Dug Deep With The Mountain Man (Spring in the Mountains #10)

Chapter 1

Rainey

Ihave made some deeply questionable decisions in my life. Marrying Kevin is still sitting smugly at number one. But buying a mountain property online without seeing it in person is clawing its way up the list with alarming speed.

My cart rattles across the uneven floor of Cady Springs Lumber Center like it’s as unsure as I am.

The front left wheel wobbles. The handle sticks.

There’s a shovel in it, a pickaxe, a post hole digger, two boxes of roofing nails, gutter brackets, work gloves, and three bags of concrete I absolutely should not be trusted around.

I stop in the middle of the aisle and stare at the shovel. Why does it look mean? That’s a ridiculous question. It’s a shovel. It does not have a personality. And yet this one feels aggressive.

I grip the handle and test the weight again. Nope. Still aggressive. This is a shovel with opinions, possibly violent ones.

A laugh almost slips out of me, but it gets tangled in the rest of my mood, which is somewhere between homicidal and one dropped tool away from tears.

The real estate advertisement said the cabin needed a little TLC — short for tender loving care. That lying son of a biscuit. A little TLC, my ass.

The gutters are hanging off the roof like broken elbows. One downspout is missing completely. Each time it rains, water pours off the cabin in sheets like the place is trying to dissolve itself back into the mountain.

The roof looks like it’s one hard storm away from giving up on life. The ground around the place is compacted and uneven, and I’m pretty sure one side yard is actively becoming a trench.

But sure. A little TLC.

I toss the shovel back into the cart with more force than necessary. The pickaxe clanks against the post hole digger, and I wince. I still don’t know why I bought the pickaxe. Google, that’s why.

Google, rage and the very dangerous female instinct to prove I can do this myself. The same instinct that had me sitting in my condo three weeks after my divorce is final, glass of wine in hand, scrolling property listings at one in the morning like a woman possessed.

Fresh start, I told myself. New chapter. You know what says emotional healing? A cabin in the Colorado mountains.

What it actually says is: congratulations, idiot, now you own structural problems at elevation.

I push the cart toward the front counter, muttering under my breath. “It’s fine. Totally fine. Women have rebuilt their lives before. Women have crossed prairies in corsets. I can handle a gutter.”

Can I? I don’t know.

But I am here now, and most of my divorce settlement is sitting on a ridge outside Cady Springs in the form of a cabin that looked adorable in photos and slightly haunted in person.

The teenage cashier glances up when I reach the register, and the poor thing immediately gets the expression of someone who senses trouble approaching but isn’t paid enough to avoid it.

I start unloading tools.

“I have questions,” I tell him.

He blinks. “Okay.”

“Great. Just fabulous. First, this shovel.”

I hold it up.

“It feels aggressive.”

He stares at me. I stare back because I’ve already committed to this sentence and there’s no graceful way out now.

“Aggressive,” he repeats.

“Yes. Like if I try to use it, the earth will become defensive and retaliate.”

He looks at the shovel. Then at me. Then back at the shovel like maybe he’s missed a key detail.

Behind me, somewhere to my left, I hear a low chuckle. I ignore it because I’m already one bad moment away from becoming the woman who cries in a lumber store. I lift the post hole digger next.

“And this,” I say, “the internet swore I needed. Do I? I don’t even have fence posts. At least I don’t think I do. Maybe I do. Maybe the property came with mystery fence posts. Honestly, at this point I wouldn’t be shocked if there’s a goat up there I don’t know about.”

The cashier opens his mouth.

A calm male voice behind me says, “That’s for fence posts.”

I turn to identify the low, rumbling voice. And my brain, which has been sprinting for the last hour, comes to a complete and dangerous stop.

Oh … oh, that is a man. Not just a man. A problem. The kind with shoulders that look like they could carry entire trees and hands that probably knew exactly what to do with them.

Tall and broad with a beard and interesting tattoos.

His shirt is stretched across a chest that looks hand-built by God on a very confident day.

He’s holding a couple lengths of lumber under one arm like they weigh nothing.

His face is unreadable, but his eyes are definitely on my cart, taking in my chaotic selections with a level of patience I do not deserve.

I forget what I’m holding for a second. Then I remember and nearly drop the post hole digger on my own foot. He catches it, handing it back to me.

Smooth.

I clear my throat. “Well. That explains a lot.”

His gaze moves from the digger to the shovel, then to the pickaxe, and finally to the bags of concrete in the bottom of my cart. One dark brow lifts.

“Concrete?” he asks.

