CHAPTER 1
TREYTON
She wasn’t supposedto get in until Thursday. It was Tuesday morning, my truck bed was full of cabin supplies, and I'd planned my whole week around having one more full day of peace and quiet before summer rental season began. So why was there an SUV parked in front of cabin three?
I pulled up next to the dusty SUV with Illinois plates and killed the engine. Biscuit whined.
“Don't start,” I told him.
He whined again. He'd been good while I ran errands this morning. But the second the SUV came into view, he'd put his nose on the dash and started wiggling his butt like he was about to be reunited with a long-lost friend.
I glanced over at the SUV. Notebooks sprawled across the passenger seat. Squares of sticky notes dotted the dash. Boxes and bags filled the back end. So much for one more day of silence.
The dog pushed past me as I opened my door. “Biscuit, get back here.”
He ignored me. That was new. Biscuit didn’t pay attention to a hell of a lot of things, but he’d never totally ignored me. Hetrotted around the back of the SUV, his tail high in the air, and that's when I saw her.
My pulse kicked up immediately as I tried to make sense of the blonde sprawled out across the gravel. She was on her stomach with her legs stretched out behind her. Had she passed out on her way to the door? Had an allergic reaction to a bee sting? It would be just my fucking luck if she’d had a heart attack on the first day of her three-month stay.
“Ma’am? Are you okay?” I rushed to her side as I pulled my phone out of my back pocket, ready to dial 9-1-1.
“Shh. I’m concentrating.”
Relief flooded my veins at the sound of her voice. She was alive. But what the hell was she doing? I glanced around. Except for Biscuit, we were alone. “Concentrating on what?”
“Her.” The woman nodded toward a glacier lily at the edge of the gravel. “Just a minute. I’m almost done.”
Her. The flower.
I took a closer look. She had a pencil in one hand and appeared to be making a quick sketch of the flower on a pad of paper. Biscuit walked right up and sat down next to her. I opened my mouth to call him back, but something stopped me.
“Well, hi there.” She tucked the pencil behind her ear, sat up on her knees, and smiled at my dog.
“Sorry,” I said. “He's friendly.”
“He's perfect.” She held out her hand for him to sniff, which was unnecessary because he was already shoving his head under it. “What's his name?”
“Biscuit.”
She laughed and scratched behind his ears. “You look like a Biscuit. It’s nice to meet you.”
I waited for her to look up at me, but she didn't. Instead, she wrapped her fingers around the pencil again and went back toher sketchbook, one hand still on my dog. “Sorry, give me one more second. I’m almost done with her.”
Her. Did she mean the flower?
I stood next to my truck and watched a woman I didn't know talk to a plant on my property while my dog refused to come when called. My to-do list was a mile long, and I still had four more cabins to check and restock.
“You'll want to unload your car,” I said. “Bears are out.”
She glanced up then, and I got my first real look at her. Hazel eyes. Honey-blonde hair piled on top of her head in some sort of messy updo. A smudge of dirt smeared across her cheek. She was stunning.
“Bears?”
“Yeah. This time of year they come down for the early growth.”
“Right. I'm Soleil, by the way. I assume you're?—”
“Treyton. I own the cabins.”
