Kept By the Mountain Man (Whitetail Falls: Mountain Men #3)

Chapter 1 – Nicola

The windshield disappears beneath white.

I lean forward, squinting against the blur, hands locked on the wheel so tight my knuckles ache.

The road isn't visible anymore, just the vague impression of pavement somewhere beneath the snow, a suggestion I'm following more by hope than logic.

The headlights bounce back at me, useless, swallowed by the storm.

My breath fogs the glass. I wipe it away with shaking fingers and immediately regret taking my hand off the wheel. The car slides, fishtails, catches. My stomach lurches.

I don't know how far I've driven since I left the highway. Twenty minutes? An hour? Time feels liquid, slipping through my grip along with everything else.

The GPS died miles ago, the screen frozen on a blue dot hovering over nothing. No service. No signal. Just me and the storm and the wedding dress hanging in the backseat, still zipped inside its garment bag like evidence I can't quite bring myself to destroy.

The wind slams into the side of the car hard enough to rattle the frame. I gasp, overcorrect, feel the tires lose purchase. For one weightless, endless second, I'm suspended between control and chaos.

Then the world tilts.

The car slides sideways off the road, plowing through snow that comes up past the windows in a rush of white. Metal crunches. My seatbelt locks across my chest, bruising. The steering wheel jerks out of my hands, and then everything stops.

I sit frozen, hands hovering uselessly in the air where the wheel used to be, trying to process what just happened. Snow presses against the driver's side window, an avalanche suspended mid-fall. The car is tilted at an angle that makes my stomach turn.

I fumble for my phone. No service, still. The battery icon blinks at fifteen percent, mocking.

I try the ignition anyway, twisting the key with numb fingers. The engine groans, turns over once, twice—then dies with a wet cough that sounds final.

Cold seeps through the door frame, curling around my ankles.

The car is half-buried, off-road, invisible to anyone who might pass—not that anyone will pass in this weather. The temperature is dropping. My coat is thin, meant for a winter wedding in a heated venue, not a mountain blizzard. If I stay, I'll freeze.

If I leave, I might freeze faster.

But staying is certain death, and leaving is only probable, so I shove the door open and force myself out into the storm.

The wind hits me like a fist. I stagger, snow immediately soaking through my jeans, my ankle boots. It's knee-deep where I'm standing, deeper in the drifts piling against the trees. My breath is ripped away before I can catch it. Cold knifes through my coat, my sweater, straight to bone.

I take one step. Then another. The car disappears behind me almost immediately, swallowed by white.

I push forward, leaning into the wind, one arm raised to shield my face from the snow that pelts my skin like tiny shards of ice.

My foot catches on something buried. I go down hard, palms slamming into the snow, cold punching through my gloves. Pain flares across my right hand where the skin scrapes against frozen ground beneath the drift.

I bite back a sound that might be a sob or a scream and haul myself upright again.

Snow gets inside my boots, melts against my socks, soaks through. My hair is plastered to my face, ice forming in the strands. Every breath hurts.

Then, through the storm—light.

Faint. Warm. Gold against the endless white.

I stop, blinking hard, convinced I'm hallucinating. But it's there. A window, glowing through the trees maybe fifty yards ahead. The dark outline of a cabin materializing like something summoned from desperation itself.

Relief hits so hard I almost collapse. Instead, I lurch forward, moving faster now, careless.

My boot catches again and I go down on one knee, biting my tongue hard enough to taste copper.

I don't care. I claw my way upright and keep going, closing the distance between me and that light like it's the only thing tethering me to the world.

The porch appears suddenly, dark wood buried under snow. I drag myself up the steps, grab the railing for balance, and pound on the door with a fist that barely feels like mine anymore.

The sound is pathetic, nearly swallowed by the wind. I hit harder, desperation cracking through the numbness.

Please. Please be home. Please—

The door swings open.

Heat rolls out, and with it, a man.

He's huge. That's the first thing I register, the sheer size of him filling the doorway, broad shoulders blocking the light behind him. Tall enough that I have to tilt my head back to see his face.

Dark beard, dark hair, eyes that catch the firelight and hold it. His forearms are bare despite the cold, corded with muscle, the hands at his sides scarred across the knuckles like he's used them for something brutal.

He looks like every warning I've ever been given about strange men and isolated places. The kind of man you cross the street to avoid.

His gaze sweeps over me. It lingers on my scraped palm, the one I'm trying to hide against my thigh. On the snow melting into my clothes. On my face, whatever he sees there.

I wait for the questions. The suspicion. The anger at being disturbed.

