Page 18 of Consumed By The Forbidden Mountain Man

So that's what I do.

CHAPTER FIVE

REID

Five days. That's how long I get.

Five days of Ivy in my bed, on my porch, in my kitchen making eggs she burns half the time and laughing about it. Five days of waking up to dark hair spread across my pillow, her warm body curled against my side, her bare foot hooked over my ankle in her sleep.

Five days of pretending the end date doesn't exist.

She brings coffee every morning. Two cups. Mine black, hers so loaded with cream and sugar it barely qualifies. We sit on the porch. She tells me about business ideas, about the social media proposal she's drafting for Patty Cole's muffins, about the branding concept she sketched at two in the morning when she couldn't sleep. She talks with her hands, nearly knocking over her cup twice. Her face does this thing when she gets excited. Eyes wide, dimple showing, whole body leaning forward.

Every morning I watch her and think: four more days. Three. Two.

I don't say it. We don't talk about what happens when the festival ends. When she goes back to Sacramento, or wherever she lands next. When this cabin goes quiet again and the second coffee cup disappears from my porch.

Tuesday morning, my phone rings at six. Tony.

Ivy is still asleep in my bed. Her clothes are on my bedroom floor. Her shampoo is in my shower. Her pie ribbon is pinned to my refrigerator with a magnet she found in a drawer.

I step out onto the porch and close the door.

"Hey."

"Hey man. Quick question. Marco's move is done early. I'm thinking about driving up for the last weekend of the festival. Saturday. You around?"

My stomach drops.

"Yeah. I'm around."

"Cool. I'll crash at my cabin. Ivy still doing okay?"

I look through the window. My bedroom door is open. From here, I can see the edge of the bed. The shape of her under the covers.

"She's good."

"Good." A pause. "You sound weird."

"It's six in the morning, Tony."

"Fair. See you Saturday. Tell Ivy I'm coming."

The line goes dead. I stand on the porch in the cold morning air, bare feet on the boards I fixed two weeks ago, and feel the ground shift under me.

Saturday. Tony will be here Saturday. Four days from now.

He'll walk into his cabin fifty yards from mine and ask how his sister is doing. He'll see her clothes in my cabin or notice the way she looks at me or catch one of a hundred small details that are obvious to anyone paying attention. Patty Cole already knows. The whole town probably knows. Whisper Vale keeps secrets the way a sieve holds water.

And Tony trusted me. Asked me to look after her. Keep an eye on her. Not sleep with her, not fall for her, not spend every night of the last week with her body against mine and her laugh in my ears and her name the first thing I say when I wake up.

The front door opens. Ivy steps out in my henley, which hits her mid-thigh, hair tangled from sleep.

"You're up early. Who called?"

My chest is tight. "Tony."

"Everything okay?"