Page 3 of Mountain Man's Mail Order Challenge
Those words flashed through my mind. Maybe I’d heard them on a TV show at some point. Or maybe a movie. Could’ve been that a friend said them. Whatever the case, they fit as I stood there, hand extended for no good reason whatsoever. Collin certainly wasn’t shaking it.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
He didn’t know. I’d suspected it. Mostly, it had been the sheer refusal to video chat or even talk on the phone. Who refused that? A guy would want to see more than a few carefully curated photos before making a lifelong commitment to a woman.
Yes, Bobbi had been behind it all. I knew it, deep down, but I didn’t want to believe it.
One thing was crystal clear, though. He wasn’t going to shake my hand. I lowered it to the bottle in my left hand, unscrewed the cap, and took a sip.
Saving face. That’s what that was called.
“Well, you can just go back home,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. He twisted the lid on his tumbler, took a swig,and snapped it back into place, leveling a stare at me. “I’m not getting married. Ever.”
This wasn’t a surprise. I couldn’t even pretend it was. He probably saw my lack of reaction as a sign I expected it. The truth was, I’d spent weeks trying to imagine how the guy in the pictures would act once I saw him in person, and I honestly couldn’t imagine him willingly signing up for a dating site.
Something had told me Bobbi was behind this, mostly because she’d been the one so eagerly helping me with travel plans. Collin had given me her number right away to coordinate. Only it hadn’t been Collin at all. It had been someone else. Probably Bobbi pretending to be him.
I weighed my options. I could head back down the mountain and stay at the inn, then leave in the morning, or I could head straight home. It was a one-hour drive. No big deal. Basically, I came up here to climb a relatively small cliff. A little early morning exercise.
But I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to stay here. With him. I wanted to convince him to marry me. Crazy, but true.
Mostly, it was the intensity in his eyes. He might say he never wanted to get married, but the guy looked at me like I was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
Nobody had ever looked at me like that.
And that was why I crossed my arms over my chest, a heavy bottle of electrolyte-fueled liquid dangling from my right hand, and stared him down. “One night.”
His expression didn’t change. His eyes still seemed to bore straight into my soul. That clenched jaw told me he was fighting the urge to close the distance between us and wrap his arms around me. Maybe kiss me the way I’d always dreamed of being kissed.
“One night?” he asked. “For what?”
“You give me today and tonight. If you still don’t want me around, I’ll leave. No questions asked.”
“I have to work,” he said. “I don’t know what time I’ll be getting off.”
I shook my head. “You’re off on Sundays.”
I knew that because he told me. Well, whoever had been pretending to be him anyway. They’d said he’d have all day to get to know me.
He didn’t blink. Didn’t budge. Just stood there, arms crossed and jaw locked tight.
I didn’t say a word. I didn’t want to press him. So I just let the silence stretch between us, let the mountain breeze blow my ponytail to one side, and let him think.
He looked like he was losing an internal war—and hating every second of it.
Finally, he exhaled through his nose. “You don’t give up easily, do you?”
“Nope.”
His eyes drifted down my body and then flicked away just as fast, like he couldn’t help but was furious with himself for looking. “Damn it.”
I said nothing.
He rubbed a hand over his mouth and muttered something I couldn’t quite catch. Then he pivoted toward the trail and spoke over his shoulder.
“I’ve got some work to do. Some errands to run in Hartsville, then landscaping on my property. If you want to stay here—just for the day—you do what I say. You help with the day’s work. No complaints, no flaking out halfway through. I don’t have time to babysit.”
My heart thudded. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling too wide.
