Chapter 6
LUCY
“Ethan, I’m about to explode. Best breakfast of my whole life,” I say.
“That’s the goal.” He leans against the counter, tea towel over his shoulder, watching me push away my scraped-clean plate. “Your grandma’s orders, anyway. Fatten you up or answer to her.”
I laugh and carry my plate to the sink, because her rules apply even from twenty miles away. “That sounds exactly like her. Word for word.”
Then I hop up onto a stool. “So what’s new with you? It’s been a long time since I last visited home. Fill me in.”
His whole face lifts. “Well, my little brother’s getting married in San Diego, and I can’t wait to see him again, as it’s been a while.”
“Wow, that’s wonderful. So you’re the best man, then?”
“Sure am.” Then his mouth tugs sideways. “Though, the rest of the family’s still not sold on his Omega. Which is dumb, because she’s great. She’s smart and funny, and she keeps him honest. But she’s not exactly, you know, submissive. And you’d think he’d told them he was marrying a wolverine.”
“Not everyone wants a submissive Omega,” I say, knowing I’m one of those who picked up my strength from Grandma. She always told me not to let anyone walk all over me, including Alphas.
“No, I know that. I mean, the folks are old-school types.” He shrugs, rueful.
“They have this picture in their heads of what an Omega’s supposed to be, all soft eyes and “yes, dear,” and if you don’t fit it, something must be wrong with you.
” He glances at me and grins. “You’d have driven them insane. I mean that as the highest compliment.”
“I’ll add it to my dating resume.” I slide off the stool and steal one last strip of bacon off the platter because I’m weak and it’s there.
Jerry, my previous Alpha here at Crimson Pine Lodge, had accepted me for exactly who I was, but every now and then, he’d hint that maybe I didn’t need to be quite so…
strong. Maybe I didn’t need to crack every joke that popped into my head or fill every silence.
He’d never asked me to change outright, but the comments had always registered with me.
Maybe that’s why I hadn’t bothered dating anyone in the five years since I lost him.
“Okay. I’m going to walk off this feast before I have to be rolled anywhere. Thanks, Ethan. Genuinely.”
“Go be free, Trouble. And we have guests coming in today, just a small group of men here for a fishing expedition. I’ll be taking them out most days, and I’ll prepare meals for our guests out in the woods, so you don’t need to worry about doing anything.”
He grins at me, saying nothing more, because I know he’s trying to impress my grandma by doing it all.
“Okay, but just know I’m here to help out. Anyway, I’m heading out to properly meet the guys in the cabin, as Grandma asked me to.”
“Oh, perfect timing.” Ethan turns back to the bench behind him and lifts a wicker picnic basket lined with a blue-checked cloth. The smell of fresh butter and herbs drifts toward me. “I baked them a fresh batch of biscuits this morning. They practically inhale them.”
He holds the basket out.
I stare at the offering. “I’m one blanket away from starring in a countryside tourism brochure.”
He chuckles. “They still haven’t returned the last two containers I sent over, so they’ve lost the privilege. Picnic basket it is.”
I laugh as I take it from him. “That’s… weirdly wholesome.”
“Don’t let the big mountain men fool you,” he says. “Feed them and they’re surprisingly easy to manage.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” I head outside, where the day has arrived in full. I draw in the air that’s so clean it’s almost sweet, exactly the kind of morning I used to dream about in Miami traffic with a bus wheezing exhaust through my window. You forget, in a city, that quiet has a texture.
Truth is, I didn’t sleep well. Half the night, I spent turning over in that beautiful bed, listening to a house I don’t have memorized yet settle around me, and the bite on my hand itched the whole time.
But Grandma asked me to help with the lumberjacks, so I’m not sitting around not helping when Ethan has his hands full with guests. I need to go and introduce myself properly. Besides, I owe Roman a thank-you after the crazy ordeal in the woods.
Grandma trusts them and speaks of them fondly, which means I have to believe they have no ill intent. Though, based on yesterday’s encounter, it’s clear one of them likes to joke around. Two can play at that game.
The track is on the far right side of the lodge. Ethan’s biscuits are still warm through the wicker against my ribs. A girl with a basket, walking into the deep woods to a cabin, and all I’m missing is a red cape and an actual wolf.
