn’t look straight at me, even when he’s answering my questions with his clipped replies. I feel like a cockroach that just showed up in a party hat and a kazoo that he’s eager to squash beneath one of his heavy boots.

Grabbing the cup off the table next to me, I revel in its warmth and try to steady my shivering hands as I take a sip. The warm liquid hits my lips, but it’s not the cup of coffee I’m expecting.

It’s salty and…meaty?

“Oh, God,” I say, dribbling a little out of the corner of my mouth before choking the rest down. “What is this?”

“Broth,” he replies plainly. “You shouldn’t have any caffeine right now, just in case it’s hypothermia.”

I stare down at the cup. It’s not just broth, butbeefbroth. He can’t be serious, but a quick glance up at his face tells me this man is never anything but serious. I think back to the hiking shelter, when he was just a big, reflective bear charging toward me to put me out of my misery. He looks even bigger now somehow. He towers over me with his chiseled forearms crossed over his broad chest. The glint of a badge catches my eye. It reads ‘H. Shaw’ and the name Hunter flashes in my mind.

“Hunter, right?”

He nods in response.

“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but this is disgusting. You should really give your guests a heads up before you serve them hot beef broth in a coffee cut.”

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