Page 4 of Moonstruck by the Mountain Man

I knew who he was looking for.

“She’s not coming,” I told him.

He gave me a long, unimpressed stare and finally came inside. He spent ten minutes watching the door before he settled by the fire. Longer than he’d ever waited on anyone who wasn’t me.

The cabin wasn’t big, but it was enough. I’d built it the way I built everything — clean lines, no waste, nothing left half-finished. The kitchen table had come from a walnut that had gone down in a storm behind the cabin two winters ago. Too big for one man. But something in me had made it that way anyway. I hated when I got those kinds of feelings. Usually nothing good came from them. I’d had one of them a few seconds before the bomb exploded.

Shaking off those memories, I grabbed a protein bar and stared at the Lone Mountain search grids that covered the wall above the table. Running search and rescue was a solitary life, and until about twenty minutes ago I would have told anyone who asked that was exactly how I wanted it.

My phone rang while I was pulling my boots off.

“You’re doing the booth,” June said, no preamble. She was the mayor’s right hand and she never took no for an answer. I’d been avoiding her.

“I’m not doing the booth.”

“The team needs new avalanche beacons and a second sled before it snows for real, Wilder, and the festival fundraiser is the only shot we’ve got this year. I need you there. In uniform. Looking like the actual search and rescue coordinator you are, instead of a rumor people tell their kids at Halloween.”

“I do plenty for the team without standing behind a folding table.”

“You do everything except let anyone see your face doing it.” The words weren’t unkind. Which was worse, somehow. “One weekend. You don’t even have to talk. Grimm can do the talking. He’s better at it than you.”

I didn’t have an answer for that, because it was true.

“Fine,” I said. “Where’s the booth?”

She hesitated just a beat too long. “I’ve put you between Quinn’s Bakery and The Honeycomb.”

Fuck. Of course she had.

“See you Saturday, Ghost. Wear the jacket.”

I hung up before I said something I’d regret.

How was I supposed to avoid a woman standing eight feet away from me?

Walking to the desk I’d set up near the corner, I opened my laptop. I told myself I was looking up her shop for practical reasons. Same as checking a trailhead map before I went in blind.

The first thing I learned was her name. Autumn Covington. The second was that she was as beautiful as I’d thought in the alley.

The website had a photo of her on the front page. Arms crossed. Laughing at something outside the frame. Unbothered. Capable. The sweater in the photo was different. The shape under it wasn’t. I stared too long at her mouth and closed the laptop.

I went out to the shop to pack the wooden ornaments June had strongly suggested I make for the booth. That had been the extent of my involvement in the festival. Now, apparently, I was going to have to show my face in broad daylight.

The design for the ornament was simple, but good. Mountains and trees. Work steadied me. My hands knew what to do no matter what the rest of me was thinking, which tonight was replaying an irritated voice telling me she didn’t need warnings.

I thought about the way her sweater had fit over her breasts. Strained around her rounded hips. I thought about how she’d have tasted if I’d licked that pulse point. Her pulse had been a tell. She hadn’t been as unaffected by me as her tone suggested. But that blade cut both ways. I was still half-hard.

She definitely needed a warning about me.

Time passed as I lost myself in finishing the task. But, just like clockwork, Grimm ambled out when it was time for bed, leaning against my leg. He did that when he decided I needed company. Him doing that had seen me through the worst nights of my life.

“She’s not coming,” I said again. Maybe more for myself than for him.

He didn’t move.

Tomorrow, I’d be close enough to her that ignoring her wouldn’t be easy. Just like ignoring the fact that I’d started wanting her in that alley wouldn’t be easy tonight.

CHAPTER THREE