Wet for the Wylde Mountain Man (Wylde Mountain Heat #1)

Chapter 1

Marissa

I have been awake for two hours. I have already broken up three arguments about sunscreen. And Claire is color-coding the safety waiver with a highlighter she brought from home.

We haven’t even gotten in the raft yet.

This is exactly what I wanted.

Six women, one mountain, one river. Five years since we threw our college graduation caps in the air and scattered to different cities and different lives and swore we’d do this every year and then didn’t, because life is a liar and adulting is a scam.

But we’re here now. Wylde Mountain, Montana.

July. The air smells like pine and warm dust and wild grass.

The river is loud enough to hear from the gravel lot where we’re standing in a semicircle around a rack of orange life jackets.

I organized every single second of this trip. I would do it again twice.

“Seventy-six degrees right now,” Claire says, refreshing her weather app for the fourth time. “Twelve percent chance of afternoon thunderstorms. Did you build that into the dinner timeline?”

“Claire. We’re getting in a raft. I built everything into the timeline.”

“I’m just saying. If the rafting runs long, the reservation is at seven and I don’t see a buffer on the schedule.”

“The buffer is built in. I am the buffer.”

“That’s not how buffers work.”

I love this woman. I love all of these women. I love them in the way you love people who drive you completely insane and who you would also commit felonies for without hesitation.

Jules is holding her PFD at arm’s length like it suggested something rude about her mother. “I run a vintage clothing business. I have a brand. And this is neon orange.”

“It’s a life jacket, Jules.”

“It’s an assault on my sense of style.”

“Put it on.”

“I’m putting it on. I’m registering my objection for the record.”

Tori is already buckled into hers, adjusting the straps with the efficient hands of a woman who works twelve-hour shifts in an ER and has dealt with equipment more complicated than this before breakfast. Jenna has her camera sealed in a waterproof case around her neck.

She’s been photographing the river from five different angles and will not stop until someone physically redirects her toward the boat.

And Paige is smiling. Quiet, a little careful, the way she’s been smiling since she gave back a ring and canceled a wedding and rearranged her entire life without once raising her voice.

Three weeks ago. We all know. Nobody’s bringing it up.

She’s here. She showed up. She put on the life jacket without complaint and she’s standing in the Montana sun with her chin up.

I catch her eye and she gives me a look that says “I’m okay.

” I give her one back that says “I know, but I’m watching. ” She nods. That’s enough.

I planned this trip in January, from my apartment in Atlanta, two days after I flew home from visiting my sister.

Leena is a veterinarian who moved to Wylde Mountain a year ago for a job and an adventure and fell in love without looking for it.

With a lumberjack named Noah who sends her the weather forecast every morning like it’s a love letter and once memorized a fact about cat paw dominance to impress her.

I have opinions about this. I have many opinions.

But I spent five days on this mountain over New Year’s and the group chat had the reunion dates blocked off before my return flight landed. Hiking. Rafting. Campfires. The works.

Six months of coordinating schedules, booking the cabin, arranging activities.

Noah recommended the guide. A friend of his who’s a lumberjack but also runs the rafting outfit in the summer and knows every rapid on the river.

I called, I booked, I laminated the itinerary.

Because that’s what I do. I make things happen and then I show up and make sure they happen correctly.

“All right, ladies.” A voice from behind the equipment trailer. Deep, loud, the kind of voice that fills a space without trying. “Who’s ready to get wet?”

I turn around.

The man walking toward us is tall. Not casually tall.

Tall in a way that reorganizes the landscape.

Broad shoulders, muscular arms, tanned skin, dark hair, a beard that’s trimmed but not fussy.

He’s wearing a sun-faded Wylde Mountain Outfitters shirt, board shorts, river sandals.

He moves like a man who has never once thought about what his body looks like.

Which makes it significantly harder to stop thinking about what his body looks like.

He’s carrying a paddle over one shoulder and grinning at the group like he already knows this is going to be fun. Not a polished smile. A real one, crooked and wide and slightly reckless. The grin of a man who thinks everything is an adventure and plans to prove it.

“I’m Levi,” he says. “I’ll be your guide today.

This is Kai.” He tips his head toward another man securing the raft at the water’s edge.

Kai is tall, broad-shouldered, quiet. He glances at the group without expression and lifts a hand.

