Chapter 11
Avery
I leaned forward in my chair, searching his face in the fading light. “Well? How’s Marlene doing?”
Something felt different about tonight. Special. Flint hadn’t brought me out here just for stargazing.
A man who wanted a fling didn’t introduce a woman to his home.
Flint had shown me the life he’d built with his own hands.
He was acting like he was serious about me, and the realization made my heart beat faster.
I loved what I saw here. His cabin was simple but solid, filled with warmth and the evidence of a life lived deliberately.
It was so much nicer than my cramped apartment, mainly because it included him.
It didn’t hurt that his property included fifty acres of gorgeous woodland that stretched out in every direction, wild and beautiful and free.
Flint’s expression shifted into something I couldn’t quite read. “Marlene’s fallen in love with her windsurfing instructor. And she plans to stay in the Bahamas after her leg heals.”
I stared at him, certain I’d misheard. “What?”
The words didn’t make sense. Marlene had lived in Red Oak Mountain her entire life. Bookish was her dream, her legacy, her entire world.
“But what about Bookish?” I asked, my voice rising. “And her life here? Everything she’s built?”
And then fear spread through my chest. Would Bookish close for good? Was my life about to change forever?
A Cheshire cat smile spread across Flint’s face, slow and knowing.
“That’s not even the biggest news. You know Marlene.
She’s always been eccentric and impulsive.
Evidently, the windsurfing instructor is a fifty-nine-year-old Frenchman, and she’s completely crazy for him.
Or his abs. Honestly, I couldn’t quite tell which from the conversation. ”
I let out a shocked laugh, trying to picture practical, book-loving Marlene swooning over some French athlete in the Caribbean sun. And not only that, but describing him in full detail to her manly-man nephew!
I didn’t know the impulsive version of Marlene that Flint was talking about. I knew her to be steady as a clock and driven by routine.
But he obviously knew her better than I did.
“She wants to sell Bookish,” Flint continued, and my laughter died in my throat.
“What? No.”
“It’s okay. Don’t freak out. She wants to sell it to either me or you. Just for the cost of the inventory. She doesn’t own the building, so I’d just have to talk to Mick Harrington and have the lease transferred over.”
The world tilted sideways.
I’d dreamed of this.
For six years I’d imagined what it would be like to own Bookish someday, to make it truly mine. But that day had always felt impossibly far away, something that might happen when Marlene retired in another decade.
The timing was all wrong. I didn’t have any savings. Not a penny. Every paycheck went to rent and groceries and the occasional splurge on a new release I couldn’t resist.
My heart sunk. And besides that, surely Flint would want the business. He’d already proven he knew how to run it better than I could.
Or worse, maybe he wouldn’t want it at all. Maybe he’d sell off the inventory for his aunt and disappear back into the mountains.
Back to a life without me.
“What are you thinking?” I asked, and I hated how tremulous my voice sounded. “About Marlene’s offer?”
Flint reached over and took my hand, his calloused palm warm and steady against mine. His eyes stayed fixed on the sunset while an owl hooted its first call of the night somewhere in the distance.
“I was thinking,” he said slowly, “that you and I might make great partners.”
My breath caught. “Partners?”
“Would you like that?” He turned to look at me, his hazel eyes soft in the fading light. “If we run Bookish together?”
I bounced up in my lounge chair, unable to contain the joy surging through me. “Are you serious?”
“I am.” His thumb traced circles on my palm. “And it’s up to you what kind of partners you want us to be. Partners in business. Partners in life,” he paused, his voice dropping lower. “Or maybe partners in both.”
My heart did a tiny flip inside my chest. “Flint, but we hardly know each other.”
“I know it’s sudden,” he growled, “But I’ve been wild about you since I first walked through that door and saw you all prim and buttoned up in Bookish.” A rough laugh escaped him. “All I wanted to do was get that skirt of yours hiked up around your thighs.”
“Flint,” I started to say, but words failed me. Everything was happening so fast. Was I just caught up in a whirlwind? But if it was a whirlwind, there was no one else I’d want to be experiencing it with.
Sawyer was far from my mind now.
All I could see was the man in front of me.
Strong. Patient. Capable of anything he put his mind to.
“What do you say, Avery? Would you be willing to have a real-life mountain man in your life? I can’t move to town.
I’m just not a townie. So you’d have to be comfortable out here with me.
And I have some money put aside from my dad’s inheritance, but I’ll never live a fancy life.
I like this world. This cabin and the land mean everything to me.
Could you see yourself here with me? I know you said your lease is coming up soon.
What if you moved here instead of signing on for another year? ”
I looked at him in the gathering dusk, this gruff, sexy man who’d turned my safe little world upside down in the best possible way.
He’d seen through my walls and pushed past them, anyway.
“Yes,” I whispered.
Then louder, because he deserved to hear it clearly, “Yes. To all of it. The business and the life and you. Especially you.”
Flint’s face transformed.
That rare, beautiful smile broke across his features, and he pulled me from my chair onto his lap in one smooth motion. I settled against his chest, feeling the steady thump of his heart beneath my cheek.
“You’re sure?” he murmured against my hair. “Because once I have you, I’m not letting go,” his hand slid to the back of my neck, warm and heavy, “Ever.”
I tilted my head back to look at him. “Promise?”
He growled out a promise.
And then he kissed me, slow and deep, while the first stars emerged overhead and the owl called again from the darkening woods.
I thought about Bookish waiting for us in town.
And the life we’d build together between these mountains and those bookshelves.
About all the future mornings I’d wake up in this cabin with this perfect man beside me.
I’d spent so long being afraid. Afraid of loving someone who might not love me back.
But Flint had chosen me.
And for the first time in years, I wasn’t afraid at all.