Drenched for the Mountain Man (Mountain Man Summer 2026 #15)

CHAPTER ONE

AMY

The river looked deceptively peaceful. That was the first red flag.

I’d seen enough documentaries to know nature loved luring people into a false sense of security before trying to kill them. Tornadoes did it. Sharks did it. And apparently rivers did it too.

“This is nice,” I lied to myself as I followed the group of women to the river. The guide helping people into the raft grinned at me like he already knew something I didn’t. “Just wait till we hit Devil’s Bend.”

Devil’s what now?

My stomach tightened. I looked around at the other women. They seemed fine. Excited, actually. One of them was bouncing on her heels like she’d been waiting for this her entire life. Another whooped. An actual, genuine, enthusiastic whoop.

I felt no kinship with any of them and the doubts started to creep in.

Maybe I should’ve stayed home. Maybe taking empowerment swim lessons at the YMCA for six weeks hadn’t actually prepared me for whitewater rafting.

Sure, I could doggy paddle with confidence and I no longer inhaled half the pool every time I attempted freestyle.

That was growth. Real, quantifiable, chlorine-scented growth.

Unfortunately, the river ahead looked less like a recreational activity and more like nature’s way of thinning the herd.

Still. I was here for a reason. Thirty-two years old and terrified of everything wasn’t how I wanted the rest of my life to go.

I’d been the person who said maybe next time so many times it had basically become my brand.

I had an entire Pinterest board called Brave Things that I’d been curating for three years without actually doing any of them.

When an ad for a women’s rafting weekend at Lone Mountain had popped up on my socials, I clicked the book now button before my common sense could tackle me to the floor. I was going to be brave.

I was going to be the woman who whooped.

Now I stood in a life jacket tight enough to rearrange internal organs while six strangers climbed into a raft that did not look puncture proof.

“You getting in?” The man holding the raft steady was smiling widely. Maybe too wide.

“Yes,” I said, and immediately got one foot tangled in the rope beside the dock on the first step. Wonderful. Strong start.

A woman already seated in the raft gave me a supportive thumbs-up. “Don’t worry. My cousin came with me last year and only fell out twice.”

I froze. “Twice?”

The woman nodded. “She broke an arm, but that was all.”

Not comforting. Not comforting at all.

I climbed carefully into the raft, lowering myself onto the side with all the grace of a sedated walrus.

I knew, with the kind of knowledge that comes only from spending a lifetime in a curvy body, that I didn’t belong here.

The life jacket was pressing my chest into an unusual shape and the strap barely made it across my hips.

But this was fine. This was brave. Brave people didn’t worry about how tight the life jacket strap was.

The guide pushed us gently away from shore.

The raft drifted along the calm water, bobbing softly.

Okay. See? This wasn’t bad. Honestly, this was almost relaxing.

The mountains towered over us in deep green layers, sunlight flashing against the river.

Birds chirped as if giving their approval.

The whole scene belonged on an inspirational wilderness calendar.

Maybe I could do this. Maybe this was the start of the new fearless me.

The guide passed out the paddles and I took mine with a brave smile.

Then the raft turned the corner and the river ahead exploded. White water crashed violently between jagged rocks, roaring loud enough to shake the air itself. The raft surged forward and my soul briefly left my body. Someone screamed excitedly. Psychopaths. I was in a raft with pure psychopaths.

“I would like to formally exit the adventure!” I screamed at a volume that should have been heard. It was not. Or the guide simply ignored me.

“Forward paddle!” he yelled. I dipped my paddle into the water with all the confidence of a Victorian woman being asked to operate machinery. The raft hit the first rapid. Cold spray smacked me directly in the face and I shrieked. The woman beside me laughed.

“This is the fun part.”

No. No it was not.

The raft bounced hard. I gripped the paddle so tightly my fingers cramped. Another wave crashed over us. The guide shouted instructions I absolutely did not process because survival mode had taken over every functioning brain cell I possessed.

Then it happened.

