Chapter Seventeen
Sienna
By the time I stepped into the lodge kitchen, my hair was still damp from the world’s fastest shower, and my nerves felt frayed at too many edges.
The kitchen smelled like cinnamon muffins and fresh coffee, comforting, warm, normal, which only highlighted how not normal the last twenty-four hours had been.
Violet stood at the island, slicing fruit for brunch prep. Fiona leaned against the counter, scrolling something on her phone while snacking on blueberries she absolutely was supposed to be saving for guests.
Both of them looked up at me at the same time.
And then… froze.
Violet lowered her knife slowly. “Why do you look like you just came face-to-face with a yeti?”
Fiona straightened. “Or had a sexy wilderness epiphany?”
I groaned. “Can I walk into a room without accusations?”
“No,” they said together.
I dropped into the chair beside the island. “Fine. We had… a weird dry run.”
Violet perked up. “Weird how?”
“Nature weird.” I grabbed a muffin, tore it in half, and shoved a piece in my mouth before I could overthink the next sentence. “We saw bears.”
Both sisters paused.
And then started talking at once.
“You what—”
“Was it close—”
“Did you run—”
“Did Carson carry you—”
“Stop, guys.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “He didn’t carry me. Nobody carried anybody. Nobody needed carrying.”
Violet set down the knife. “You’re yelling, which means you definitely needed carrying.”
“I didn’t. I handled it.”
Fiona gave me a skeptical look. “Okay. And then what?”
“And then,” I continued, “we saw a pack of wolves.”
Silence.
Total silence.
Violet blinked. Fiona gasped and clutched her chest as if she’d just heard a scandal at church.
“You didn’t tell us about that,” Violet said.
“I just walked in the door!”
They exchanged a long look. One of those sibling glances that meant an entire conversation passed silently, and I was not going to like the result.
I pointed a finger at them. “No.”
“We didn’t say anything,” Violet said innocently.
“I’m preemptively saying no.”
Fiona snorted. “Okay, drama queen. Keep going. What did the wolves do?”
“They watched us. Assessed us.” I swallowed hard. “I’ve never had a pack do that before. Not like that.”
“And?” Violet asked quietly.
“And then Carson dispersed them.”
Fiona paused mid-blueberry. “Carson dispersed a wolf pack?”
“Yes.”
“With what? A stern look?”
“No,” I said, glaring. “Just—his presence. And snow. And calm. And… whatever.” I waved my hand dramatically. “Wolf magic. I don’t know. He knows things.”
They both stared and broke into identical smiles.
“Oh no,” I said. “No. Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” Violet asked, entirely too sweet.
“That face.”
“What face?” Fiona echoed.
“The oh look our little sister is smitten face.”
Violet placed a hand over her heart. “We would never.”
“We absolutely would,” Fiona corrected.
I threw a piece of muffin at her. She dodged it.
“I’m not smitten,” I insisted. “I’m stressed. Huge difference.”
“Is it?” Violet asked.
“Yes.”
Fiona tapped her nails on the counter. “Because you look extremely smitten.”
Violet nodded. “Positively smote.”
“That’s not even the right use of smote.”
“It’s the right use for your face right now,” Violet said.
I groaned into my hands. “You’re impossible.”
Violet nudged a mug toward me. “Tell us the rest.”
“There is no rest,” I said defensively. “We camped. We ate freeze-dried soup. We slept. That’s it.”
“Sienna,” Fiona said, her tone flipping from teasing to knowing in one second flat, “we’ve known you your whole life. You don’t get frazzled by animals. You don’t get frazzled by hikes. You don’t get frazzled by the weather. You only get frazzled by feelings.”
“I don’t have feelings.”
Violet laughed so hard she had to brace herself on the counter. “Oh my God. That is your battle cry every time you absolutely do have feelings.”
Fiona crossed her arms. “Is the problem that he makes you feel something?”
I snatched another muffin piece, shooting them both the deadliest glare I could manage. “I’m ignoring your psychological dissection. I don’t need therapy from people who drink twelve-dollar matcha and haven’t emotionally recovered from the great goat stampede of ‘21.”
