Page 9 of Framed By the Mountain Man Firefighter

“Yeah.”

“That’s not fair.”

“I know.” I’m in front of her now. Close enough that I can feel her breathing. “But I looked at those portraits and saw what you see when you see people. The tenderness. The honesty. The way you catch the moment nobody knows they’re showing. That belongs on the walls.”

She lets out a breath that shakes on the way out. Her hand reaches up to my jaw, small fingers against the hard angle of it, and warmth spreads from the point of contact down through my chest. I turn my face into her palm.

“The carving stays,” I tell her.

“The portrait stays,” she says.

“There’s more in the sketchbook.”

She almost smiles. Closer than she’s ever let it get.

I lean down and kiss her, slow and certain, the way I carve. Her hands slide up to the back of my neck and hold on, and I pull her into me. Around us, the gallery is full of art, and for the first time, we’re part of it.

EPILOGUE

IRIS: 5 YEARS LATER

The gallery has two walls I never touch.

The east wall is Levi’s. Twelve carvings from that first morning, plus the new pieces he’s brought in since. The bull elk, a series of wildflower studies in reclaimed cedar, and a large panel of the ridge at dawn that a collector from Denver offered four thousand dollars for. Levi turned down the offer because he carved it for me, not for a stranger’s living room.

The west wall is mine. Charcoal portraits, framed in simple black, lit by the track lighting I adjusted myself. Between them, centered on the main wall, the half-finished charcoal portrait of Levi still hangs where he put it that first morning.

I never finished it. I never will. It’s better this way. The place where my hand stopped and reached for him instead says more than any completed drawing could.

The Trading Post women. The firefighters I started drawing after Levi brought me to the station for the first time. Dean mid-laugh. Holt leaning against the engine with his arms crossed. Graham looking at something off the page that I knew, when I drew it, was Neve. The newest addition is our daughter, Amelia, eight months old, asleep in her bouncer with one fist curled against her cheek. Levi cried when I hung that one. I pretended not to notice. He pretended to believe me.

The rest of the gallery is other people’s work, curated the way I’ve always curated it. But those two walls are ours. Nobody buys from them. Nobody asks to. The regulars understand, and the tourists learn fast.

It’s after hours. The courtyard is dark, the other shops closed. Amelia is home with Laurelle, who offered to watch her for the evening. Dean is on shift with Levi, and Laurelle said our girls would keep each other busy. I didn’t argue. My husband gets off at six, the gallery closes at five, and the hour between is mine to work in the quiet.

I’m alone behind the counter, finishing a new piece on the easel. Levi’s hands. Just the hands, holding a carving tool, his massive fingers wrapped around the handle with a delicacy that still catches me off guard. I’m working from memory, shading the tendons across the back of his knuckles, when the bell chimes.

He fills the doorframe. He always will. Station shirt untucked, pine resin on his forearms from the carving he was working on this morning before his shift. He locks the door behind him, turns the sign, and walks to the counter without a word.

He looks at the drawing on the easel. His hands, rendered in charcoal by mine.

“You’re still here,” he says.

“Almost done.”

He comes around the counter, takes the charcoal out of my fingers, and sets it aside. Then he leans down, his mouth close to my ear, and says, “Time for a break.”

His mouth is on mine before I can draw another breath, deep and hungry, tasting of the coffee he drinks at the station and the wild mint he chews on the drive over. Five years, and my body still lights up like the first time. I kiss him back hard, fisting the front of his shirt, pulling him closer.

His hands slide down my sides, gripping my hips, lifting me onto the counter like I weigh nothing. Charcoal sticks clatter to the floor.

“Levi—” I start, but he’s already dropping to his knees between my spread thighs, pushing my skirt up to my waist with rough reverence. The cool air hits my skin a second before his hot breath does. He hooks my panties aside and looks up at me once—those dark eyes burning—then buries his face in me.

I gasp, head falling back. His tongue is relentless—broad and flat, then teasing and pointed, licking long stripes up my center before circling my clit with devastating precision.

The wet sounds of his mouth fill the quiet gallery, obscene and perfect. I thread my fingers through his hair, holding him there as my thighs tremble around his shoulders. He groans against me, the vibration shooting straight through my core.

“Look at me, Iris,” he rumbles, the words muffled against my slick flesh.