Chapter 2
CHAPTER
TWO
DAISY
I press my forehead against the cold glass of the bus window, watching the pine trees blur past me. My cat, Pickles, is curled up on my lap, purring softly, warm and oblivious to the fact that our lives are about to completely change—or implode. Honestly, it could go either way.
I’ve got forty-three dollars in my pocket, a backpack full of clothes that smell like the laundromat, and no idea what I’m doing.
Well. That’s not true.
I do know what I’m doing.
I’m going to meet my husband. Husband .
The word still tastes strange in my mouth, like a foreign country whose language I don’t speak but agreed to live in. I pull the zipper down on my jacket and scratch behind Pickles’s ears, trying not to spiral.
I met with the Mountain Mates matchmaker in a little strip mall office next to a pawn shop and a vape store. The sign on the door was crooked, and the “A” in “Mountain” was a triangle drawn with a black Sharpie. I probably should’ve run right then.
But I didn’t. Because I had nowhere else to go.
Marcy, the matchmaker, was all smiles and bubble gum.
She wore a cardigan with little sheep on it and had a photo of her “happy couple of the month” framed behind her desk, but there was something just a little…
off. Something about her eyes. Like she could spot a woman with no options from a hundred miles away. And I was her perfect mark.
Still, when she spoke, it was with this strange kind of confidence, like of course this was going to work out.
Like meeting a stranger in the middle of nowhere and marrying him on sight was perfectly normal, healthy behavior.
I tried to ask questions—where he lived, what he was like—but Marcy brushed most of them off.
“He’s quiet, but steady. A real mountain man. And you—you’ve got a warm energy, Daisy. You’re exactly what he needs.”
“What if he’s not what I need?” I muttered.
She just smiled wider. “Sweetheart, you’ve picked your own men before, right? How’d that go?”
Bitch ! How rude! But… she’s right.
I guess that’s how she got me. Because she was right. My taste in men has always been... cataclysmic. The last one left me with six hundred dollars of unpaid rent and a busted heart. The one before him ghosted me on my birthday. And the one before him told me I “smelled too hopeful.”
So no. I don’t trust myself with love. Maybe I’ve got something in me that draws the wrong people? Maybe my picker’s broken? But if Marcy’s even slightly better at choosing than I am, maybe this one won’t leave me worse than he found me.
I told her I wanted stability and a fresh start. She told me she had just the guy.
A reclusive artist in the mountains. Hudson Mills . She said his name like it should mean something to me, but it didn’t.
I shift on the seat and look down at Pickles. “Well, buddy. We’re almost there. You ready to meet your new dad?”
Pickles yawns and looks at me like she’s not going to get excited for yet another one of my hommes du jour.
I sigh and press my cheek to the window again, trying not to let the panic win. I told Marcy I wanted someone steady—but the ambiguity of that word really didn’t settle in until right now that I was being matched… permanently
The bus grinds up another curve, tires crunching through patches of rock and pine needles.
I tighten my arms around my backpack and glance down at Pickles, nestled in the crook of my arm like a loaf of warm bread.
He gives me a slow blink, the kind that feels like a hug.
Like I got you, lady. Even if no one else does.
And with this new venture, I’ve come around to the idea that a marriage based on a business arrangement rather than the blinding compulsion of love is probably a better choice for me.
This is different. An arrangement. A contract. A decision.
Someone else—someone with actual vetting skills and a clipboard—matched me to a man who, on paper, wants a wife. Not a girlfriend. Not a hookup. Not someone to text back when he feels like it. A wife.
And maybe that sounds cold. Maybe that sounds mechanical. But you know what? After everything I’ve been through, mechanical sounds like a vacation.
The bus comes to a stop at the bottom of a long road. The bus driver tells me this is my stop and I grab Pickles, my backpack, and start up the road. The steep hill is forcing me to take deep breaths and it’s actually quite calming. I’ve never been so thankful to be this out of shape.
After about ten minutes a cabin comes into view.
I walk closer, my heart beating faster. I stand on the creaking wooden porch, staring at the dark green door like it might bite me.
My heart is thumping so loud in my chest I’m half-worried he’ll hear it before I even knock.
Pickles shifts in my arms, mewing softly like he’s sensing the tension.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Moment of truth.”
I raise my fist and knock three times.
There’s a long pause. Too long. I wonder if maybe he’s not home. Or maybe he saw me through the window and decided I wasn’t worth opening the door for. I knock again. My breath clouds in the cold mountain air. I bounce slightly on my heels, nerves sparking like static under my skin.
And then the door swings open.
And— oh.
Oh no. He’s… hot. Like, seriously hot.
Not the kind of hot you see in magazines or on Instagram with perfect angles and filtered skin. No. This is real, rugged hot. Grumpy mountain man hot. Brooding hot.
I’ve never felt this way before. The warmth gathering between my legs and the butterflies trying to fly up and out of my stomach have me wanting to run. I want to stop staring but I can’t.
He’s tall—at least six-three—with wide shoulders, long arms, and a chest that fills out the plain henley shirt he’s wearing like it was stitched just for him.
His jaw is sharp, dusted with a salt-and-pepper beard that somehow makes his mouth look even more kissable.
