Chapter Eight
Carson
Sienna pushed our planning meeting off twice.
Not once.
Twice.
Which, if I had been someone else, wouldn’t have bothered me. Delays happen. Schedules shift. People are distracted.
But I wasn’t someone else. I was me. A man who had spent years avoiding unnecessary social entanglements.
A man who preferred clarity, quiet, and structure.
A man who, for reasons I preferred not to examine too closely, kept replaying the sound of Sienna’s startled yelp when I approached her by the zebra paddock.
And then she avoided me.
For forty-eight hours.
Her sisters didn’t seem surprised. When Violet spotted me reorganizing the ropes outside the lodge yesterday, she’d said, “Don’t take it personally. She runs from anything that resembles change. Which is almost everything.”
Fiona had nodded. “Yeah, she’ll talk to a moose but not a man she’s attracted to.”
I nearly dropped an entire crate of climbing harnesses.
“She is not,” I’d started, but stopped.
But they had both walked off, laughing like I was the punchline.
Which might have explained some things. Or confused everything further. I wasn’t sure.
All I knew was this: Sienna Harper was avoiding me, and I didn’t understand why.
Or maybe I did.
Because she looked at me the way I looked at her.
Which complicated everything.
Now it was Saturday morning, and she had finally agreed to meet me in the equipment shed to plan our first backcountry trip, which was a honeymoon tour booked for late March.
And she was late.
I leaned against the workbench, arms crossed, breathing in the familiar cold-and-canvas scent of the reorganized shed.
I had spent hours here over the past few days, putting everything in logical order: ropes, tents, stoves, repair kits, water filters. A place for everything and everything in its place.
It soothed me.
Or it did, until footsteps approached outside.
The moment the door creaked open, I felt my pulse shift.
Sienna stepped inside.
She looked beautiful.
Not done-up, that wasn’t her. Hair pulled back in a loose braid, cheeks flushed from the walk, bits of ice still clinging to the soles of her boots. But her eyes… her eyes kept darting toward me, then away, as if looking directly at me burned a little.
What confused me most was the expression she wore.
Nervous.
As if I were the one who might bolt.
“Hi,” she said, too quickly. “Sorry, I’m late. I had a… You know. A morning.”
“A morning,” I echoed.
“Yes. One of those.”
I didn’t know what those were, but she looked like she needed five deep breaths and perhaps divine intervention.
“Everything all right?” I asked.
“Yes. No. Maybe. It’s fine. Definitely fine.” She paused. “Totally not avoiding you.”
I blinked. “I didn’t ask that.”
“Oh.” She cringed. “Good.”
Something warm and traitorous tugged inside my chest.
She was flustered because of me, which was not a thing I was used to.
Sienna cleared her throat and strode toward the workbench. “Anyway. Planning meeting. Right. Let’s…let’s do that.”
She picked up the clipboard, dropped the clipboard, snatched it off the floor, and then pretended she hadn’t almost tripped over her own boots.
I tried not to smile.
“What?” she demanded.
“Nothing.”
“You’re smiling.”
“I’m not smiling.”
“You’re absolutely smiling.”
I looked down at the checklist to hide the way my mouth wanted to betray me again.
“All right,” I said. “The honeymoon couple will need…”
“Extras,” she said. “What if they want extra blankets? Extra snacks? Extra romance?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Extra romance.”
“You know. Candles. Fairy lights. Mood-building gear.”
“This is a backcountry hike.”
“Yes, but it’s a honeymoon backcountry hike.”
“I’m not packing fairy lights into the wilderness.”
She grumbled. “Ugh. Practical men. That’s what battery-operated lights are for.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but she moved past me to examine the neatly stacked rows of sleeping pads and then froze.
It took her two seconds.
Three.
Then her jaw dropped.
“Oh.” Her voice went soft in awe. “Oh my goodness.”
She turned a slow circle, staring at the reorganized shed like I’d performed structural magic.
“Carson. This is… beautiful.”
I fought the warmth that crept up my neck. “It wasn’t difficult.”
“Are you kidding? Look at this. Everything is labeled. Everything is sorted. Everything isn’t in mortal danger of collapsing onto my head.”
“There was room for improvement.”
“There was room for a complete overhaul,” she corrected. “You’re amazing.”
I felt it then, a tightening in my chest, and a warmth I had no defense against.
Praise.
It wasn’t casual praise. It was genuine and disarming…possibly sincere?
I forced myself to focus. “Well, now it is functional.”
“It’s perfect,” she said softly.
For a moment, she just stood there, admiring the careful rows of gear the same way some people admired art. It was… unexpectedly intimate. Watching someone appreciate your work. Your order. Your way of calming the world around you.
And something inside me wanted to step closer.
But I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
“Okay,” she said suddenly, clapping her hands to break the moment. “Work time. Focus. Business. No feelings allowed.”
I blinked. “Were there feelings entangled with the tents and cast iron?”
She froze. “No. I mean…no. None. I don’t have those.”
“You don’t have feelings.”
“Correct.”
I lifted an eyebrow.
“Fine,” she muttered. “I have them. But I ignore them. Like a professional.”
“Interesting approach.”
