Page 24 of The Mountain Man Lumberjack’s Claimed Bride

"You told me to be afraid of you."

"You should be. I'm difficult, I'm stubborn, I talk to trees more than people, and I will never, for as long as I live, deserveyou. But I am asking you to come home anyway. Come home, Nora. The bread dough is still on the counter, and the cabin doesn't work without you in it."

Both hands on my face now. Framing it. Holding it the way he holds everything. With care. With intention. With the full force of a man who has decided and does not do anything that matters halfway.

"I love you too." The words come out steady. Clear. No hesitation. "I loved you when you made me coffee. One mug, no conversation, just a man who does the right thing without being asked. I love your mountain and your timber and your terrible communication skills. I love that you read forestry books by candlelight. I love that you burned the letter because it didn't deserve to exist in a house where something real lives."

His mouth crashes into mine. Not gentle. Not careful. The kiss of a man who drove twenty miles to his sister's house with a hand-carved sign in the passenger seat because words alone weren't enough and he needed me to see my name burned into something permanent.

My arms wrap around his neck. His hands drop to my waist, lifting me off the floor, pulling me against his chest. The kiss deepens. Tongues. Teeth. The scrape of his beard against my chin and the sound he makes, low in his throat, that vibrates through my entire body.

"Come home," he says against my mouth.

"Take me."

We leave the sign in Bette's entryway. Leave the guest room with the lavender curtains and the wrong-facing window. Leave the town behind as the truck climbs back up the mountain, headlights cutting through the dark, his hand on my thigh the entire drive.

Neither of us speaks. There's nothing left to say that the sign hasn't already carved into timber. Hunter and Nora Marsh. Permanent. Burned deep.

The cabin door opens. Bread dough still on the counter, dried and unsalvageable. Two mugs still in the sink. The woodstove burning low, barely alive, because he banked it before leaving but didn't let it die.

His flannel is still on the back of my chair.

My chair. His chair. Our table.

The door closes behind us. His arms wrap around me from behind, pulling me back against his chest, mouth finding the curve of my neck where his breath goes warm.

"Welcome home."

"Feed the woodstove. Then feed me. Then take me to our bed."

A rough laugh against my throat. "Bossy."

"You love it."

"Yeah." Another kiss, pressed into my shoulder, into the skin beneath the collar of a sweater I'm going to lose in about fifteen minutes. "I do."

The woodstove gets fed. Leftover soup gets heated. We eat standing at the counter because the table still has the ghost of an argument on it, and by tomorrow it'll be gone, replaced by fresh bread and coffee for two and the steady rhythm of a life being built with intention.

He carries me to bed at eight thirty on a Thursday evening, and the mountain is dark and quiet and ours.

"Stay forever," he says into the hollow of my throat.

"That was always the plan."

His mouth finds mine. The night wraps around us. Outside, the October stars are sharp and bright and infinite, and the cabin on the ridge smells like bread and wood smoke and the beginning of everything.

EPILOGUE

HUNTER

FOURTEEN MONTHS LATER

The garden is producing more zucchini than any two people could reasonably consume.

That's what I'm thinking about, standing on the south ridge at six in the morning, looking down at the rows Nora planted in April between the two granite outcrops she spotted on her second week here. She was right about the site. Morning sun from the east, natural windbreak on the north and west, drainage down the slope. The tomatoes came in heavy in August. The squash is still going strong in late November, protected by the cold frames she built from scrap timber and old windows she found in the back of my workshop.

The woman built cold frames. Without asking. Without instructions. Measured the lumber, cut the angles, fitted the glass, and had four functioning frames operational before I camein from the south slope and found her installing hinges with my good drill.