Saving the Mountain Man (Whispered Echoes Season 2: A Wounded Mountain Man #18)

CHAPTER ONE

EMILY

The paper bag rattled on the passage seat as I drove up the narrow dirt road that disappeared into the pines. My car idled rough, protesting the altitude, and I was seriously reconsidering every life choice that had led me to this moment.

Delivering medication to shut-ins was supposed to be the easy part of the job. Sweet elderly ladies who offered tea. Farmers with bad knees who told stories about the old days. Not... this.

Not… him.

Tucker Barrett.

Even before I’d taken the job at the Lone Mountain Medical Clinic, I’d heard the whispers. The recluse in the cabin. The war hero who had come back scared and broken. The man who growled if you looked too long. Who didn’t come to town. Period.

So that left me to deliver the refills on his medication.

“You’re the only one I trust to do it,” Dr. Parker had said this morning, his voice mild but his eyes serious behind those wire-rimmed glasses. “The others would drive halfway up and leave the bag on a tree stump.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” I’d replied.

Then he’d given me that look—the one that said he knew exactly how broke I was, how much I needed this job, how little room I had to argue. “He needs these, Emily. He’s ex-military and gets migraines from his injuries. If he doesn’t take the medicine, he could end up in real trouble.”

Mandy, the receptionist and holder of all small-town secrets, had been less diplomatic. “Consider it a rite of passage. Everyone gets sacrificed to Tucker Barrett sooner or later. Guess it’s your turn.”

I tore myself away from the unhelpful thoughts. “This is absolutely not in my job description,” I muttered, gripping the steering wheel hard in order not to be bounced out of my seat.

I wasn’t fresh out of high school like some new nurses.

I’d been the girl working double shifts at the local diner while squeezing in night classes because my mom couldn’t raise my little brother alone after our father had walked out.

I was the one who stayed home when everyone else went off to college parties.

By the time I had finally got into nursing school full-time, I was older than most of my classmates.

I’d graduated with honors last year, but sometimes I still felt like the impostor in scrubs.

I needed this job.

Which meant I needed to drive up this mountain and knock on that door.

Funny, how I could handle screaming patients in an ER rotation but the thought of knocking on one cranky veteran’s door made me sweat through my sweater I’d worn over my scrubs. I told myself it was because everyone in town acted like he was Bigfoot. But deep down, I knew it was more.

Men had never been easy for me. Not that I didn’t like them—I liked them too much.

Or maybe I liked the idea of them. Romance novels, daydreams, kisses in the dark that never happened in real life.

Real men saw me as sweet Emily with the curves that wouldn’t quit.

At best, I was cute. At worst, I was a punchline.

No one ever looked at me like I was the fantasy I secretly wanted to be.

The road got worse the higher I climbed. Ruts deep enough to swallow my tire. Branches scraping both sides of my hatchback like skeletal fingers. The trees pressed close and dark, blocking out the afternoon sun until the whole world felt like twilight.

My car whined in protest on a particularly steep incline, and I patted the dashboard. “Come on, baby. Don’t die on me now. We’re almost there.”

I hoped.

The cabin appeared suddenly. Solid logs. Stone chimney with a thin curl of smoke. A porch stacked with enough firewood to last a nuclear winter. And absolutely no sign of welcome. The whole place radiated a single message—go away.

I killed the engine and sat there, heart hammering.

“This is ridiculous,” I whispered. “You’re a grown woman. Just knock on the door, hand him the bag, and leave.”

Simple.

Except my hands were shaking when I grabbed the medication bag.

Except my stomach was doing backflips as I climbed the porch steps.

I knocked anyway. Three sharp raps.

Nothing.

I waited, counting to thirty in my head. Tried again, louder this time.

Still nothing.

Then the door swung open.

And I forget how to breathe.

Tucker Barrett stood there, wearing only a pair of black sweatpants slung low on his hips, bare-chested, scars bared to the daylight.