Around me, sunlight filters through the towering pines, lighting up patches of moss while the rest of the world sits shaded beneath the canopy. The air smells of damp earth and sap, and the breeze stirs the branches overhead.
Then I hear a low, male grunt, followed by the rumble of deep voices.
My steps falter.
Instead of walking straight toward the cabin, I slip quietly off the track and weave between two thick pines, wanting to see who I’m dealing with first and work out what I’m going to say so I don’t mumble.
Ferns brush against my calves as I duck behind a screen of dense undergrowth, the basket hugged against my ribs.
From here, I have the perfect view through the foliage.
They can’t see me, but I’m watching the cabin up ahead, tucked into the clearing.
Except, it’s not the cabin I remember. This is a whole house of dark logs under a green metal roof, a stone chimney letting up a thin blue thread of smoke, and a deep porch running the length of it.
In the front yard, a splitting stump sits worn, with an axe driven into the wood.
Firewood is stacked against the side of the house.
And that’s when I spot two men strolling from around the back of the cabin, talking low.
The first one I know instantly, and my stomach fills with butterflies at the sight of Wolf. Impossible to mistake: that mountain of a body in a dark button-up shirt with the sleeves shoved to the elbow, black hair, a shadow of a beard, and all those muscles.
Then the man beside him lifts his head to say something, and the sun catches his eyes. They’re hazel brown, and the basket nearly slides out of my hands.
Roman.
He’s as tall as Wolf and built along the same unfair lines, but he’s got chestnut-brown hair loose to his shoulders, skin tanned.
He’s wearing a black button-up shirt with the sleeves pushed up over forearms roped with muscle.
Even from here, hidden in the ferns like a burglar, I feel the tug of him low in my belly, which is just crazy.
Who let these men out of a storybook?
The sight catches me off guard but has nothing to do with the men in front of me.
Jerry used to stand just like this in the early morning, sleeves shoved to his forearms, laughing with the other guys over a woodpile, while I wandered down the track carrying breakfast. It isn’t the same place, and these aren’t the same people, but for a fleeting second, the memory overlaps with the present so perfectly that it steals my breath.
For years, thinking about him had felt as if someone were squeezing my lungs.
And it had taken a long time to come back here because everywhere I looked had reminded me of what we’d shared.
Now, though, the pain has softened into something quieter.
Not gone, just… settled. A gentle ache for a life I thought I’d have and never did.
I watch Wolf and Roman again and almost laugh at how nervous I feel about talking to them. This is ridiculous.
They’re insanely attractive, sure. Anyone with functioning eyesight could admit that, but they’re still strangers, and whatever old memories they’ve stirred belong to me, not them.
That’s when Wolf mumbles one last thing to Roman that I can’t hear and retraces his steps back around the rear of the cabin.
Roman rolls his shoulders, crosses to the splitting stump, and yanks the axe free.
I bite down on my bottom lip. I really should just keep watching where this goes and not interrupt him.
His shirt is already half unbuttoned, the fabric hanging open as he settles his grip on the axe.
Then he swings. The movement is fluid, his whole body working as one, power rolling effortlessly from his shoulders through his back before the blade bites clean through the round.
The crack echoes across the clearing, startling birds from the branches overhead.
He reaches for another log without pause and does it again and again.
Sweat glistens at the base of his throat, disappearing beneath the open collar of his shirt. And somewhere along the way, I’d stopped watching him split wood and started watching… him.
Heat creeps slowly up my neck, and I shift my weight, suddenly far too aware that I’m hiding behind a cluster of ferns, clutching a basket of biscuits while openly staring at a man who has absolutely no idea he’s being admired.
He plants the axe in the block before reaching for a bottle of water resting on the porch steps, making me realize he’d been working out here long before I arrived.
Tilting his head back, he drains half the bottle in a few long swallows, a bead of water escaping down the side of his neck.
He drags a damp hand through his dark hair, pushing it off his forehead before exhaling slowly.
Then, without a second thought, he unbuttons his shirt and slides it down his arms before tossing it toward the railing on the porch.
A gasp slips past my lips.
I clamp a hand over my mouth, heart thundering, as I duck instinctively behind the ferns, convinced he’s heard me. But he doesn’t even glance my way, so I stand back up. He reaches for the axe again, and with one effortless swing, sends another log splitting clean in two.
Good grief.