One sharp, unexpected slam against a hidden rock. The raft lurched violently sideways. And I — with the balance of a newborn deer under ideal conditions — went flying. One second, I was seated. The next I was airborne.

“Oh sweet baby —”

Then freezing water swallowed me whole. The river punched the breath from my lungs. Everything turned cold and loud and chaotic. Water rushed over my head as panic took the wheel. My arms flailed wildly. My feet found nothing. Absolutely nothing.

This was it. I was going to drown wearing waterproof mascara and a rental helmet. My Brave Things board would outlive me — three years of careful curation, and the only item I’d ever checked off was about to double as my cause of death.

Death by killer rapids, trying to be the woman who whooped.

I burst back above water sputtering violently, the life jacket jerking me upward while the current shoved me downstream.

Water splashed into my mouth. I coughed hard, blinking wildly before the current shifted again, spinning me sideways.

I got a good look at the shore. I’d never be able to swim to it. The current was too fast.

Then, from behind a tree, something appeared. I thought it was a bear at first. Would I wind up his dinner? I blinked the water from my eyes and the shape came into focus. It wasn’t a bear standing on two legs on the riverbank watching me drown.

It was Bigfoot?

No, according to the documentaries I watched, it couldn’t be Bigfoot.

Bigfoot did not dress in black t-shirts and worn jeans.

No, it — he — was simply the biggest man I had ever seen in my entire life.

Not big like tall. Big like if a lumberjack became a grizzly bear.

Broad shoulders stretched the t-shirt to its limit.

A surprisingly well-kept beard—why was I noticing that in the middle of drowning?

—covered the bottom half of his face. A scowl covered the top half.

He found me in the water. Dark eyes. Focused. Annoyingly calm while I was actively being waterboarded by nature.

He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Feet up!” he barked.

Excuse him? I was fighting for my life, not attending boot camp. I flailed my arms. “I’m trying not to die here!” I shouted.

That earned me one eyebrow lift. Water crashed over my face again. I sputtered, coughed, and flailed with absolutely no dignity left whatsoever. “This is not the empowering experience I paid for!”

“Feet up!” the giant shouted again. And then, as if I wasn’t obeying him fast enough, “Feet up!”

“I heard you the first time,” I muttered as I tried to do as he’d ordered.

It was easy for him to shout directions.

He was standing safely on land looking like the final boss in a lumberjack video game while I got spiritually mugged by nature.

The current spun me sideways. A sharp rock scraped my thigh through my leggings. “Ow! Rude!”

Then I was being swept past him, over another set of jagged rocks that made me wince.

I knew I’d be black and blue if I survived this.

Another shout, the same order. Feet up. I decided I might as well do as he said.

Thankfully more than one lesson at the YMCA had covered floating, which I attempted now.

There was no sense in fighting the current. Fighting—

I shrieked as I was jerked up by the back of my life vest. A massive hand grabbed it hard. The mountain of a man had walked into the raging water and simply dragged me out of the river. Zero gentleness involved. He hauled me through the water behind him like a pool float.

The second we reached shallow water, he bent, grabbed me beneath the arms, and lifted me fully out of the river. I collapsed onto the rocky bank coughing violently. Water poured from my nose. My braid stuck to my face. One of my shoes was missing. Gone. Probably halfway to Idaho.

“You with me?” The deep voice rumbled above me.

“No. The river ate my shoe and my dignity. I’m going to need a moment.

” I lay there for a moment eyes closed. When I opened them, he was close.

Very close. I blinked then blinked again.

He was even bigger up close. Water dripped from the dark ends of his hair.

He slicked it back with one hand. His beard was dark and thick and only slightly damp from his river rescue, and I had the deeply unhinged thought that it probably felt incredible against a person’s throat.

Or the inside of a person’s thighs, which was an excellent sign that I was concussed.

Everything about him screamed mountain man.

Big boots. Beard. Rough hands. Permanently annoyed expression.

