Mountain Grump: A Grumpy Mountain Man Sunshine Curvy City Girl Age-Gap Romance (Men of Mount Carson

Chapter 1 Becca

The red flags should have been obvious.

Three day all-inclusive yoga and spa retreat for under a thousand dollars?

Immediate red flag.

Payment in full due ahead of time?

Flag just glowing a brighter and more alarming red.

Website full of stock photos?

Yep. Firetruck red.

Exact location not provided until the day before, to “maintain integrity of the program?”

Not even a red flag at that point. More like a full on stop sign.

And yet…

Here I was, standing next to my dusty BMW in an unpaved parking lot, baking in the surprisingly hot spring sunshine. I put on my sunglasses and surveyed the landscape.

Golden hills of dry grass punctuated by scraggly shrubs rolled out before me, with Mount Carson towering imposingly overhead. The mountain”s granite cliffs jutted out among twisted evergreens clinging to the rocky slopes. A shimmering heat haze hovered at the edges of my vision. Even at this elevation, the afternoon California sun was relentless.

I couldn”t deny it was a nice view. Definitely an upgrade from the vista of a busy overpass and on-ramp I typically enjoyed from my city apartment.

I looked around again, just confirming what I already knew.

Hills. Mount Carson. The winding cliffside road I’d been driving with my hands clenched on the steering wheel for hours.

Definitely no spa.

Nothing the website had advertised. No “yurt village,” no “hot spring lagoon.”

In fact, there wasn’t a shred of evidence of human civilization that I could see apart from the road and some power lines on the horizon.

I swiped through my phone. I was at the GPS coordinates that had been emailed to me yesterday. So I was in the right place.

And the “right place” was a muddy lot hours from the nearest town.

No yoga retreat. I’d been scammed.

I felt nauseous and scrambled through my bags to find my water bottle. The ice cold water helped settle my stomach, but did nothing to change the reality.

The reality was that I had no cell service, no data, and barely half a tank of gas.

My first instinct was to call my best friend. Amanda had gotten me out of trouble plenty of times since we met in middle school. She was smart, level-headed, and me… well, let’s just say ending up falling for a yoga retreat scam and being stranded in the mountains wasn’t completely out of character.

But I couldn’t call her. My phone wasn’t even showing that little “SOS” symbol. Literally nothing but a flat line where the bars should show up.

A drop of sweat rolled down my forehead. I wiped it with the back of my hand and got back in the car, a growing sense of panic fluttering in my chest. Okay, breathe. I went to turn on the air conditioning before remembering that it would use gas to sit here and idle with the air conditioning on blast.

Gas.

Okay, first order of business definitely had to be filling up my tank.

I remembered I’d passed a little station about an hour ago. It had made an impression on me because I thought maybe it had been abandoned or closed because of how old and worn the pumps looked and it looked empty, but a lit neon “open” sign in the window of the convenience store attached to the gas station had caught my eye at the last moment as I’d sped past.

With the sun already taking on an ominous golden tinge, I knew I didn”t have much time before nightfall. Whoever worked at that remote gas station had no idea how much I was relying on them right now. They were my only hope of getting enough fuel to make it to the nearest town for help.

They’d been open an hour and a half ago. Now that I was back on the road, heading down the mountain, I’d be there within an hour.

The tight turns and switchbacks of the road along the mountain”s base seemed even more treacherous in the fading light. I flicked on my high beams, their piercing glow illuminating each hairpin bend ahead as the last dregs of daylight slipped away. The sun finally dipped behind Mount Carson, the sky still glowing a cool greenish-blue.

So focused on not careening off the edge, I nearly blew past the station. The trees were thicker down here at the base of the mountain, and the wooden exterior of the convenience store blended right into the tree trunks on either side.

I slammed the breaks and pulled beside the nearest pump.

The machine was so old it didn’t have a backlit digital screen. Some light reached the pumps from the shuttered windows of the convenience store, but it wasn’t enough. I switched on my phone flashlight to peer at the display.

Cash only. Pay inside.

The bold letters of the notice taunted me.

This whole situation was so ridiculous it had almost been funny at first. I’d figured I’d make it to one of the small mountain towns, get connected to Wi-Fi and share the whole embarrassingly hilarious story of the scam with everyone before I drove down tomorrow.

But things were getting too real.

This wasn’t funny at all.

I didn’t have any cash. I never needed it back home. I basically used Apple Pay for everything and sometimes even left my physical wallet at home on quick shopping runs.

That wasn’t going to cut it out here.

I ducked back into the car to rifle through my purse and the glove box. A couple of quarters. I opened my wallet and flipped through the cards. Did I even have my debit card with me?

A few of the cards slipped from my hand as I pulled them out to get a closer look in the fading light.

“Are you serious…” I knelt down to run my fingers along the concrete in the shadow under my car, feeling for the plastic edges of the cards.

“Everything alright, sweetheart?”

A deep, gravely voice sent shivers through me. Good shivers. I froze, took a deep breath to collect myself, and straightened, slowly, to see what kind of man that velvety voice could belong to.

He didn’t disappoint.

Backlit by the fluorescent lighting in the convenience shop, the first thing that hit me was his size. Huge, hulking, nearly filling the doorway, he leaned in.

He regarded me with arms crossed over a broad chest, sizing me up through narrowed eyes. Even with the harsh lighting, I could make out how thick his biceps were beneath his flannel shirt.

In the city, guys who worked out also often talked about not wanting to be too big. The goal was staying lean to have muscles everyone could see. Vanity muscles.

But I’d always been into big guys. Tall. Sturdy. Solid. I was on the curvier side myself, and I craved the feeling of being in the arms of a guy who could embrace the whole of me. A guy who could lift me like it was nothing.

And there was no doubt this rugged mountain man right here checked all those boxes.

Why did he have to show up now?

This was horrible timing, for so many reasons. But also… perfect? At least the station wasn’t closed.

A storm of emotions swirled within me: embarrassment at my predicament, relief at no longer being alone, and an unmistakable attraction that made my pulse quicken and my cheeks flush.

“Are you alright?” he repeated, with maybe a tinge of increased concern under his gruff demeanor. After all, he’d just watched me stare at him, slack jawed for a few moments instead of responding to his question.

“I think so,” I managed, barely audible. “I, uh, I need gas.”

He arched an eyebrow, glancing pointedly at the line of pumps between us. “You”re in the right place, then. Good thing you stopped by. I was just getting ready to close up.”

My throat tightened as I forced out the words. “I don”t have any cash,” I admitted.

The man tilted his head; the light moving across his face to illuminate his sharp features softened by a full beard. With the change in the lighting, I now saw the salt and pepper in his beard and hair. Shadows collected in the creases at the corners of his eyes, where his brow furrowed.

Older than I’d assumed, but that did nothing to cool down the way my body was reacting to him. If anything, it stoked the flames more. He looked… weathered. Grizzled.

Experienced.

Mind out of the gutter, Becca.

“Come on in,” he said, finally, his firm tone holding no room for argument. “It’s cold out here. We’ll talk inside.”

It was true. With the sun now gone, the air had chilled and I could smell a hint of ozone. Rain was coming.

I let the car door shut, revealing the credit cards I had dropped strewn across the pavement. I hadn’t noticed because they were behind the half-open door. Apparently, my thinking skills weren’t at the top of their game after a day of non-stop driving.

Butterflies traveled from my stomach to my chest, roiling with a mix of curiosity and excitement. I should have been scared, right? On edge?

Instead, this guy somehow had put me at ease with a few gruff words.

I stuffed the cards back into my wallet and followed the man inside.