His hair is tousled like he just ran his hands through it, a few strands falling over a furrowed brow.
And his eyes—dear God—his eyes are a stormy gray, locked on me like I’m the last surprise he wanted to see today.
But here I am. Standing on his porch with a cat and a backpack and way too many feelings for someone who’s supposed to be entering a strictly practical marriage.
I expected old. Wrinkled. Maybe balding. Hairy in weird places. Someone with nose hair and soup stains and an odor problem. Not… this.
He’s probably twice my age, sure, but he wears it like a leather jacket. He looks like a man who’s chopped wood with his bare hands and maybe once punched someone for calling a woman sweetheart when she didn’t like it.
My brain has completely left my body, which is now being taken over by the intense throbbing between my thighs.
I realize he can tell I’m staring and immediately force a smile. “Hi. I’m Daisy. From, um… Mountain Mates.”
He doesn’t say anything for a second. Just stares at me like he’s not sure I’m real. Or like maybe he really thought I wouldn’t show.
Then he clears his throat. “You brought a cat.”
I glance down at Pickles, who has no idea how loaded this moment is. “Ya… I told Macy he’s part of the package.”
His lips twitch like he’s trying not to smile. “Of course he is.”
He steps aside, holding the door open, and I brush past him, clutching Pickles a little tighter. I catch the scent of him—woodsmoke and pine and something darker, maybe turpentine—and suddenly I’m hyper-aware of everything. My heartbeat. My breathing. The way his eyes track me.
I shouldn’t feel this attracted to someone I don’t know. But I do. I feel it all the way down to my toes.
He shuts the door behind me, and I catch one last glimpse of the mountain view outside before I turn to face him.
“Thank you for… opening the door,” I say awkwardly. “I wasn’t sure you were going to.”
He just nods, those gray eyes unreadable. “Neither was I.”
Well. That’s comforting.
Still, I can’t help the strange flutter low in my belly. I thought I was coming to marry a stranger out of desperation. I thought I’d be bracing myself to sleep in the same house as some crusty old hermit who wanted a maid and a microwave dinner companion.
I stand in his living room and he walks toward me. Pickles chooses the exact wrong moment to launch out of my arms.
One second, he’s nestled against my chest like a good little travel companion.
The next, he’s squirming free and leaping to the floor like he owns the place.
I gasp and reach for him, but it’s too late—he’s already trotting across the hardwood toward Hudson, tail high, meowing like they’re long-lost friends.
“Pickles, no?—”
But my cat is clearly smitten, too. He circles Hudson’s legs like a fuzzy gray tornado, rubbing against his calves, twining between his boots, and then—oh my God— clawing at his pant leg like he’s scaling Everest.
“I am so, so sorry,” I say, rushing toward them. “He usually doesn’t do this?—”
“It’s fine,” Hudson says, his voice a little rough around the edges. He’s crouching down now, one hand already extended toward Pickles. “He’s friendly.”
“Only with people he likes,” I blush, and I’m not sure why that makes my stomach do a slow, swooping somersault. It’s almost like I’m admitting that I like him.
We both reach for Pickles at the same time.
And whack!
Our foreheads collide with a soft thunk.
“Ah!” I yelp, pulling back instinctively, one hand to my head.
Hudson flinches, then looks at me—and starts laughing.
I can’t help it. The sound of his laughter—deep and low, surprised and boyish—makes me laugh too. It bubbles up through my chest and spills out, and for a second, we’re just two strangers in a mountain cabin, forehead to forehead, cat pawing our ankles, sharing this faux pas.
And when I open my eyes again, our faces are still close. Really close.
His smile fades slowly, those storm-gray eyes softening as they lock onto mine. His breath fans across my cheek—warm, woodsy, intoxicating. I’m not sure which one of us leans in first, or if we’re both just frozen, suspended in that electric, buzzing space between almost and not-quite.
“You okay?” he murmurs, his voice lower than usual—rougher, like gravel and honey.
His palm is warm against my temple, his thumb brushing just barely along my skin. My breath stalls. We’re inches apart. His eyes—those stormy gray ones that always seem to see too much—are locked on mine, scanning my face for signs of pain.
I nod, but I don’t move. Neither does he.
“I think we hit each other pretty hard,” I whisper, trying to keep my voice steady. My heart is pounding. I don’t know if it’s from the collision or the way he’s looking at me like I’m something he’s not sure he deserves to touch but can’t stop himself from wanting.
“Yeah,” he says, his voice quiet. “Harder than I expected.”
His hand stays on my face, just for a moment too long.
Long enough for me to feel it everywhere.
My skin burns beneath his fingertips. I can smell cedar and soap and the faintest trace of paint on his clothes.
I wonder if he can feel how fast I’m breathing.
I wonder if he knows that every part of me is begging him not to step away.
But he does. Slowly, reluctantly, his hand falls from my cheek, and the cold rushes in.
“I, uh… I’ll get Pickles,” he says, blinking like he’s trying to shake something off.
Pickles is already curled smugly at his feet like this was his plan all along.
As Hudson bends to scoop him up, I press my fingers to the spot on my forehead where his skin touched mine. It tingles. I swear I can still feel him there. So much for not falling in love.