Page 11 of The Mountain Man Lumberjack’s Claimed Bride

"You saw that?"

"You were cutting a downed limb off the access road. Proper form. Weight balanced, bar angle correct, chain tension checked before you started. Where'd you learn that?"

"My dad. He put a saw in my hands when I was fourteen. Said every person who lives near timber should know how to use one safely."

Something moves through his expression. Not surprise. Recognition. The same thing I saw on the ridge when I pointed to the garden spot. This man keeps finding pieces of himself reflected in me, and it keeps catching him off guard.

"You look at my land like you're already planning where the garden goes."

"Because I am."

The couch is three feet wide between us. Maybe less. Close enough that if I extended my leg, my foot would touch his thigh. The firelight paints his face in planes of amber and shadow, catching the lines at the corners of his eyes, the silver threading through his beard at the jaw.

"Nora."

"Yeah."

"Tomorrow isn't going to go the way you think."

My pulse picks up. "What does that mean?"

He sets the book on the side table. Turns his body toward me. Full attention. Those hazel eyes are dark now, green swallowed by something deeper, something that has been building for six days in this cabin between carefully maintained distances and conversations that ended exactly one sentence before they needed to.

"It means I was supposed to spend this week proving to myself that you don't belong here. That Bette was wrong. That a woman who showed up with two suitcases and a letter from an agency I never contacted has no place in a life I built specifically to keep people out."

My breath shallows. The book slides off my lap onto the couch cushion. Neither of us looks at it.

"Did you?"

"No." The word comes out raw. Almost angry, but not at me. At himself. At the situation. At whatever wall he built eight years ago that is apparently no match for a former librarian who bakesbread at dawn. "Every morning you're in my kitchen before I get back from the porch. Every night you sit at my table asking questions nobody has asked me in years. You smell like flour and you read forests and you wear my flannel like it's yours, and I can't?—"

He stops. Jaw tight. Hands gripping his own knees, knuckles white.

"Can't what?"

"Can't stop thinking about what would have happened on that ridge if Bette hadn't called."

The candles flicker. The storm presses against the windows. The entire world narrows down to this couch, this man, this moment that has been building since I stepped out of a rental car with flour on my future and a letter in my pocket.

"So stop thinking about it."

His eyes snap to mine.

"Stop thinking about it and find out."

Something breaks in him. I see it happen. The controlled, careful, self-imposed discipline of a man who has spent eight years keeping people at arm's length fractures along a line that runs right through the center of his chest, and what's underneath is not calm at all.

His hand finds the back of my neck. One motion. Not tentative, not testing. Decisive. Fingers threading into my hair, palm warm against my skin, and my whole body lights up from that single point of contact.

He pulls me forward.

The kiss is not gentle. There is nothing exploratory about it, nothing questioning. Hunter Marsh kisses me with the same precision he brings to everything else. Thorough. Devastating. His mouth opens against mine and the taste of coffee and woodsmoke fills my senses while his other hand finds my waist,pulling me across the couch cushion until there is no space between us at all.

My fingers curl into the front of his thermal. The fabric bunches in my fists as his tongue finds mine, slow, deliberate, a man who takes his time because he has decided this matters and he does not do anything that matters halfway.

A sound escapes my throat. Low. Involuntary. His grip tightens at my waist in response, fingers pressing into the curve above my hip, and the kiss deepens. His beard scratches against my chin. His chest is hard and warm under my hands. His breathing has changed, gone rough, gone uneven, the carefully controlled rhythm of Hunter Marsh disrupted by a woman sitting in his lap in candlelight while a storm tries to peel the roof off his cabin.

When he pulls back, just barely, his forehead rests against mine. Our breathing fills the space between us, ragged, too fast.