Chapter 3
Chapter Three
CARMEN
Aweek in, and Owen McCall has left soup on my porch three times.
The first was a mason jar of chicken tortilla, still warm, sitting on the railing when I came back from scrubbing cabin two's bathroom. No note. No knock. Just soup, a spoon wrapped in a paper towel, and the faint impression of his boot print on the step where he'd stood.
The second was minestrone. Thick, loaded with vegetables, the kind of soup that takes hours. That time he left a biscuit wrapped in foil beside it. From Mabel's, according to the napkin tucked underneath with the Ridgeline Diner logo.
The third, this morning, was pozole.
Pozole. Like he looked up what a woman named Carmen Reyes might want to eat on a cold mountain morning and went to the trouble of making it from scratch.
The hominy was tender. The broth was rich with chiles.
My abuela would've given it a seven out of ten, which from her was basically a standing ovation.
My hands didn't shake when I ate it.
That's the thing that scares me. The quiet up here is doing something.
My body is remembering how to be still. For the first few days, every sound jolted me awake.
A branch cracking outside the cabin. Wind against the roof.
An owl at two in the morning. My nervous system was still running ER protocol, scanning for emergencies that weren't coming.
But the mornings are so still. Coffee on the porch wrapped in a blanket, watching mist burn off the creek. No pager. No overhead pages. No family members screaming in the hallway.
By day four, something loosened in my chest. By day six, I slept past sunrise for the first time in months.
Now I'm elbow-deep in the plumbing under cabin four's bathroom sink, and the wrench keeps slipping because whoever installed this faucet used the wrong size fitting.
"You're gonna strip the threads."
Owen's boots appear in my peripheral vision. Work boots, worn at the toe, laces double-knotted. Standing in the bathroom doorway because the man cannot seem to walk past a cabin I'm working in without stopping to check.
"I'm not gonna strip the threads." Cranking the wrench harder, I brace my knee against the cabinet. "The fitting's wrong."
"That's what I said when my dad installed it in 1997."
"Then why hasn't anyone fixed it?"
"Because it works if you don't tighten it past a quarter turn."
Sliding out from under the sink, I look up at him.
He's backlit by the late morning sun pouring through the window, turning his hair gold at the edges.
Flannel today, open over a gray thermal that stretches across his chest. Arms folded.
That steady, patient expression he wears when he's trying not to be amused by something.
"You could've mentioned that before I spent twenty minutes under here."
"Could've." One shoulder lifts. "But you were already under there when I walked up, and you looked like you were having a moment."
"A moment."
"With the pipe. Seemed personal."
A laugh breaks out of me. Genuine. Ugly-sounding because my laugh has always been too loud for my face, but real. His eyes warm when he hears it.
"Here." He steps into the bathroom, extends a hand. The space is small. Cabin four's bathroom barely fits one person, let alone a man built on Owen's scale. When his fingers close around mine, callused and warm, the contact travels all the way up my arm.
He pulls me to my feet. Easy. No effort. One smooth motion that brings me chest to chest with him in a bathroom that has approximately three square feet of floor space.
Pine. He smells like pine, always, like he's been cutting wood or walking through trees or both. This close, I can see the stubble along his jaw, the small scar near his left eyebrow, the way his pupils dilate when he looks down at me.
And he is looking down at me. My hand still in his. His other hand finding my hip to steady me, or at least that's what he'd say if anyone asked. His palm is huge against my waist. Warm through my shirt.
"Carmen."
"Owen."
His thumb moves. Just barely. A half-inch sweep against my hip bone that sends heat pooling low in my belly. My breath catches. His eyes drop to my mouth.
We're close enough that breathing is a shared activity. Close enough that if either of us leaned forward even slightly, it would be over. Whatever pretense we've been maintaining about this being a professional arrangement, a clean deal, no strings, would dissolve the second his lips touched mine.
The wrench clatters out of my other hand. Hits the tile floor.
We both flinch. Owen steps back so fast his shoulder hits the doorframe.
"I should go check the..." He gestures vaguely behind him. "Firewood. For cabin two."
"Right. The firewood."
"Yep."
He's gone before my heart rate settles. Through the cabin door, down the porch steps, boot heels on gravel fading toward the wood pile.
My knees are shaking again. Not from exhaustion this time.
Pressing both palms flat against the bathroom counter, I stare at my reflection in the mirror. Flushed cheeks. Parted lips. Eyes wide. My hair's falling out of its bun again, dark strands stuck to my neck with sweat from the plumbing work.
"Get it together, Reyes."