“That goat chased you, not us,” Violet said.
“Off-topic,” I snapped.
Fiona snickered. “So is Carson.”
“NO,” I said louder than intended. “Carson is work. Work work. Very professional work.”
“Professional work doesn’t make you blush,” Violet sing-songed.
“I don’t blush.”
“You do right now,” Fiona pointed out.
I slapped my hands over my cheeks. Damn them.
Violet leaned forward, chin in her hands. “Okay. Real question. Why does he bother you so much?”
“He doesn’t bother me.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Fine,” I sighed. “He… disrupts me.”
Fiona blinked. “Disrupts you?”
“Yes,” I said, flustered. “He looks at me like he sees things I don’t want seen. And he’s calm when I expect him to be chaotic. And he’s thoughtful when I expect him to be detached. And I don’t know what to do with that.”
Violet nodded slowly. “Ah.”
“What ah?” I demanded.
“You like him.”
“I don’t.”
“You like him,” Fiona said.
“It’s attraction,” Violet corrected. “Different thing entirely.”
“It’s nothing,” I insisted. “It’s just proximity and adrenaline and the fact that he’s… annoyingly competent!”
“Oh yes,” Fiona teased. “Nothing more erotic than competence.”
I moved my head onto my folded arms. “I hate this family.”
“No, you don’t,” Violet said, patting my shoulder. “But you do hate when someone gets past your guard.”
She wasn’t wrong. I hated that she wasn’t wrong.
Before I could make up a solid defensive lie, the back door swung open, and Beck strode in, tracking in a line of snow like a Labrador with human height.
“Morning, ladies,” he said. Then, louder, “I brought company!”
I froze.
The temperature in the room seemed to shift.
Carson stepped in behind him.
Hair damp from melted snow. Expression calm, but eyes cutting immediately to mine like he’d been looking for me before he saw anything else.
My breath tripped.
Violet silently mouthed, Oh my God.
Fiona elbowed her so hard she nearly dropped a blueberry.
Beck slapped Carson’s shoulder. “Found him wandering around the cabins looking lonely, so obviously I dragged him here before he developed a complex.”
“I wasn’t wandering,” Carson said mildly.
“He was absolutely wandering,” Beck insisted.
I fought a smile.
Carson’s eyes flicked back to mine.
Warm. Unsure. Curious.
Too much.
Beck went to the fridge. “Anyway, I already decided we’re taking the new guy out tonight.”
My head snapped up. “Tonight?”
“Yeah,” Beck said, grabbing a juice. “Dinner. Drinks. You know the place…The Hungry Buck, our favorite Supper Club. I told him we’d bring the whole crew.”
My stomach dropped.
“The whole…what?” I squeaked.
Violet perked up. “Oh, absolutely. Carson deserves a proper introduction to Buttercup Lake.”
Fiona nodded enthusiastically. “With cocktails.”
I stared at them in horror. “No. No, no, no. We do not need to do that. He’s only here temporarily.”
“He’s here until the end of September,” Beck said, laughing. “That’s practically a full-time resident.”
Carson spoke for the first time, voice calm, eyes still on me. “I didn’t mean to impose. Beck invited me. I can decline if it’s—”
“No!” my sisters said.
I glared at them.
Fiona coughed. “I mean… no, of course not. The more the merrier.”
Violet grinned. “And Sienna loves supper club night.”
“I don’t,” I snapped.
Carson’s mouth shifted slightly, not a smile, but that quiet near-smile he used when he found something amusing but didn’t want to encourage it.
Beck clapped his hands. “Perfect! We’ll leave at six.”
I went very still.
Beck noticed. “You okay, Sien?”
“Fine,” I said faintly.
Carson didn’t look away from me.
Not once.
And in that second, with my sisters smirking, Beck cheerful, Carson steady and unreadable, I realized something:
The next twelve hours had the potential to become significantly more dangerous than bears or wolves.
Because it wasn’t nature I was scared of.
It was proximity.
And the way Carson Reed seemed to see through me every time I accidentally met his eyes.
