Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
PIPER
Sunlight wakes me. Actual, aggressive, streaming-through-a-window sunlight, which means I'm not dead on a mountain and the previous twelve hours weren't a fever dream.
They feel like one. The car dying mid-pass.
The walk in sandals that destroyed my pedicure, my ankle, and my dignity in that order.
The fashion magazine campfire. The man with the headlamp and the scarred hands who carried me the last quarter mile when my ankle gave out completely, his arm around my waist, my arm over his shoulders, and he didn't say a single unnecessary word the entire time.
Beck Craine. The bladesmith.
Sitting up sends a throb through my ankle that makes my teeth clench.
The bed I'm in is a queen, plain wood frame, flannel sheets that smell clean.
The quilt is heavy and handmade. Not the Pinterest kind.
The real kind, where someone's grandmother spent six months on it and the stitching isn't quite even.
Across the room there's a dresser, a hook with a flannel shirt, and a window showing nothing but pine trees and blue sky.
His bedroom. He gave me his bedroom.
The door is closed. On the floor beside the bed, someone left a glass of water, two ibuprofen, and a pair of thick wool socks. My ankle is wrapped properly now, tight white bandage over the compression wrap from last night. He must have redone it after I fell asleep.
The socks are enormous. They go past my calves. Pulling them on with the ruined sundress is a look, but my feet are freezing so vanity can wait.
Getting vertical takes effort. The ankle holds if I keep most of the weight off it. One hand on the wall, I hobble out of the bedroom into a main room that stops me mid-step.
Not because it's fancy. Because it's good.
My brain does this automatically. Six years of interior design means I can't walk into a space without reading it.
This cabin is one open room. Kitchen along the far wall, living area around a stone fireplace, a leather armchair by the window.
The mantel is a single slab of wood with a grain pattern that would cost eight hundred dollars in a Vegas showroom.
The furniture is solid, simple. Handmade, all of it.
Whoever built the bookshelf by the fireplace understood proportions.
He built it. Obviously he built it. The man makes knives. Of course his furniture is beautiful.
A note on the kitchen counter, propped against a coffee mug.
Road washed out overnight. Won't be passable for at least a day, maybe two. Parker knows. Coffee's on the stove. Propane burner, knob on the left. Don't put weight on that ankle. — B
Two days.
Two days stuck in a cabin on a mountain with a man I met six hours ago. No phone signal. No car. One sandal. A sundress that smells like campfire smoke.
My mother would lose her mind.
The coffee is in a percolator on a propane stove, which takes me three tries to light because the ignition clicks but doesn't catch. When it finally hisses to life I feel unreasonably proud. There's no creamer, no sugar, just a bag of dark roast grounds and a spoon. Black coffee it is.
Through the kitchen window I can see a second building about fifty yards away. Stone foundation, metal roof, a wide door propped open. Smoke pours from a chimney stack on the side. Not wood smoke. Something hotter.
The forge.
Common sense says stay off the ankle. Curiosity has never once listened to common sense in my entire life.
The wool socks are useless outside, so I shove my feet into a pair of boots by the door that are roughly four sizes too big.
Between the oversized boots, the socks, the wrecked sundress, and my hair doing whatever it's doing, I look like a scarecrow that got dressed at Goodwill during an earthquake.
Doesn't matter. Nobody's here except a man who watched me try to fight him with a stick last night. The bar is underground.
The walk to the forge hurts. Every step on the uneven ground sends a pulse up my calf. But the door is open and the sound coming from inside pulls me forward. A rhythmic clanging. Metal on metal, steady as a heartbeat.
Beck stands at an anvil in the center of the space. Sleeves pushed to his elbows, leather apron over a gray henley, tongs in one hand, hammer in the other. The forge behind him glows orange. He pulls a strip of glowing steel from the fire, lays it on the anvil, and brings the hammer down.
The impact resonates through the stone floor into the soles of his too-big boots on my feet.
He hasn't seen me yet. Good. Because I need a second.
His forearms are thick. Not gym-thick. Work-thick, corded with muscle that flexes every time the hammer falls.
The burn scars I noticed last night cover both forearms and the backs of his hands, silvery and textured in the morning light.
His face is all concentration. Jaw set, dark eyes locked on the steel, sweat at his temples.
Every movement is precise. No wasted motion.
I design spaces for a living. My entire career is about understanding how objects exist within an environment. How light interacts with texture. How form follows function.
This man and this forge are the most beautiful functional thing I've ever seen.
