15. Mila
MILA
We stay under the stars until the cold becomes impossible to ignore, then drive back to Luke's cabin with my hand in his and country music playing soft through the speakers.
I don't go home that night.
Or the next.
By the third morning I wake up tangled in Luke's sheets with winter sunlight streaming through his bedroom window, I realize I've stopped thinking about leaving. Stopped planning my exit strategy or keeping one foot perpetually pointed toward the door.
It terrifies me.
But not enough to make me pull away.
Winter settles over Montana like a heavy quilt, muffling the world in snow and silence. The ranch transforms into something out of a postcard—white-covered pastures, frost-rimmed fence lines, mountains sharp against pale blue skies.
I keep helping Luke with the administrative chaos, which only intensifies as the holidays approach. Guest bookings. Staff schedules. Endless questions about whether trail rides are still available in December. (They are, for people brave enough to bundle up properly.)
But now when I arrive at his office each morning with coffee, he pulls me into his lap first. Kisses me slow and thorough before we tackle the day's disasters together.
"You're going to make me spill this," I protest one morning when his hand slides under my sweater.
"Then you shouldn't bring such good coffee." His mouth finds that spot beneath my ear that makes me forget my own name. "It's a distraction."
"I'm pretty sure you're the distraction."
"Maybe." He pulls back, grinning in a way that's becoming dangerously familiar. "But you started it."
He's lighter these days. The permanent tension that used to live between his shoulders has eased into something softer. He laughs more. Smiles without looking like he's second-guessing whether he's allowed.
And I did that. I helped pull him out of the constant work-worry spiral he'd buried himself in.
The realization makes something warm bloom behind my ribs, even as it scares me how much I want to keep making him smile.
One morning, I find Luke in the barn at seven in the morning looking more stressed than I've seen him in weeks.
"What happened?"
"Guest lodge heater died. I thought I got it fixed, but apparently not." He drags a hand through his hair, leaving it standing in worried peaks. "Repair guy can't get here until tomorrow and we've got twelve guests arriving this afternoon who specifically booked for a 'cozy holiday experience.'"
I pull out my phone, already scrolling through local contractors. "Does Wyatt know anyone?"
"He's checking." Luke stares at his own phone like it personally betrayed him. "This is exactly the kind of thing that goes wrong at the worst possible time."
"Hey." I move closer, putting my hand on his arm until he looks at me. "We'll figure it out. That's literally what I'm here for—helping you figure shit out when it breaks."
Something in his expression softens. "What did I do before you showed up?"
"Panicked alone, probably."
"Yeah." He pulls me against his chest, resting his chin on top of my head. "That sounds right."
I let myself sink into his warmth for a moment before stepping back.
"Okay. Here's what we're going to do. I'll call every heating company within two hours and throw money at whoever can get here fastest. You focus on setting up portable heaters as backup so guests at least don't freeze tonight. We'll make it work."
"You're terrifyingly competent when you want to be."
"I know. It's part of my charm."
By three o'clock, I've bribed a heating company from Helena to send someone immediately with the promise of double their usual rate. The heater is fixed by five, the guests arrive to a perfectly warm lodge, and Luke looks at me like I just saved Christmas.
"You're amazing," he says that night in his cabin, pulling me into his lap while we eat takeout on the couch. "You know that?"
"I do know that, yes." I steal a piece of his orange chicken. "But feel free to keep saying it."
He kisses my temple, his free hand rubbing absent circles against my hip. "Thank you. For everything you did today."
"That's what partners do, right?" The word slips out before I can think better of it, and I freeze.
But Luke just tightens his hold on me. "Yeah. That's what partners do."
I convince him to actually celebrate Thanksgiving instead of just working through it.
"The ranch doesn't stop for holidays," he protests when I propose taking the day off.
"The ranch has a full staff who can handle one day without you hovering." I poke him in the chest. "You're allowed to have a life, Luke Blackwood."
"Am I?"
"Yes. And I'm not taking no for an answer."
We end up at the main ranch house with the entire extended family—Caleb and Harper, Dean—who's home between rodeo events—Wyatt and Sadie.
Harper cooks a feast that could feed thirty people, and we crowd around that massive dining table trading stories and passing dishes until I'm so full I can barely move.
Caleb watches Luke and me throughout the meal with something that might be approval in his usually stern expression. At one point he catches my eye and gives me a single nod that feels like acceptance.
