The Lumberjack's Obsession (Timbercrest Lumberjacks #1)

1. Sloane

Sloane

The lawyer described it as a cabin with potential.

In my experience, that phrase covers everything from a charming fixer-upper to a structure that has made peace with returning to the earth.

I spent the four-hour drive from Billings preparing for either, and also mentally drafting the email to my business partner explaining why I was listing it as-is and coming home immediately.

I pull up, cut the engine, and sit for a second looking at it through the windshield.

Rough. The porch has a soft board on the left side.

I can see the sag from here. The roof has a patch over the east corner that somebody did themselves and did okay, not great.

The paint is the particular shade of gray that happens when brown gives up entirely.

My business partner would say: walk away.

My business partner is sensible and has normal feelings about real estate.

But the bones… I see the potential.

I get out of the car. The scent of pine resin hits me first, thick and warm, almost a taste.

Somewhere up the mountain, a chainsaw is going, steady and distant.

It's eleven in the morning, and the air already has weight to it, the kind of July heat that feels purposeful, like the mountain is leaning in.

Original cedar siding under that paint, I'd bet my truck on it.

Stone foundation. Deep porch overhang, big front windows — somebody built this with care.

I walk to the porch and put my hand on one of the posts.

The wood is warm and solid and the grain runs true.

I am already, against all professional instincts, falling a little bit in love with this wreck of a cabin, which is exactly the problem my business partner keeps trying to explain to me.

I take photos for the estate file and do the familiar math in my head and I'm starting to feel the particular pull that has derailed more than one of my tidy professional plans when I hear boots on the ground behind me.

I turn around.

Oh my…

He's standing at the property line, and I forget, briefly, what I was doing. And also what year it is. And my own name, a little.

Tall. Broad through the chest and shoulders in a way that has everything to do with years of lifting and cutting and hauling heavy wood.

Canvas work pants sitting low on his hips.

A gray t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, and his arms — I clock his forearms first, tanned and thick and crossed over his chest, and I have to do a small, private thing where I remind myself I am a professional adult with a job to do.

It doesn't fully take.

His jaw has a few days of dark blond on it. His eyes are light — gray or green, I can't tell from here. His mouth is set in a straight, neutral line, and he's watching me the way you'd watch weather coming in. Like whatever he concludes, he's already decided what to do about it.

I realize I've been standing here for a beat too long. I put my phone in my pocket. "Hi," I say. Very smooth. Excellent.

"Well pump needs a new pressure switch." He says.

His voice is low and unhurried. I feel it low in my stomach, which is new information about myself that I didn't ask for.

"Soft spot on the roof over the east dormer.

And your access road washes out in the first hard rain if the culvert's not cleared. "

I drag my attention to what he's actually saying and away from his mouth, which is where it had drifted somewhere around pressure switch. "Good morning to you too."

Nothing moves in his face. "Holt Greer. Next door.

" He tilts his head two degrees toward the cabin set back in the trees to the north.

I hadn't noticed it. It’s bigger than mine, darker, with a covered woodpile running the length of one wall and a truck parked in the dirt that looks like it was built to outlast civilization.

"Sloane Rafferty." I wait. He doesn't offer a hand, so I don't either. "You knew my great-uncle?"

"Knew him enough to wave at."

"Why didn't you reach out to someone? About the pump?"

"Not my property." No heat in it. Just the rule, self-evident, end of discussion.

"But the well affects your property too, presumably."

"My well's separate." He looks at me with those green eyes and the expression on his face says he finds my line of questioning mildly interesting. "Wasn't my business."

I want to push back on the logic, but I genuinely can't find the flaw in it, and I'm also having some difficulty thinking clearly because of this sexy lumberjack of a man standing in front of me.

"Thank you," I manage. "For the information."

He nods once, then turns and walks back toward his cabin. No backward glance. The set of his shoulders, the easy width of him moving through the trees — I watch longer than I mean to. The back of him is just as perfect as the front, and the heat isn't helping.

I turn back to the cabin before I do something embarrassing, like keep watching.

I drove from the city to spend two days documenting a dead man's cabin before I list it and go home. That is the plan. It is a good, clean, sensible plan, and it has no room in it for large, quiet men with green eyes and the whole forearm situation.

I pull out my phone. Take a photo of the porch sag. The dormer. The window boxes. Then I stand there in the pine-thick heat, staring at the tree line where he disappeared.