CHAPTER TWO
Bridger
She didn’t get out of the truck right away.
I killed the engine and waited, watching her stare at my house through the windshield. Her mouth was slightly open, eyes wide, taking in the glass and steel and wood.
I’d seen that look before. People expected rustic. Expected logs and a tin roof.
They didn’t expect this.
I climbed out, grabbed her bag from the bed, and headed for the front door. Behind me, I heard her door open. Heard her feet hit the gravel.
Good. For a second, I’d thought she might bolt.
Not that she had anywhere to run.
I punched the code into the keypad and pushed the door open, stepping inside. The house was exactly as I’d left it this morning. Clean. Quiet. Empty.
Except now it wasn’t empty.
Now there was a woman walking through my front door.
Mine.
The thought came out of nowhere, slamming into me.
I shoved it down. That was insane. I didn’t even know her.
But I’d known the second I saw her standing in that town square. The way her shorts hugged her hips. The curve of her waist. Those gorgeous fucking thighs I wanted wrapped around me. The way her t-shirt pulled across her chest when she breathed.
Every curve on her was designed to test a man’s self-control.
Mine was already shot.
What you find, you keep.
My grandfather’s voice. He’d said it about land. About tools. About things that mattered.
I’d never applied it to a woman. Maybe it was time to start.
“This is...” She turned in a slow circle. “I don’t even have words.” Her head was tilted back, her full lips parted. She looked completely overwhelmed by the size of the place, her hands smoothing down the sides of her denim shorts. It hit me then—she thought she was out of place here.
She wasn’t.
I set her bag down by the stairs. “Guest room’s upstairs. Second door on the right. Bathroom’s attached.”
She wasn’t listening. She was staring at the windows, at the valley stretching out below, at the mountains in the distance going purple in the fading light.
“You built this yourself?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I designed it and lent a hand when needed.” I didn’t tell her I’d done all the finish work because I’d wanted to. I could have paid a team and gotten it done in a fraction of the time.
“That’s...” She finally looked at me. “That’s incredible.”
I’d built this place for me, because I wanted to, because I could.
But hearing her say it felt good anyway.
She looked good in my house, standing in my entryway. I could see her here in a year. In five. Her things mixed with mine. Her shoes by the door. Her coffee mug next to mine in the cabinet.
I was losing my fucking mind.
“Kitchen’s there,” I said, gesturing. “Help yourself to anything. Coffee, food, whatever.”
Her eyes tracked across the open-concept space, landing on the espresso machine on the counter.
She froze.
“Is that a La Marzocco?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh my God.” She actually took a step toward it. “I didn’t think people actually owned those. I thought they only existed in fancy cafes.”
“You want coffee?”
“Now?”
“Why not?”
“I just...” She glanced at me, then back at the machine. “Are you sure?”
I was already moving into the kitchen, flipping switches. The machine hummed to life. “You drink it strong?”
“Is there any other way?”
I almost smiled. Almost.
I ground the beans, tamped the espresso, pulled the shot. She watched me the whole time, leaning against the counter, and I was aware of her in a way I hadn’t been aware of a woman in years. If ever.
The way she tilted her head when she was curious. The way her fingers drummed against the countertop. The curve of her hip where she leaned against it. Those damn breasts pushing against her top. She had no fucking idea what she was doing to me by simply being herself.
I handed her the small cup.
She took a sip, and her eyes closed. A soft sound escaped her throat. Pleasure. Satisfaction. I wanted to hear it again.
I wanted to hear her make that sound as I slide inside her.
I wanted to learn every sound she could make and take notes of what I did to cause them.
My gaze dropped to the front of her shirt, watching the heavy, delicious weight of her breasts move slightly as she sighed.
She wasn’t some fragile, runway-thin city girl who survived on celery juice.
She was a real, lush woman with curves that begged to be handled roughly.
I wanted my hands full of her. I wanted to sink my teeth into the soft flesh of her hip and leave a mark.
“That’s perfect,” she said, opening her eyes. “Actually perfect.”