He looks up. The hammer pauses.
"You're supposed to be off that ankle."
"You're supposed to have creamer."
His mouth twitches. Almost a smile. He sets the steel in a tank of liquid that hisses on contact, then pulls off his gloves. "How bad is it this morning?"
"Manageable. I took the ibuprofen." Stepping inside, the heat from the forge hits my skin. "Thank you for the socks. And the ankle wrap. And the bed, which I'm guessing was your bed."
"I've slept in the chair before."
"That doesn't make me feel better."
"Wasn't trying to." He hangs the apron on a hook. "You hungry?"
"Starving."
Back in the cabin he cooks eggs and toast on the propane stove.
No fuss about it. Cracks four eggs one-handed into a cast iron pan, slides bread into a rack over the burner.
Moves around the kitchen without hesitation.
My designer brain catalogs the layout. Efficient.
Everything within arm's reach. But the spice rack is chaos and the mugs are shelved by size instead of frequency of use, which is objectively wrong.
"So." He sets a plate in front of me. Sits across the small table with his own. "Estate sale in Reno."
Right. I told him that much last night during the hike. Between gasps of pain I'd rambled about the car, the GPS routing me through the pass, the estate sale full of mid-century furniture I was driving to preview for my side business.
"Vintage decor. I curate and sell it online.
The day job is interior design at a firm in Vegas but the side business is growing faster.
" Saying it out loud to a stranger feels different than explaining it to my boss, who doesn't care, or my ex, who thought it was cute.
"There's a whole market for authenticated vintage pieces.
I've been building the client list for two years. "
"You want to go full-time with it."
Not a question. He read that off my face or my voice or whatever frequency quiet observant men pick up on.
"Yeah. The estate sale was supposed to be a buying trip. First big investment for the business."
"And then your car died."
"Yep." Eating his eggs, which are perfect and seasoned with just salt and pepper. "On a mountain. Fifteen miles from a cell signal. While wearing sandals."
"Platform sandals."
"I was driving, not hiking. There was no hiking in the plan."
That almost-smile again. He eats without rushing. Doesn't fill the silence. Most men I know talk to fill space. Beck seems comfortable with the quiet, letting it sit between bites, between sentences.
"What about you?" Nodding toward the window, toward the forge. "Eight months, you said. What was before Whisper Vale?"
"Bozeman. Before that, an apprenticeship in Colorado. Before that, Montana."
"And the scars?"
His fork pauses. Just a beat.
"Forge work. Twenty-six years of it. You get burned."
"They don't bother you?"
"They bother other people." He says it flat. Factual. Picks up his fork again.
That answer has a story behind it. A big one. But he's not offering and I'm not the kind of woman who pries over breakfast. Not yet, anyway.
After we eat I wash the dishes because sitting still makes me twitchy. He dries. Standing next to him at the small sink, my shoulder almost touches his arm. He's warm. Radiates heat. Whether it's the forge or just him, I can't tell.
"You reorganized my dish rack," he says, watching me slot the last plate into place.
"Your mugs were shelved by size. That's psychotic."
"They fit better by size."
"They're accessed by frequency. The ones you use daily should be at the front."
He stares at the dish rack. Stares at me. Stares at the dish rack again.
"Huh," he says.
"You're welcome."
My hand reaches for the towel at the same time his does. Our fingers brush. His are rough, warm, the scarred skin textured against my palm. Neither of us pulls away for a second longer than makes sense.
His eyes drop to our hands. Then back to my face. This close I can see the brown of his eyes has gold in it. The muscle in his jaw flexes.
The coffee pot chooses this exact moment to boil over on the stove, hissing and spitting. Beck turns away to grab it. The moment breaks.
"I'll get you something to wear," he says, back to me, mopping up coffee with a rag. "That dress isn't gonna make it another day."
"It wasn't gonna make it another hour."
He disappears into the bedroom. Comes back with a flannel shirt and a pair of drawstring sweats. Holds them out without looking at me.
"Thank you." Taking the clothes, my fingers brush his again. On purpose this time.
He notices. Those gold-brown eyes track the contact, then lift to mine.
"Road should clear by tomorrow," he says. Quiet. Almost like he's reminding himself.
"Tomorrow," I repeat.
He nods once. Goes back outside to his forge.
Standing alone in his kitchen wearing his too-big socks, holding his flannel shirt that smells like wood smoke and iron, I press the fabric to my chest.
Tomorrow is a long time from now.