The Mountain Man Guardian (Summit Falls Protectors #7)

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

DOMINIC

The problem with ten years in the Secret Service is that you never stop working.

I'm sitting on my uncle's porch in Summit Falls, Colorado, population nobody cares, drinking coffee that's too weak and watching a woman I've never seen before park a rental sedan outside the Summit Inn.

She's wearing a brown wig that doesn't match her skin tone, oversized sunglasses on a cloudy day, and the kind of nervous energy that makes my teeth ache.

I'm supposed to be on vacation.

My uncle Michael keeps telling me to relax.

Keeps pushing food across his kitchen table and asking when I last slept eight hours.

The answer is never, but he doesn't need to know that.

He's a doctor. He worries. That's what family does when you show up twenty pounds lighter than the last time they saw you and can't sit with your back to a door.

The woman across the street fumbles with her bag. Drops her keys. Picks them up, scans the parking lot, drops them again.

I set my coffee down.

She's not a tourist. Tourists don't check behind their vehicle before opening the trunk. They don't position themselves between the car and the building so they can't be approached from behind. They don't flinch when a screen door slams two buildings away.

I know what fear looks like in a body. The rigid spine. The too-quick breathing. The way the jaw locks to keep the mouth from trembling.

This woman is afraid of something specific.

June Whitaker opens the inn's front door and greets her with the kind of warmth that makes newcomers cry or run. The woman does neither. She squares her shoulders, adjusts the wig that's already slipping at her left temple, and follows June inside.

I pick up my coffee. Drink it. Set it back down.

Not my business.

I came to Summit Falls for two weeks of nothing.

No clients. No threat assessments. No late night phone calls from politicians who think their importance translates to actual danger.

I've been running private security for three years since leaving the Service, and I'm tired in a way that sleep doesn't fix.

Uncle Michael offered me the guest room and promised the most boring town in America.

He wasn't wrong. Summit Falls moves at the speed of seasons.

Betty Russo at the Evergreen Diner poured my coffee this morning without asking what I wanted, and when I thanked her, she looked at me like I'd spoken a foreign language.

The general store smells like pine and dust. A woman with paint on her shirt unlocked a gallery door on Main Street at nine sharp and waved at my uncle like they'd been doing this for decades.

It's quiet. Steady. The kind of place where nothing goes wrong because nothing happens.

Except a woman just checked into the Summit Inn wearing a disguise, and every instinct I've spent eighteen years honing is telling me she's running from more than a bad breakup.

I make it forty minutes before I'm walking across the street.

The diner is the excuse. Betty's lunch special is pot roast, and my uncle won't be off shift until five. I don't need to walk past the inn to get there, but I do anyway, because the sedan is still parked at the same angle and the trunk is still open.

I close it on my way by. Reflex.

Inside the Evergreen, I take the stool at the counter with the clearest sightline to the inn's front door. Betty slides a menu I don't need across the counter and tells me the pot roast is better than it sounds.

"I'll take it."

"Comes with mashed potatoes and green beans."

"Fine."

"You want pie after? Apple. Still warm."

"Sure."

She studies me for a beat. I'm used to people studying me. Six three, two twenty, shaved head, face that doesn't invite conversation. I know what I look like. I've used it to my advantage for most of my adult life.

"You're Michael's nephew," Betty says. Not a question.

"Yes ma'am."

"He's a good man."

"He is."

"You look like you could use more than two weeks."

I almost smile. Almost. "That obvious?"

"Honey, you've been scanning this diner like you're looking for the shooter since you sat down. There's no shooter. There's pie."

She pats the counter once and disappears into the kitchen.

The inn door opens.

The woman from the sedan steps out onto Main Street without the wig. Her blonde hair is pulled back, her face bare, and in the flat August light I recognize her immediately.

Harper West.

I've worked enough celebrity details in the last three years to know the face.

Pop star. Grammy winner. The kind of famous where her name is a brand and her smile is worth more than most people's retirement funds.

She was all over the news six weeks ago for cancelling the back half of a tour with no explanation.

She's standing on the sidewalk in front of the Summit Inn, looking both directions like she's crossing a highway instead of a street that sees maybe ten cars an hour. She's traded the oversized sunglasses for regular ones and the nervous energy for something that looks more like exhaustion.

She spots the Evergreen and starts walking toward it.

I should leave. Whatever brought Harper West to Summit Falls wearing a bad wig and jumping at screen doors is not my problem. I'm between contracts. I'm visiting my uncle. I'm eating pot roast.

She pushes through the diner door and every head turns. Not because they recognize her. Because she's new, and this is Summit Falls, and new people are noticed.

Betty comes out of the kitchen already holding a menu. "Welcome, sweetheart. Sit anywhere."

Harper chooses the booth in the corner. Back to the wall, facing the door, clear view of the window.

Tactical seating.

Someone taught her that, or she learned it the hard way.

She orders coffee and a grilled cheese. Her voice is lower than I expected. Quieter. The kind of voice that's been saving its energy for the things that matter, and a lunch order at a diner in nowhere, Colorado, doesn't make the list.

I eat my pot roast. She eats her grilled cheese. Betty refills both our coffees without commentary, which for Betty probably qualifies as restraint.

Harper's phone buzzes on the table. She looks at the screen, and for a half second her whole body locks. Jaw. Shoulders. Hands. The kind of freeze response that comes from repeated exposure to something threatening.

Then she puts the phone face down and takes a slow breath.

I set my fork down.

She catches me looking. Those blue eyes snap to mine across the diner, and there's nothing soft in them. Nothing starstruck or manufactured or designed for a camera.

Just a woman who wants to know if the man staring at her is a threat.

I hold her gaze. Steady. Open hands on the counter where she can see them.

After three seconds, she looks away. Her shoulders drop half an inch.

I pick up my fork.

Betty brings the apple pie and sets it down with a look that says she saw the whole exchange and has opinions she's choosing not to share.

I eat the pie. It's good.

Harper West leaves the diner seven minutes later without looking at me again.

She walks back to the inn with her phone in her hand and her shoulders climbing toward her ears, and I watch her go because that's what I do.

I watch people. I read their bodies and their patterns and their fears, and I decide whether the threat is real or imagined.

Harper West's fear is real.

I leave a twenty on the counter and walk back to my uncle's porch.

Not my business, I tell myself again.

I almost believe it.