Beck tossed Carson a “welcome to the family” grin and headed for the dining room, leaving the rest of us in the kitchen.
Carson stayed exactly where he was.
So did I.
Even the air felt held between us, charged and delicate.
Then Beck called out from the hall:
“Come on, Carson, I’ll show you the bulletin board of shame!”
Carson broke eye contact at last.
But not before something flickered across his expression.
Something aware.
Something that echoed the same unsettling truth thudding under my ribs:
I wasn’t ready for dinner tonight.
Not even remotely.
And I was absolutely going anyway.
Carson turned to follow Beck out of the kitchen, but he didn’t move right away. He lingered, just long enough that anyone paying attention could see he wasn’t ready to look away from me yet.
Unfortunately, everyone was paying attention.
Violet was biting her lip like she was suppressing an entire Broadway number.
Fiona looked like she was witnessing the season finale of her favorite TV show.
And I… well, I was silently melting into an anxious puddle inside my boots.
Finally, Carson dipped his chin and turned toward the hallway.
The second he disappeared from view, both of my sisters sprang into action like coiled snakes freed from a basket.
“Oh. My. Lord.” Fiona slapped both palms on the counter. “Sienna, that man just looked at you like you were a sunrise.”
“I don’t even know what that means,” I said weakly, gripping my muffin as if it were a flotation device.
“It means he likes you,” Violet sang. “It means he very much likes you.”
“No,” I insisted. “No, he absolutely does not. He’s just… polite.”
Fiona held up a finger. “He brought you coffee this morning.”
“People bring coffee.”
“He brought it into the woods at dawn,” she countered. “Into the cold. Into the snowy wilderness. He trekked into a potential bear zone with a hot beverage for you.”
I glared. “You’re being dramatic.”
“Sienna.” Violet leaned in. “You nearly combusted when he looked at you.”
“I did not.”
Fiona snorted. “Girl. You pinged between five emotional states in eight seconds. We watched it.”
I buried my face in my hands. “Can you both stop analyzing me like I’m a nervous squirrel?”
“You are a nervous squirrel,” Fiona said.
“With good hair,” Violet added.
“That doesn’t help!”
They laughed, and despite myself, I felt a small smile tug at my mouth. As annoying as they were, as pushy and perceptive and impossible as they could be… they also knew me better than anyone.
I rested my elbows on the counter and stared at the doorway through which Carson had disappeared.
A supper club dinner.
With him.
With my siblings.
With cocktails.
I was doomed.
Violet bumped her shoulder into mine. “Why does it bother you so much?”
“It doesn’t bother me,” I said. “I just don’t want—”
“You don’t want what?”
I hesitated.
I didn’t want to say it. Didn’t want to give the thought weight. Didn’t want to give my sisters anything else to poke at.
But the words slipped out anyway, quiet and too honest.
“I don’t want him to matter.”
Silence.
Real silence — not teasing, not smirking, not elbowing.
Then Fiona spoke softly. “Honey… he already does.”
I shot her a look sharp enough to slice fruit. “No. He’s my coworker. This is temporary. I am temporary.”
“But you’re acting like you’re trying not to care,” Violet said gently. “People only do that when they… well… care.”
Before I could respond, Beck’s voice echoed down the hallway.
“Carson! Come on! You’re not backing out of dinner!”
My stomach flipped so violently I nearly dropped my muffin.
Carson’s reply followed, calm and quiet. “I said I’d go.”
Violet squeezed my arm. “You’re going too.”
I groaned. “I hate this.”
“No, you don’t,” Fiona said. “You hate how much you want it.”
The door swung again, Beck’s boots thudding across the floor, Carson close behind him.
“Six o’clock!” Beck called. “Don’t be late!”
I forced a smile, but the second Carson’s gaze found mine, the world narrowed to a thrum in my chest.
He didn’t smile widely.
Just enough.
Just for me.
And that tiny curve of his mouth felt like a match being struck inside my ribs.
Oh no.
Dinner was going to be a disaster.
A slow-burning, heart-thumping, extremely inconvenient disaster.
And there was absolutely no way out of it now.