His torso was a roadmap of damage—pale lines crisscrossing tan skin, one jagged mark racing down from his collarbone, another slashing across his ribs.

His muscles were hard, the kind built by chopping wood and surviving winters alone, not flexing in a gym mirror.

His face was just as devastating. Strong jaw, shadowed with stubble. Dark hair in need of a cut. And that scar, the one everyone talked about—that brutal line running from his temple down his cheek—made him look both fierce and heartbreakingly human.

He looked... dangerous. Magnetic. And everything feminine in me sat up and paid attention even as my brain screamed run.

His eyes locked on mine—dark, cold, furious.

“You lost?” His voice was deep, gravel rough, the kind that scraped down my spine and settled hot in my belly.

I jerked my gaze back to his face, cheeks flaming. “No. I—I’m from the clinic.” My voice cracked, and I cleared it, holding up the bag like a peace offering. “Dr. Parker asked me to bring your prescriptions. You weren’t… coming down for them.”

One dark brow arched, slow and skeptical. “So, he sent you?” His gaze flicked over me, lingering in ways that made me both squirm and flush. My jeans. My sweater. The way the mountain wind had pinked my cheeks.

“I’m just doing my job,” I managed, trying to sound professional.

“Try being gone instead.” His gaze raked over me, slow and dismissive. Taking in my dark blue scrubs, my worn sneakers, the way my braid was already coming loose. And of course, my curves. There was no way around seeing those.

I’d been bigger my whole life. Curvy in a way that made people assume things—that I was soft, easy to dismiss, not worth a second look unless they wanted something from me.

“I don’t care what Parker said.” He stepped forward, clearly trying to intimate me.

I held my ground even though his tall frame towered over me and despite being shirtless, heat radiated from him.

“I didn’t ask for this. I don’t want this.

And I sure as hell don’t want some nurse playing hero because she thinks a few pills will fix what’s wrong with me. ”

“I never said—”

“You didn’t have to.” His eyes were black, empty. “It’s written all over your face. Poor broken soldier. Let’s save him.” He leaned down, close enough that I could smell him. His scent hit me hard. Male. Too male. “I don’t need saving, sweetheart. Least of all from you.”

My throat went tight. I should’ve turned around, left the bag and walked back to my car and told Dr. Parker to send someone else next time—anyone else.

But something in me—the part that had worked two jobs and raised a kid brother and clawed my way through nursing school—refused to back down.

I straightened my spine and met his glare head-on.

“I’m not trying to save you,” I said quietly. “I’m trying to do my job so I can help my mother pay the mortgage on our house and keep food on the table for my younger brother. So if you could just take the medication and let me leave, we can both get on with our day.”

For a heartbeat, something flickered in his expression. Surprise, maybe. Or recognition.

Then it was gone, replaced by that same cold fury.

He snatched the bag from my hands, his fingers brushing mine—rough, hot, sending an unwanted jolt straight up my arm. A flicker in his eyes told me he noticed my unwanted reaction to him.

“Tell Parker if he sends you back up here, I’ll throw the pills in the creek.” His voice dropped lower, more dangerous. “This mountain isn’t for little girls playing nurse.”

I didn’t bother to answer, even though I wanted to.

Maybe it was the raw ache under his gruffness that I couldn’t unsee, but I held my tongue.

I turned on my heel and walked back to my car.

I didn’t run because I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d scared me.

Behind me, the cabin door slammed hard enough to echo through the trees.

“Well,” I muttered to myself as I started my car with shaky hands “That went great.”

I drove down the mountain and back to the clinic, passing the diner where I used to work doubles, the high school where my younger brother, Jesse, would start his senior year in a few weeks. As I drove all I could think about was the look in Tucker Barrett’s eyes.

Not the anger.

The pain underneath.

The kind of pain that made a man cruel because it was the only way he knew how to survive.

And for reasons I couldn’t’ explain, I wanted to go back.