“It works for me. I try not to get too attached to my gear in case it falls down a cliff or washes away in a river.”
“Does that happen often?”
“Often enough.”
“I’ll have to remember that.”
She grabbed the clipboard as if it were a life raft. “Moving on. Let’s talk tents.”
She spun toward the wall of packable tents and nearly tripped again.
I stepped forward without thinking, steadying her by the elbow.
She inhaled sharply.
I dropped my hand immediately as heat rushed up my arms from where I’d touched her.
We stood there for half a second too long, close enough to see the flecks of light brown in her eyes.
Close enough to feel the tension between us like a crackle of static.
She cleared her throat and stepped back. “Right. Yes. Tents. We need a lightweight two-person for the honeymoon couple.”
“Yes,” I said quietly. “We do.”
She nodded. “And a three-person backup, just in case.”
“For what?”
“Um… spontaneous arguing? Snoring incompatibility? Newlyweds sometimes need space.”
I almost smiled again. “You plan for everything.”
She shrugged. “Someone has to.”
We worked through the list: stoves, water filtration, dry bags, trekking poles, and snow gaiters, just in case March decided to behave like February.
The entire time, the air between us felt charged.
She tossed another sleeping bag into the pack for the trip bin.
“So, you’ve guided a lot of trips?”
“Yes.”
“What made you get into it?”
That stopped me cold.
She didn’t notice at first. She was rummaging through a bin of fire starters, humming under her breath.
But I completely froze.
Because that question, simple, innocent, and normal, wasn’t one I let people ask. The past wasn’t something I wanted poking at me.
But the answer was simple: to escape.
She turned when I didn’t respond. “Carson?”
I forced my face back into neutrality. “It was just… work. A way to stay outdoors.”
“Oh.” Her expression flickered when she heard how flat my voice had gone. “Right. Sorry. Too personal.”
I shook my head. “It’s fine.”
But it wasn’t, and she could tell.
She took a slow step back, as if realizing she had accidentally touched something sharp.
“Okay,” she said quietly. “We’ll stick to equipment talk.”
The warmth between us cooled.
Not gone.
Never gone.
It was just pushed behind the walls we both instinctively raised at the same time.
We were two people shutting down for completely opposite reasons.
She fiddled with the edge of the clipboard. “You know, talking about the gear is safer anyway. Gear never makes things awkward.”
“Sometimes it does,” I countered.
Her eyes widened. “How?”
“You can make anything awkward.”
She stared at me for a long second.
Then, thank God, she laughed.
Soft at first, then bigger, rolling through the shed like a burst of sunlight.
I felt it again. That pull. That ridiculous, unwanted tug inside my chest that only seemed to exist around her.
And even after she’d stopped laughing, the air between us stayed warmer than before.
“Carson?” she said after a moment.
“Yes.”
“You’re… not what I expected.”
I lifted a brow. “What did you expect?”
“I don’t know. Someone more… serious.”
“I am serious.”
“Yes, but also not,” she said, waving vaguely at me. “You smile sometimes.”
I almost did it again.
Instead, I picked up another tent bag. “Let’s finish organizing.”
She nodded quickly, but her gaze lingered on me longer than it should have.
We finished the checklist more slowly than necessary.
Partly because she kept bumping into things and apologizing, and partly because I kept watching her
And most importantly, because neither of us seemed eager to end the moment.
When everything was finally packed into staging bins for the honeymoon trip, she exhaled a shaky breath.
“Okay,” she said. “That’s it. Planning meeting complete. We did it. We were professional. Very professional.”
“Very,” I agreed.
“Barely any awkwardness.”
“Barely.”
“Except the parts where everything was awkward.”
“That happens.”
She nodded. “I guess so.”
We stood there again, too close, too aware, too surrounded by the remnants of a conversation we were both pretending hadn’t rattled us.
I broke the silence first. “Coming up soon.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Our first trip. Together.”
“Oh.” Her voice dipped. “Right. Together.”
I studied her for a moment. “Are you nervous?”
“No,” she said immediately. “I know these trails like the back of my hand, and the first one is just down the road. No biggie.”
Too immediately.
She swallowed. “Okay, maybe…but not because of the guests or the trip.”
“Why?”
“Because,” she said, cheeks warming, “you’re… you.”
“That is not an explanation.”
“It is, actually,” she muttered.
I stepped closer. Not much. Just enough to catch the way her breath hitched.
“Are you worried I won’t be able to handle the trail?”
She shook her head softly. “No. I’m worried I won’t be able to handle… other things.”
“Such as?”
The tension tightened between us like a pulled rope.
She looked up at me.
Eyes bright.
Cheeks flushed.
Walls half-raised, half-fallen.
She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
Then whispered, “You know.”
I did know.
And I should have stepped back.
Instead, I let the moment hang long enough to feel it.
Finally, she cleared her throat and retreated two full steps. “Okay! Well! See you tomorrow. Or later. Or whenever. Great meeting.”
She practically bolted for the door.
And I stood there in the middle of the reorganized shed, heart beating harder than it should have, watching her escape like she was the one in danger.
She wasn’t.
I was.
Because for the first time since taking this job, I admitted a truth I’d been trying to ignore.
I wanted her.
And that was going to ruin everything.