Scorched Heart (Heart of the Mountain #9)

A steamy small-town mountain man romance featuring a precision-handed builder hero who missed his first dart throw in twelve years, a content-driven influencer who came to Wildwood Valley for four days to save her career, and the campfire conversation that made her put the phone down for good.

She came for the content. She stayed for him.

I walked into the diner on a Tuesday night and missed my next throw. I never missed that throw.

I was a general contractor in Wildwood Valley.

Twelve years of building cabins, framing additions, restoring the things people wanted to keep.

I worked with my hands. I threw darts on league night at The Soda Jerk.

I didn’t rush anything and I didn’t miss throws and I hadn’t looked twice at anyone in longer than I wanted to admit.

Then she walked in with her phone up and her content running and something in her eyes that didn’t match the performance, and the dart went wide.

She was an outdoor influencer. Four days in Wildwood Valley to shoot content and save a stalling career. Four days—that’s what she gave me.

I drove to her campsite that first night because I couldn’t not.

She was sitting by the fire with her phone face-down on the log and a paperback in her lap, and she looked up at me coming through the trees and said, "I figured."

Like she’d been expecting me. Like some part of her had already decided I wasn’t an interruption.

She told me her numbers were stalling. She told me she’d come up here to remember why she started.

She told me things she hadn’t told her audience, and I sat across the fire and listened and didn’t try to fix any of it.

I kissed her before I left. I drove home knowing Tuesday was coming and deciding it didn’t change anything.

She had a brand review. She had content to edit. She had a life in Charlotte that ran on algorithms and engagement metrics and quarterly renewals, and I had a dart tournament I’d been training for all summer and a campsite I kept finding reasons to drive back to.

She came to Wildwood Valley to go viral. What changed her life wasn’t the content. It was the Tuesday night she looked up from a campfire and found a man who already knew the things she hadn’t posted yet—and stayed anyway.

I told her she was mine before she left. I meant it the way I mean everything—quietly, completely, without any particular interest in being argued with. The dart tournament could wait. She couldn’t.

I walked off the line for her. I’d do it twice.

Scorched Heart is part of the Heart of the Mountains series, featuring books from all your favorite steamy instalove authors.