Page 10 of Saved By the Mountain Man Ranger

We lie still. His weight on me, heavy, real. His breath coming in ragged bursts against my collarbone. My fingers tracing the scar on his left knuckle where his hand rests beside my head.

"Your ex wife," I murmur.

"Don't."

"Was wrong."

He lifts his head. Looks at me with something so unguarded it makes my chest ache. "You don't know that yet."

"I know what impossible to love feels like. This isn't it."

He stares at me for a long time. Then he rolls to the side, pulls me against his chest, arm locked around my waist, and presses his mouth to my shoulder. Holds there. Breathing me in.

We stay like that while the storm rages. My files are scattered across the kitchen floor. My research timeline is probably under the table. Marcus Farrell's twenty year old mystery is waiting for me in the next room.

For the first time in two years, I don't feel like getting up to chase it.

The realization should scare me. Darius's words should be echoing, the accusation that I love dead people more than living ones. But Weston's arm tightens around me, his mouth warm on my bare shoulder, his heartbeat steady against my spine.

And all I can think is: this is what it feels like to be held by someone who won't let go until you ask.

I don't ask.

Chapter Five

WESTON

The storm breaks on the morning of day four, and the silence that follows is deafening.

No wind screaming through the trees. No snow hammering the windows. Just cold, white stillness. Sunlight cuts across the kitchen floor for the first time since Eliza arrived, and the cabin feels different in the light. Smaller. More exposed.

She's still in bed. My bed. Where she's been sleeping wrapped around me for two nights now, her body pressed against mine, her breath on my chest, her thigh thrown over my hip. Each morning, I've woken up with my face in her hair and my arm locked around her waist. Each morning, letting go has taken longer.

The sat phone buzzes while I'm pouring coffee. Briggs.

"Pass should be clear by tomorrow noon," he says. "Plow crew's starting from the Durango side at first light. How's your guest?"

"Fine. She's fine."

"County towed her rental down to Mabel's lot yesterday. Keys'll be at the diner."

"Copy."

Silence on the line. Then: "Everything okay up there, Weston?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"You sound weird."

"I don't sound weird."

"You used two complete sentences in a row. That's weird for you."

I hang up.

Tomorrow noon. The pass clears, Eliza gets her car, drives back to Denver or wherever she came from. Goes back to her research, her book, her life built around other people's stories. The cabin goes quiet again. My bed goes cold.

This is fine. This is how it was always going to end. Three days. One storm. The math was always temporary.