I turned away, busying myself with cleaning the machine. I needed to do something with my hands before they did something stupid. Like reach for her.
“I’ll show you around,” I said.
I gave her the tour. Living room. Dining area. Office. Upstairs, I pushed open the guest room door. King bed. Big windows. Attached bathroom with a soaking tub.
I’d designed this room for guests I’d never had.
And now she was here.
“This is beautiful,” she said softly. “Thank you. Really. I know having a stranger in your house is probably the last thing you wanted.”
Stranger.
The word grated. “You’re not a stranger.”
She looked at me, surprised. “We just met.”
“I know.” I didn’t explain myself. She wouldn’t believe me if I told her. “Get settled. I’ll be downstairs.”
I turned to go.
“Bridger?”
I stopped in the doorway but didn’t turn around. Didn’t trust myself to look at her again.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “For helping me. For... this.”
My hands curled into fists at my sides.
“You’re safe here,” I said.
I headed downstairs, grabbed a beer from the fridge, and walked out onto the back deck. The sun was setting and the valley stretched out below.
This was what I’d wanted when I’d moved to Lone Mountain. Peace. Solitude. No people. No complications.
And now there was a woman upstairs in my guest room who talked too much and looked at me like she couldn’t figure me out and made me think words like mine when I’d known her for all of two hours.
I took a long pull from the beer.
This was temporary. A week, maybe less if Lou got the parts early. I’d go about my business as if she wasn’t her. She’d stay here, sleep in the guest room, keep to herself. And then she’d leave.
Back to her road trip. Back to figuring out her life. Back to wherever she was going when her car decided to die in my town.
That was fine. That was the plan.
Except the thought of her leaving made something dark and possessive take hold.
I heard footsteps behind me. Light. Hesitant.
“Is it okay if I...?” Roxie’s voice.
“Yeah.”
She came to stand beside me at the railing, keeping a careful distance between us. Smart.
Because if she’d stood any closer, I’d have had my hands on her hips, her ass, the soft swell of her stomach. Would have pulled her in front of me and pressed her against the railing and let her feel exactly what she was doing to me.
We stood there in silence, watching the sunset. She didn’t fill the quiet with chatter this time. Just stood there, breathing, existing in my space like she belonged there.
“This view,” she finally said. “I can’t imagine ever getting used to it.”
“You don’t.”
She glanced at me. “How long have you lived here, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“About five years.”
“And before that?”
“I lived in the city. I got tired of smelling the exhaust fumes every time I walked out my door. The rat race, run by men who take that seriously.”
“What kind of rat race?”
“Architecture. Commercial design. Big firm, bigger clients. I was good at it.” A pause. “Good enough that I could afford to stop. I figured out pretty fast that what I’d been building there wasn’t anything I wanted to come home to.”
“So you built this?”
“I built this.”
She leaned her arms on the railing. I tried not to look, but I failed.
The posture flared her hips out behind her, stretching the denim of her shorts tight over her round, heavy ass.
It was a brutal temptation. My palms practically ached to slide under the hem of those shorts, to feel the heat of her bare thighs and pull her flush against my groin so she could feel exactly how hard she’d made me.
“So what are you searching for, Roxie?”
She smiled up at me. “Probably the same thing you were. I just decided to go about it differently. Plus, I have no chainsaw skills.” She cast a playful, sideways glance at me, her eyes dancing.
“Those are important if you plan to live in the wild.”
She snorted. “I would not call this living in the wild, Bridger.”
“Just wait until a bear meanders onto the deck and tell me that.”
“Meanders?” One of her dark eyebrows rose.
“We have very calm bears here on Lone Mountain.”
“Good to know.”
“I guess I better feed you.”
“That would be greatly appreciated.” Again, with that megawatt smile.
I waited a moment before following her back inside.
She was just a guest. A stranger who needed a place to stay.
Nothing more.
Even if every instinct in my body was screaming the opposite.
Even if I already knew, deep in my bones, that letting her leave was going to be the hardest thing I’d ever done.
What you find, you keep.