Page 39 of Naughty With The Mountain Man
Nate leans against the counter with a coffee, pretending not to stare. He fails at pretending. Greta catches him and raises one eyebrow like a challenge. He grins, slow and dangerous, and she rolls her eyes while smiling into the cake she’s icing.
“Y’all want help or you just flirting in there?” I call.
“Both,” Greta sings back. “Mind your business, Hunt.”
“Noted.”
Hale watches them with a look that’s part amusement, part relief. He’s easier in his skin now. Wren did that. She’s perched on the arm of his chair in a soft sweater and combat boots, tracing lazy circles on his shoulder with her thumb. When I glance over, she gives me the kind of bright, unguarded smile that used to make me suspicious and now just makes me grateful.
“How’s town?” I ask Hale.
“Quieter,” he says. “Sheriff cleaned house. Center’s got cameras that work, badges that can’t be faked, and a panic button Ellie insisted on that goes straight to Dixon and me.”
“That was my idea,” Ellie calls, popping back out with a tray. “If I’m going to run a sanctuary, the walls better be smart.” She sets down rolls that should be illegal. “Also, I bullied city hall into funding new lights in the alley. And the teens voted to name the dog we adopted ‘Lieutenant Biscuits.’”
“Powerful name,” I say, deadpan.
“Carries gravitas,” Wren agrees.
“Has range,” Hale adds, so serious I almost lose it.
Ellie tips her head toward the mantle. “Speaking of range—” She squints. “Did you move my mistletoe?”
“It migrated,” I say, utterly sober.
“You moved it above the couch,” she says, hands on hips.
“Gravity,” I say. “Can’t fight it.”
She crosses to me, standing between my knees. “This feels like a trap.”
“It is.”
“Good,” she whispers, and then she kisses me, slow and sure, like this is how the night begins and ends. It still wrecks me, the way she does that—threading gentleness and heat together until my ribs remember what soft feels like. She pulls back with a smile that lives in her eyes. “Merry almost-Christmas, mountain man.”
“Merry almost-Christmas, Sunshine.”
Greta clears her throat loudly. “Some of us are trying to keep this PG.”
Nate doesn’t take his eyes off her. “Name one time you kept anything PG.”
Greta’s mouth curves, satisfied. She slides him a slice of pie without looking. “Eat, CIA.”
“Ex,” he says, accepting the plate. “But I’ll make an exception.”
It’s not subtle, what’s happening between them. It doesn’t need to be. Nate’s been hovering around the diner at odd hours, fixing leaky faucets and “taste-testing” anything that requires an opinion. Greta pretends she’s just tolerating him. She’s not fooling anyone, least of all herself.
“You two taking bets on whether he wins her over before New Year’s?” Wren murmurs to me while Hale pulls her closer.
“No bets,” I say. “Odds aren’t interesting. He’s already gone.”
“Good,” she says. “She deserves someone who looks at her like that.”
Hale kisses her hair, and the room goes warm around the edges again. I think about the first time I met Wren—Hale’s ghost story turned flesh—and the way he talked about her like she was the one bright thing he’d been tasked to guard. Now she guards him right back. That’s how it should be.
Dinner is loud in the way I used to avoid and now can’t get enough of. Greta tells a story with hand motions that threaten structural damage. Nate steals her roll and lives to tell the tale. Ellie keeps touching me when she passes—shoulder, wrist, the back of my neck—as if reminding herself I’m here. Or maybe reminding me she is.
After, the girls conspire over cocoa while Hale and I step onto the porch, Ranger pushing his head into my hand until I scratch that spot behind his ear. The snow glows blue under a thin moon. The trees are quiet.