Instead, he steps aside.

"Inside." His voice is low, rough-edged, but not unkind. A command, not a suggestion. "Now."

I hesitate for half a second—some instinct screaming that walking into a stranger's cabin in the middle of nowhere is how horror movies start—but the cold makes the decision for me. I stumble past him into warmth.

The door shuts behind me, cutting off the wind's howl. The silence that follows is almost disorienting.

I stand dripping on a woven rug, shaking so hard my teeth chatter, barely registering the space around me.

Wood walls. A stone fireplace with a fire crackling behind an iron screen.

Furniture that looks handmade, solid and rough-hewn.

The ceiling is low, timbered, the kind of place that would feel cozy if I weren't standing here in soaked clothes, terrified and lost.

The man moves past me without touching, efficiently closing the distance to the fireplace. He grabs a thick wool blanket from the back of a chair and returns, holding it out.

When I don't take it immediately—my hands are too numb, or maybe I'm too shocked—he drapes it over my shoulders himself, careful not to brush my skin. His hands are enormous, but shockingly gentle.

"Sit." He nods toward the chair closest to the fire.

I sit. My legs give out as much as obey.

He crouches near the hearth, adding a log to the fire with practiced efficiency, then moves to the small kitchen area, and fills a kettle with water. His movements are economical, controlled. Nothing wasted. Nothing loud.

I watch him because I don't know what else to do. My brain is starting to catch up to my body, adrenaline ebbing enough to let in the reality of where I am. Alone. In a cabin. With a man who could break me in half without trying.

"You hurt?" His voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts. He's facing me now, arms crossed, leaning against the counter. His eyes are dark, unreadable, fixed on me with an intensity that makes my pulse jump.

"I—" My voice cracks. I clear my throat, pull the blanket tighter. "No. Just cold."

His gaze drops to my hand, the one I scraped. I tucked it under the blanket, but he saw it before I could hide the evidence.

"Let me see."

It's not a question. I hesitate, every ingrained response warring inside me—Don't make him angry. Don't argue. Do what he says.—but he doesn't move, doesn't push. Just waits, patient and still, until I slowly extend my hand from beneath the blanket.

He steps closer. I force myself not to flinch.

He kneels in front of the chair, bringing himself to eye level with me, and takes my hand in his. Slowly. Like I'm something fragile that might shatter.

He turns my hand over, studying the scrape across my palm where the skin is raw and starting to bruise.

"Not deep," he says after a moment. "I'll clean it."

He releases me and rises, moving back to the kitchen. I curl my hand against my chest, still feeling the ghost of his touch, the surprising steadiness of it.

The kettle whistles. He pours steaming water into a mug, adds something from a jar, and brings it to me along with a small first aid kit.

"Drink." He sets the mug on the small table beside the chair, then flips open the kit and pulls out antiseptic and gauze.

I take the mug with my good hand. The heat seeps into my palm, and I have to resist the urge to press it against my face. It smells like honey and something herbal. I sip, and warmth spreads through my chest, shocking after the cold.

He reaches for my injured hand again. This time, I let him take it without resistance. He cleans the scrape with quick, efficient movements, his touch firm but gentle. It stings. I bite the inside of my cheek and stay still.

"You ran off the road." Not a question.

"Yes." My voice is steadier now, but barely.

"How far back?"

"I don't know. Maybe a mile?"

He nods, wrapping gauze around my palm with the precision of someone who's done this before. A lot. "You're lucky you found this place."

Lucky. The word almost makes me laugh. Nothing about tonight feels lucky. But I'm alive, and I'm warm, and the man kneeling in front of me hasn't asked why I'm driving through a blizzard alone or what I'm running from, so maybe he's right.

He finishes tying off the gauze and sits back on his heels, studying me with that same unreadable intensity. "What's your name?"

I freeze. The lie comes automatically, instinctive. "Emily."

There’s a quick flicker in his eyes, he knows I’m not telling the whole truth. But he doesn't call me on it. Just nods once, slow, like he's filing the information away for later.

"Jason." He stands, gathering the first aid supplies. "You'll stay here tonight. Storm's not letting up anytime soon."

It's not a question. Not quite an order either, but something in between—a statement of fact delivered with the kind of certainty that doesn't leave room for argument.

I know I should be scared. After everything this past year has taught me, I know this is the kind of moment you run from.

But he's already turning away, giving me space, moving back to the kitchen to put the kettle back on the stove.

The fire crackles, casting shifting shadows across the walls. The wind howls through the windows, battering the cabin, and I realize with a jolt that I have nowhere else to go.