Page 12 of Beastly Mountain Man

“Good, because I’m having a surprisingly strong response to this.”

She opened it once more, and I stepped beside her to point out where the latch now met the center of the opening. Her shoulder came within an inch of my arm. Heat from the cabin moved through the thin space between us, carrying the faint clean scent of her sweater and skin.

My cock tightened behind my zipper before I could do anything useful about it.

I kept my attention on the door.

Caprice leaned a little closer to see what I was showing her, then looked up at me. Her lips parted as if she had been about to ask another question and forgotten it somewhere on the way.

The silence lasted only a second.

Then her laptop sounded from the dining table, and she blinked.

“I should get that.”

“Go ahead. I need to pack this up.”

She crossed the room while I returned the driver to my bag. On her screen, a video window sat above several bands of color and a row of numbered markers. Caprice put on one side of the headset, listened, jumped to two different points in the file, and answered without wasting a word.

“Use the newer version. The timing is right there, and the graphic change matches the approved note. Leave the earlier file available until the final review is finished, but don’t route it forward.”

She listened again, confirmed something, and ended the call.

I nodded toward the screen when she removed the headset. “What are all the colored bands?”

“That’s a review timeline. Picture is up here, then dialogue, sound, music, graphics, and the markers show where notes or changes land. I don’t sit in the editor’s chair and build every piece myself, but I need to understand the structure well enough to know whether a change actually solved the problem.”

She turned the tablet so I could see another screen beside it.

“Once you know the system, you can tell a lot at a glance. It probably looks like nonsense if you don’t spend your life doing it.”

“It looks like more than nonsense. I just wouldn’t know where to start.”

“That was me with the door fifteen minutes ago.”

Bear chose that moment to settle across both of her boots.

Caprice looked down.

He had positioned seventy-five pounds of golden fur so precisely that she could not move either foot without disturbing him.

“You realize I need those.”

Bear rested his chin across the toes of her boots.

Caprice bent and rubbed both hands through the thick fur behind his ears. “This is coercive affection.”

His tail swept slowly across the floor, bumping the leg of her chair.

“You’re rewarding him,” I said.

“I’m managing the situation I’ve been given.”

She kept petting him.

I decided not to point out the obvious.

Before leaving, I checked the wood supply for the forecast. The cabin already had more than enough seasoned split wood for normal use, but with the weather moving in faster, I wanted a little extra reserve under cover in case the upper road became inconvenient later.