The face in the mirror doesn't look like a woman who's getting it together. She looks like a woman who's been fed soup by a mountain man for seven days straight and is rapidly losing her grip on the boundaries she set.
The rest of the afternoon, we orbit each other.
Careful distance. He chops wood on the far side of the property while I rehang a curtain rod in cabin three.
We eat lunch at his kitchen table with a solid two feet of space between us, discussing which cabin needs new weatherstripping.
Our knees don't touch. Our hands don't brush. Nobody looks at anyone's mouth.
It's excruciating.
After dinner, I'm fixing the latch on the supply shed behind the main house.
The sun's dropping behind the ridge, turning everything amber and pink.
Mountain air at this hour is cold enough to bite.
My flannel isn't cutting it, but going back to my cabin for a jacket means walking past Owen's kitchen window, and right now proximity to Owen is a bad idea.
"You're cold."
His voice comes from behind me. Closer than expected. When I turn, he's holding out a jacket. Lined canvas, dark green, obviously his because it smells like him when he drapes it over my shoulders without waiting for permission.
The warmth envelops me. So does the scent. Pine and wood smoke and something underneath that's just Owen. My body responds before my brain can intervene, leaning into the collar, breathing him in.
"The latch is stripped," I say because I need to say something. "Needs a new screw."
"I've got screws in the workshop."
"I'll fix it tomorrow."
"Carmen."
There's my name again. Low. Deliberate. He's standing close enough that I can feel heat radiating off his body even through the jacket. The sun is almost gone. Everything is going blue and gold at the edges.
"We should talk about the bathroom."
"Nothing happened in the bathroom."
"Something almost happened in the bathroom."
Turning to face him fully, I have to tip my chin up to meet his eyes. He's taller than me by a good eight inches. Broad enough that he blocks the wind. His hands are at his sides, fingers curled, jaw tight.
"This can't happen," I tell him. Even as the words leave my mouth, my body is leaning toward his warmth. "I'm here to work. You're my employer. I've been in Bear Creek Valley for a week."
"Seven days."
"That's what I said."
"Seven days of you fixing things I didn't ask you to fix." His voice drops. Rough. "Seven days of your laugh coming through the cabin walls. Seven days of you sitting on that porch every morning with your coffee like this mountain belongs to you."
My heart is beating in my throat.
"Owen."
"I know." His hand comes up. Hovers near my jaw. Doesn't touch. "I know this can't happen."
But his eyes are on my mouth. My chin tips up, just barely, and his thumb grazes my bottom lip. Feather light. Testing.
Every nerve in my body fires at once.
"One month," I whisper. "We agreed."
"We did."
His hand slides into my hair. Tilts my head back. Holds me there, his palm warm against the nape of my neck, his thumb stroking behind my ear. The gentleness of it wrecks me. Twelve years of holding other people together, and this man is handling me like I'm the one who needs care.
"Tell me to stop." His mouth is an inch from mine. His breath warm on my lips.
"No."
He kisses me.
Slow. Thorough. His lips are warm and firm, and he kisses with the same unhurried steadiness he does everything else.
No rush. No fumbling. Just his mouth learning mine while his hand cradles the back of my head.
My fingers curl into the front of his thermal, pulling him closer, and the sound he makes when our bodies press together is quiet and deep and devastating.
The jacket slips off one shoulder. Neither of us fixes it.
He pulls back just far enough to rest his forehead against mine. Both of us breathing hard. His hand still in my hair.
"That wasn't nothing."
"No." My voice is wrecked. "That wasn't nothing."
The sun disappears behind the ridge. The first stars come out over Bear Creek Valley.
We stand there in the cold, foreheads touching, his heartbeat against my palms, and I can already feel the complication building in my chest. This wasn't the plan. Rest, recover, leave. Clean and simple.
Owen McCall is the opposite of simple.
His thumb traces one more line behind my ear. Then he steps back, picks up the jacket from where it's pooled at my elbow, settles it back on my shoulders.
"Goodnight, Carmen."
He walks inside without looking back. The kitchen light clicks on. His silhouette moves past the window.
On my porch, twenty minutes later, there's a mason jar of something warm. When I unscrew the lid, steam curls up into the dark.
Cider. Warm, spiced, smelling like apples and cinnamon.
My phone buzzes.
Owen:
From Sutton Orchards. Wade dropped off a batch this morning.
Figured you could use something warm.
Me:
Thank you.
Owen:
Lock your door tonight. Temperature's dropping.
Leaning against the porch rail, I drink the cider and stare at the kitchen light in the main house until it goes out. My lips are still buzzing. His jacket is still on my shoulders.
One month. No complications.
Too late.