“You look like Bigfoot.” The words came out before my filter had a chance to recover from the river. I apparently became extremely honest when terrified. One dark eyebrow lifted. Not offended. More annoyed, if anything. “I get that a lot.”

“I mean it affectionately,” I added quickly, because my mouth was apparently committed to the disaster. “Bigfoot is impressive. Enormous. And apparently excellent at water rescue.” That did not make him smile.

He reached for my helmet. I jerked backward. “Wait. My head’s still attached.”

“I need to check your pupils.”

“Wow. Buy me dinner first.” Still no smile.

The man looked like he hadn’t deployed a real smile in several years, and I had decided, lying on a riverbank with river water draining from my nose, that I was personally going to be responsible for extracting one.

It felt like a challenge. I loved a challenge.

Even when I was soaking wet and missing a shoe and had technically attempted to drown myself.

The mountain man unclipped my helmet and lifted it carefully from my head. Cool air hit my soaked scalp. Then he grabbed the straps of my life vest. “Arms up.”

I obeyed immediately before realizing what I was doing. Since when did I take orders from giant river cryptids? He tugged the vest off my body in one smooth motion. My wet shirt clung to everything I owned.

Oh no.

The mountain man’s eyes dropped. Briefly.

But long enough that I felt it even through the cold, even through the embarrassment of being drenched and lying on a riverbank in a wet shirt that was advertising everything I had — every soft, generous, entirely unhidden curve — in high definition.

I did not have the build of a woman who could afford a clinging wet shirt and maintain dignity.

I knew this. And yet here I was, unable to do a single thing about it except sit still and try not to make eye contact.

“Are you hurt?”

“Emotionally? Deeply.”

His gaze moved over me again, more focused now. Clinical. Unfortunately, still hot. “You hit anything?”

“My pride definitely took a beating.”

“Anything else?”

I paused. “…maybe a rock? A couple of them.”

“Where?”

“My leg?”

“You asking me?”

“It was a traumatic event.”

The sound of shouting carried from the river as the raft caught up with me. One of the guides yelled, “She okay?”

Before I could answer, the giant mountain man stood.

“She’s fine,” he called back, even as his attention swept down my flushed face before landing on my leg.

I sat up straighter, realizing they weren’t stopping. “They aren’t coming to get me?”

He stood there towering over me, hands at his sides. “Do you want to go back on the water?”

“No. Definitely not.”

“Then no. They aren’t coming back for you.” He knelt back down, his big arms resting on his big thighs. “Can you stand?” “Yes.”

I tried getting up as gracefully as I could. Which wasn’t very. I realized instantly the wet rocks were probably in cahoots with the river. A shriek escaped me before his arms caught me around the waist. I grabbed his shoulders, fingers digging into muscle that had no give in it at all.

Here was the thing about being a curvy woman in a moment like this.

I knew exactly how much of me was now pressed against him.

All of it. Everywhere. My soft body against his solid one.

Every generous curve of me announcing itself.

I braced for the subtle shift, the barely-there adjustment men made when they registered who was in their arms. He didn’t shift.

He just held me. Like I was simply a person he’d caught.

My brain had no file for that, but it did recognize he held me for exactly one second longer than he had to.

I felt that all the way to my toes. And other places, none of which had any business responding during a near-death rescue.

“I’m fine,” I said. “I just need a second.” He didn’t let go.

Smart man, as it turned out. Because the second I shifted my weight the world tilted sideways in a way that had nothing to do with the rocks beneath my feet.

A rushing sound filled my ears. The tree line went soft at the edges.

I started to shiver — I knew it was from shock and the cold of the river.

“Eyes on me.” His voice came from somewhere far away. His hands tightened on my waist. I was trying hard to stay upright and losing the argument with my legs. “I think,” I started to say something.

And then the ground came up to meet me.

Except it didn’t, because his arms were already there, catching me before I hit the rocks, and the next thing I knew I was up in his arms, the solid wall of his chest and the absurd, unhurried steadiness of his heartbeat under my ear.