Page 15 of My Protective Mountain Man

I can still feel the way my heart cracked when he looked at me like a stranger. Like I was just another player in some deal. I told him the truth. And maybe that’s what stings the most. I was honest.

And it didn’t matter.

“Sierra,” a voice barks from across the room.

I don’t need to look. I already know who it is. Martin. My boss. The man who holds my paycheck, my future, and—if I let him—my dignity in his hands.

He strides over, all stiff shoulders and forced smiles, his cologne wafting like a chemical warning. “Where the hell were you yesterday?”

“I was on the mountain,” I say evenly. “Looking for Everest Smith.”

His eyes narrow. “And?”

“I never found him.”

He snorts. “You just didn’t work hard enough. I always say if you want something bad enough, you’ll get it.”

I clench my jaw. I want to argue. To tell him I walked for hours in the blistering heat, passed out on a porch, and fell into something I didn’t see coming. But instead, I bite the inside of my cheek and nod.

“Right,” I say. “I’ll do better next deal.”

His lips curl, satisfied. “Good girl.”

I swallow the bile rising in my throat as he gestures for me to follow him. “Clients are here. Let’s make a good impression. Smile, Sierra.”

I force my shoulders back and step into the conference room. The walls are all glass and chrome, a sleek lie. The clients are already seated—two men in suits and a woman with a perfect blowout and a sharper smile.

I take the seat beside Martin, and just as the clients start making small talk, I feel it—his hand. Sliding around my waist like it belongs there.

I stiffen. But I don’t move. Instead, I plaster on a smile. The kind of smile that says I belong here. That I’m fine. That nothing inside me is breaking.

I glance at the reflection in the window across the table and barely recognize the woman looking back.

I sit at the long glass table, trying to focus on the words spilling from the clients’ mouths—square footage projections, slope access, early investor interest. But it’s all static in my ears.

Martin’s hand doesn’t move from my waist. I miss my mountain man. I miss the way he touched me. The way I felt safe with him. I am a fool to think you can spend 24 hours with a man and somehow form a real connection. I’ve thought a thousand times that I shouldn’t have told him who I truly am, but then what would the relationship be if I couldn’t be me?

I relegate myself to the fact that he will always be the one that got away. I guess it wasn’t meant to be after all…

I shift slightly in my chair, trying to make it seem casual, professional, but Martin just tightens his grip. I grit my teeth, trying to smile and trying to hide my disgust. It’s like I’m some trophy he’s placing on the table for everyone to see.

I nod politely at something the woman across from me says. And then I hear it. A voice. Low. Rough.Commanding. “Take your hand off her before I break it.”

My heart stops. The room falls into a thick, stunned silence.

I turn. And there he is.

It’s my mountain man and he’s left his cabin. Standing just inside the glass doorway, the sun casting a halo around his broad frame like he’s a god who has descended from the heavens to rescue me from this tortured hell. His jaw is set like stone, blue eyes burning a hole through Martin.

No one moves. But Martin. His hand drops from my waist like it’s been electrocuted.

“Who are you?” Martin says, voice high with forced bravado. I can see his hand waiving to the secretary to call for security.

Everest doesn’t even blink. “I said take your hands off her. And I don’t say things twice.”

I stand slowly, legs trembling, every eye in the room swinging to me.

“Sierra,” Everest says, his tone softer when he speaks to me, but still firm. “You okay?”

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