Page 9 of The Mountain Man Lumberjack’s Claimed Bride

"And you've been alone since."

"By choice."

"Was it, though?" Her head tilts. Not challenging. Genuinely asking. "Or was it just easier than finding out whether someone else would make the same choice she did?"

The forest is very still. A hawk circles somewhere above the canopy, its shadow cutting across the ground between us. Eight feet of distance. Maybe seven now. Maybe six.

"You ask a lot of questions."

"Former librarian. It's an occupational hazard."

"I thought librarians were quiet."

"Common misconception. Librarians are full of questions. We just ask them one at a time so people don't notice how many there are."

Something happens in my face. I feel it. A loosening at the corners of my mouth that I haven't felt in long enough that the muscles almost don't remember how. Not a smile. The precursor to one. The geological shift that happens before the surface breaks.

Nora sees it. Her eyes widen just slightly, and her lips part, and the flush on her cheeks deepens from exertion pink to something warmer, something that has nothing to do with the climb.

"We should head back." My voice is lower than it should be. "Bread'll be ready."

"Yeah." She doesn't move. Neither do I. "We should."

The space between us is definitely six feet now. Maybe five. Close enough that I can see the flour she missed on her cheek, a small smudge below her left eye. Close enough that if I reached out, my thumb could brush it away.

My hand rises. Slow. The motion feels inevitable, like a tree choosing a direction to fall. Fingertips find her cheek. The flour sweeps away under the rough pad of my thumb, and the skin underneath is warm and soft and she goes completely still.

Not frozen. Still. The stillness of a woman who is standing exactly where she wants to be.

Her chin tilts up. Brown eyes finding hazel. The mountain breeze catches a strand of hair across her face and she doesn't brush it away because she's not moving and I'm not moving and the distance between my mouth and hers is exactly the width of one more bad decision.

My phone rings.

The sound shatters through the pines with the subtlety of a gunshot. My hand drops. One full step backward, boots crunching on dry needles.

Bette. Of course it's Bette.

The phone goes unanswered, shoved back into my pocket. When I look at Nora again, she's picked up the paint cans, slung them over her shoulder, and started back down the trail with the steady, unhurried stride of a woman who just had something taken from her and has already decided she'll get it back.

She doesn't look over her shoulder.

She doesn't have to.

The whole walk back down the mountain, through timber and scrub and the golden October light, I can still feel the warmth of her skin on my thumb. The bread is waiting. Mykitchen is going to smell like something I lost a long time ago. And the woman walking ten paces ahead of me is becoming impossible to refuse, one question at a time.

Five days. She asked for seven.

At this rate, seven won't be enough.

CHAPTER FOUR

NORA

Day six. One day left on the deal I made him, and Hunter Marsh still hasn't touched me since the ridge.

Two days ago, his thumb on my cheek, flour and mountain air and hazel eyes gone dark with something he didn't want to feel. Two days since Bette's phone call shattered the moment and he stepped back so fast you'd think my skin burned him.

Since then, nothing. Careful distance across the kitchen. Controlled conversation at dinner. Eyes that track me when he thinks I'm not paying attention, then snap away the instant I turn my head.