Later, while we're cleaning up, Harper pulls me aside.
"You're good for him," she says quietly, loading plates into the dishwasher. "I haven't seen Luke this relaxed in... maybe ever."
"He's good for me too." The admission comes easier than I expect. "I didn't realize how much I needed steady until I met him."
"Steady is Luke's superpower." She smiles, bumping my shoulder with hers. "Among other things, I'm sure."
"Harper!"
"What? I'm just saying—the man clearly adores you. It's written all over his face every time he looks at you."
I glance through the doorway where Luke is arguing with Dean about something rodeo-related, and my chest does that dangerous flutter it's been doing more and more lately.
He catches me looking and smiles. Just a small quirk of his lips, but it's for me. Only me.
"Yeah," I tell Harper softly. "I'm pretty gone for him."
"Good. You deserve to be happy, Mila."
December arrives with a vengeance, bringing storms that dump feet of snow and temperatures that make my bones hurt.
Luke finds me shivering on his porch one evening, wrapped in three blankets and clutching coffee like my life depends on it.
"What are you doing out here?" He's bundled in his heavy work coat, cheeks flushed from the cold. "It's below freezing."
"Watching the snow." I wave vaguely at the white landscape. "It's pretty."
"You're going to get hypothermia."
"I'm fine. I have blankets."
"You're ridiculous." But he sits down next to me anyway, pulling me and my blanket cocoon against his side. "Better?"
"Much."
We sit in comfortable silence, watching fat snowflakes drift down through the porch light. His property looks like something from a winter postcard—trees heavy with snow, the creek frozen at its edges, everything muffled and quiet.
"I never really took time to appreciate this," I say eventually. "Real winters, I mean. The snow. They clear it fast in the city."
"You're not missing much. Mostly it's just cold and wet and annoying."
"Spoken like someone who's lived here his whole life." I poke him through the blankets. "It's magical and you're too jaded to appreciate it."
"Magical until you're shoveling two feet of it off the driveway at five in the morning."
"Even then. Especially then."
He shakes his head but he's smiling. "You're insane."
"You like that about me."
"I really do."
I start spending more nights at his cabin than my apartment in town. It happens gradually—staying over after working late, then staying because we're in the middle of a movie, then staying just because leaving feels wrong.
My clothes migrate into his dresser. My toiletries take up space in his bathroom. My ridiculous collection of decorative pillows appears on his couch because "this place needs color, Luke, everything is brown."
He never complains. Just makes room for my chaos in his ordered life like he's been waiting for someone to shake things up.
One morning I wake up wrapped around him like a vine, winter sunlight turning his bedroom soft and golden. He's already awake, one hand stroking lazy patterns down my spine.
"What time is it?" My voice comes out scratchy with sleep.
"Early. Don't have to be up yet."
I burrow closer, not ready to face the cold air outside these blankets. "Good."
His hand continues its path up and down my back, lulling me into that perfect space between sleep and waking. This is my favorite time—when the world is quiet and it's just us and nothing else matters.
"Mila?"
"Mm?"
"I'm really glad you're here."
Something in his voice makes me lift my head to look at him. His expression is open in a way that still catches me off guard sometimes—vulnerable and honest without any of the walls he used to hide behind.
"Me too," I whisper, and mean it with every cell in my body.
Later, after coffee and the slow morning sex that's become our routine, I drag him outside.
"Absolutely not." Luke stares at the snow-covered yard like I just suggested we wrestle bears. "It's freezing."
"It's perfect snowman weather." I'm already pulling on my boots. "Come on, cowboy. Live a little."
"I live plenty."
"You work plenty. That's different."
"Mila—"
"Luke." I give him my best pleading expression. "Please? For me?"
He sighs, but he's reaching for his coat. "You're impossible."
"You love it."
We spend the next hour building the most lopsided snowman in Montana history. Luke keeps trying to make it structurally sound while I insist on giving it personality, which results in a three-foot tall disaster with stick arms at weird angles and rocks for a face that looks vaguely demented.
"It's perfect," I declare, stepping back to admire our work.
"It looks like it's having a stroke."
"It has character." I scoop up a handful of snow. "You're just jealous because you can't appreciate artistic vision."
"I can appreciate that you're about to throw that snowball."