“He’ll be in the safety kayak. Follows the raft downstream in case anyone goes for a swim they didn’t plan. ”

“How often does that happen?” Claire asks, already locating this information on her waiver.

“Hasn’t happened in weeks.”

“Weeks?”

“At least two.”

“That’s not comforting,” Claire says.

“It’s not supposed to be comforting. It’s supposed to be exciting.” He scans the group. His eyes move across all six of us, the professional sweep of a guide sizing up his passengers. And then they land on me.

They stop.

It’s not dramatic. He doesn’t freeze or stare or do anything a person watching would call unusual. But I feel the pause. The half-second where his gaze catches and holds and his grin shifts from “the group” to “you, specifically.”

“You’re Marissa,” he says.

“How’d you know?”

“Noah told me you’d be the one running the show.” He looks at the clipboard in my hand. I didn’t realize I was still holding it. “He was right.”

“I like to be organized.”

“You’re holding a laminated schedule.”

“It’s day one. There’s a lot to coordinate.”

The grin gets wider. He holds my eyes for one more beat.

Easy, warm, not pushing. Then he’s back to the group and the safety briefing and I am fine.

I am completely fine. I am a woman who planned a six-person reunion trip across four states and two time zones and I am not going to lose focus because a river guide has a jawline and a voice and forearms that belong on a government watchlist.

Levi runs the safety briefing like a man who’s done it a thousand times and still finds it fun.

PFDs buckled tight. Helmets on. Paddles held at the T-grip, not the shaft.

If you fall out, feet up, float on your back, don’t fight the current.

If someone else falls out, grab their PFD, not their hand.

Forward paddle means dig in. Back paddle means reverse. When he says hold, you hold.

“Water’s running cold today,” he says. “Snowmelt. You’re going to get wet and it’s going to feel like a refrigerator landed on you. Then it’s going to feel incredible. Trust me.”

“Do we have a choice?” Jules asks.

“Nope.” He’s already heading toward the raft. “Let’s go.”

We load in. Three on each side, paddles up, feet braced under the inflated sections that run from side to side across the raft, which he explains are called thwarts.

Levi takes the back, elevated on the stern, paddle across his knees.

From back there he can see all of us and the whole river ahead.

He looks like a man who was built for exactly this seat.

“Forward paddle,” he calls, and we’re moving.

The Wylde River is beautiful in the way that things are beautiful when they can also kill you.

Canyon walls rise on both sides, red and gold in the morning sun.

The water is clear enough to see the rocks underneath, green-blue and fast. Pines along the banks.

Wildflowers clinging to the ledges. The air is warm but the spray off the water is ice, and every few seconds a wave slaps the side of the raft. Someone yelps. Levi laughs.

He laughs a lot. Big, open, unapologetic.

He talks while he steers. Points out features along the canyon, names the rapids ahead, tells stories about the river that are probably half-true and completely entertaining.

He’s good at this. Not rehearsed. A man who genuinely loves what he does and can’t help letting it spill over.

“Calm stretch coming up,” he says as the water flattens between two bends. “Enjoy it. Next one’s a Class III.”

“What’s a Class III?” Paige asks from the front row. She’s been paddling harder than anyone, gripping the paddle with both hands.

“The fun kind,” Levi says. “You’ll scream. You’ll love it.”

I look back at him. He’s leaning on his paddle, relaxed, scanning the water ahead. The sun is on his face and his beard and the line of his shoulders and I notice this without meaning to.

He catches me looking.

“You doing okay up there?”

“I’m doing great.”

“You look like you’re already planning the rest of the week.”

“I’m assessing the operation.”

“The operation?”

“Your website is terrible, by the way.”

He blinks. The grin flickers. Not gone, but caught off guard. I don’t think people usually critique his business model mid-river.

“My website,” he says.

“I’m a digital marketing consultant. I notice these things. Your homepage has a stock photo of a river that is clearly not this river. Your booking system requires three extra clicks that are costing you customers. And your Instagram hasn’t been updated since March.”

Behind me, Jules snorts. Tori shakes her head. Claire nods because Claire has also noticed the booking system and has been waiting for someone to say it. Jenna takes a photo of the canyon and stays out of it.

Levi stares at me for two full seconds. Then he laughs. Not the smooth guide laugh. A real one, startled out of him. His whole face changes when it happens.