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My brothers tell me I do it wrong-- River will spend hours carefully turning a marshmallow above the flames until it's evenly toasted on all sides to a golden brown.
I never had that kind of patience. Stick the thing in the fire and light it up. Who cares about a little char on the outside when you get the perfect, molten middle in mere seconds? Of course, I've lost more than one marshmallow in the fire over the years as they ooze off of sticks and skewers before I can pull them from the flames.
This one makes it out of the fire and onto the Graham cracker.
I wonder if Sage has ever made s'mores.
The doc is a city girl, born and bred. She only moved up to the ridge a little over a year ago when some big medical group funded a long over-due rural clinic for our remote mountain town, complete with the on-site, live-in, sexy-as-fuck Doctor Everett and her son.
I've been obsessed since I got my first good look at her: It was the end of the season last year. My family's river touring business had hung up the annual "closed for season" signs and all the boats and gear was in storage. I finally had some free time to get into town, have a few drinks with the guys and let loose.
Till dumbfuck Hayle put his hands on the new waitress down at the tavern and got his nose busted for it.
Fucker deserved it too.
Over the years that we've been buddies, I've watched Hayle get better and then get worse again. He's my friend and I'll always have his back, but when he pulled that stunt down at the tav, I knew it was time to let him suffer his own consequences.
That, and there was no way I was stepping between Cedar McAllister's fist and Hayle's face that night, man. You don't fuck with a woman that's been claimed by a mountain man. Hayle had that hit coming.
I think about Sage. How I'd react if anyone messed with her. I'd kill the fucker. Drop his body off a cliff up here in the mountains so high the animals would have his bones picked cleaned before anyone found them.
Not that she knows how I feel about her. I've been real careful to keep my feelings hidden from her and everyone else, but I've been obsessed with Doc Everett ever since she answered that after-hours emergency call button I pushed at damn near midnight while Hayle's nose was gushing so much blood I couldn't tell if it was that or the alcohol that had him near passed out.
She came to the clinic door with the kind of awareness that comes from a shot of pure adrenaline getting pumped into your bloodstream when your body is still dead asleep. Her hair was a mess of sleep-matted, dark waves falling down all the way to middle of her back.
Her face was scrubbed free of makeup and bore the telltale lines of having been pressed to a pillow very recently, and the lab coat hastily thrown on over the simple pink pajamas hadn't hidden the curves that were displayed in a way that her usual uniform of scrubs never showed.
I could have taken her right there that night. She was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen and all I wanted to do was leave Hayle bleeding on the clinic's doorstep while I pushed her inside and fucked her on the exam table.
Of course, I put my reaction down to the booze we'd been slinging all night and the fact that it's been a long ass time since I've taken a woman to bed, the adrenaline of the fight, and trying to get Hayle's bleeding to stop.
Watching her handle the emergency situation with Hayle, getting the bleeding stopped and finding a local ride to get him to the emergency room in Slow River quicker than calling an ambulance to come up the ridge, only managed to get me more interested.
Interested enough to find half a dozen excuses to stop by the clinic over the next few months after that night.
Allergy meds, a tetanus shot for a scratch I'd gotten repairing a fence on the property, butterfly bandages on a cut that I'd normally have washed with soap and water and thrown a piece of tape over.
Every time I saw her, she was more beautiful than the time before. Always remembering to ask about Hayle-- even though no one's heard from that asshole since he left the ER in Slow River-- always remembering anything I'd told her on a previous visit, asking about my family, our river guide business, my dumb ass brothers falling head over heels and getting married without taking a breath between "will you" and "I do."
That thought has me deepening my frown and shaking my head. The movement is enough to send my current marshmallow dripping off the end of the stick and flaring up as it hits the burning log that's fueling the fire.
I'd finally screwed up the nerve to ask her out on a proper date. I couldn't take any more of the burning need for the woman that had been building up inside of me for months and I was determined to find out if it was just lust that I needed to get her out of my system or if maybe there might be more to this one.
That was the day I met Jax.
Sage and I were standing at the reception counter in the tiny lobby of the clinic, bullshitting about God knows what while I tried to screw up my courage to ask her out when the kid came barreling through the door from their private residence, fit to be tied over some science fair project he couldn't get to work.
Till then, I didn't have a clue that Doc was a single mom.
Everything changed for me in that instant. She doesn't need some bearded yokel sniffing her panties, she needs a man: for her boy and for herself. Someone who's going to show up for them. Every time.
Well, it was easy enough to come back by with the stuff needed to help Jackson out with his project and after spending a few hours with him, I was smitten.
The kid needs a man in his life. Especially if he's going to grow up here on the mountain. He'll need someone to teach him how life up here is different than in the city, and I'm more than up to that challenge.
But it sure as fuck complicates my feelings for Sage.
Dropping the stick I whittled to a point into the fire, I watch as it burns down before I douse the fire and crawl into the tent myself.