There is something about his voice that makes me want to answer honestly and flirt at the same time, which is unfortunate because at the moment I can’t manage either with dignity.

“Yes,” I say, with all the false confidence of a woman who does not know why she is buying concrete.

His expression doesn’t change, but I can feel him not buying it. The cashier wisely says nothing.

I should stop here. I should quietly pay for my nonsense, load it into my car, and leave before I embarrass myself any further. Instead, because I am me, I bend to grab one of the concrete bags one of the employees in the back loaded for me.

How hard can it be?

Very.

That’s how hard.

The bag barely shifts before it slips from my hands, tilting sideways with terrifying speed. I gasp and jerk back, fully prepared to lose a toe in Cady Springs before I’ve even unpacked all my boxes back at the cabin. But it never hits the floor.

Two large hands catch it.

Of course this giant tattooed mountain man catches the concrete bag like it’s a sack of flour and not sixty pounds of humiliation. He lifts it over his shoulder with insulting ease. I try not to notice how easily he does it. I fail immediately.

I stare at the bag … then at him. I glance at my own arms like they’ve personally betrayed me.

“Those are heavier than they look,” I say, because apparently I’m committed to sounding deranged in front of this man.

His mouth moves at one corner. Not quite a smile. More like the possibility of one.

“Yes.”

Up close, he smells faintly like cedar, clean skin, and the kind of outdoor air that costs money in candles.

Noticing this about him is not helping my situation, only worsening it.

He observes me for a few seconds — more than most people would. But he’s not rude about it. This giant of strength seems calm and observant — like he’s taking inventory.

“You’re new here,” he says.

Not a question.

I blow out a breath. “Is it that obvious?”

He glances at my cart. That’s answer enough. I laugh before I can stop myself, which feels wildly inappropriate considering my current level of stress.

“Okay, fair. In my defense, I didn’t wake up this morning planning to become a hardware store cautionary tale.”

He waits. Which somehow makes me keep talking.

“I bought a cabin outside town,” I say. “Online. Sight unseen. Because I was having what I would now describe as a highly emotional post-divorce episode.”

There … it’s out. The word divorce still scrapes a little on the way up, but not enough to stop me.

“Anyway, the photos were gorgeous. Very rustic. Very charming. So now I’ve got gutters hanging off the roof, water pouring down the side of the house every time it rains, and ground around the cabin that feels like a punishment from God.”

He listens without interrupting. The fact that he just listens is somehow annoying, but incredibly attractive.

Most men either cut in, try to fix, or wait impatiently for their turn to talk.

This one just stands there, looking at me like everything coming out of my mouth is worth hearing even if it’s moving at ninety miles an hour.

I keep going …

“I thought maybe I could handle some of it myself. You know, basic stuff. Gutters. Minor repairs. Maybe start a garden because apparently I’ve decided I’m the kind of woman who grows vegetables now.

Reinvents herself. Heals in nature. Becomes one with mountain soil.

” I gesture at the cart. “But judging by this collection of poor choices, that may not be the direction I’m headed toward. ”

He looks at the cart again, then back at me.

“You’re going to hurt yourself.”

I bark out a laugh. “That is also what my divorce lawyer implied.”

The cashier snorts. I don’t even care. At least someone in this building appreciates my suffering. The big man shifts my bag of concrete over his shoulder.

“There’s a diner across the road,” he says.

I blink. “What?”

“Millie’s.”

His voice stays level and unhurried.

“You can start over there with your story. Slower.”

For one second I just stare at him. Because that is either incredibly kind or the opening scene of a cautionary Dateline episode. Then again, if he were dangerous, I feel like my instincts would be screaming.

Instead they’re doing something much more inconvenient. They’re purring.

I plant a hand on the cart. “Are you asking me to lunch because I seem unstable, or because my story is that compelling?”

His eyes hold mine.

“Both.”

I laugh. Actually laugh. A real one this time, sharp and surprised and completely involuntary. Well, that’s irritatingly effective.

I tilt my head. “And here I thought I was doing a bad job of hiding the instability.”

“You’re not.”

“That’s fair.”

He sets my concrete bag on the counter and offers his hand.

“Troy.”

His hand is large, rough, and warm. I take it, suddenly and absurdly aware of the fact that I haven’t wanted to touch a man in a very long time.

“Rainey,” I respond.

His fingers close around mine once, firm and brief, before he lets go. And just like that, I realize I’m standing in a lumber store with an aggressive shovel, bags of concrete I can’t lift, and a life I may or may not have wrecked all over again.

Yet, somehow … I get the strange, electric feeling that Cady Springs is about to become a whole lot more complicated.