Page 17 of Shared By the Mountain Men Triplets

Her eyes stay on mine. “If you think you’re making decisions about this on your own, I’ll find different guides.”

Something in my chest pulls tight, but it’s not anger. It’s respect, and maybe something worse.

“That’s fair,” I say.

Boone grins at her. “Yes, ma’am.”

Wren gives him a look that could strip paint, and he smiles like he enjoys it.

I don’t smile because I’m too busy noticing how she drew a line in a room with three former Rangers and didn’t even need to raise her voice.

When Wren’s ready to leave, Rhett wants to follow her back to the motel, but she refuses with one look. We walk her out to her truck instead, because none of us like it and none of us has theright to stop her.

After she leaves, I stay out on the porch when my brothers go back inside.

I can still feel her fingers on my arm and her body against my chest. I still hear her voice from the stream crossing. I close my eyes to blot it out, but it only makes it worse.

I’ve been careful with wanting for years. Careful, like I am around a loaded weapon. Not afraid of it. Respectful of what it can destroy.

People think leaving the Army means the danger’s over, but for me, it was the end of the only thing that gave me purpose. One day, I had a role with structure, orders, and a mission. The next day, I had a duffel bag and a discharge. And I had a future that looked like blank terrain in every direction.

I didn’t handle it well, and that’s an understatement.

Despite having two brothers who tried to save me without being obvious about it, I spent six months losing the battle to get out of bed.

I’d been a Ranger, and then I was nothing.

Boone brought me food I usually didn’t eat, and Rhett came into my room every day to make sure I was still breathing. Sunlight came in through the window, but it seemed like it was part of another world.

I’m better now, but not who I used to be, and I’m not sure I can survive letting myself want a woman and then losing her when she leaves.

And Wren Hollis sure as hell isn’t staying. She has an office in the city, a federal job, a lifethat exists beyond hiking through the wilderness with us. She’s here for an assignment, and assignments end. Women like Wren go back to their real lives, and men like me stay.

We built Wilder Outfitters because Rhett needed a plan, Boone needed people, and I needed the mountains to give me something solid to put my hands on and wrap my head around.

Our bodies might fit together, but our lives don’t.

I stare out into the darkness, but nothing makes any more sense.

I can handle wanting her body. It’s the rest of it that scares me. The way she trusts evidence more than opinions, the way she doesn’t flinch from hard truths, the way she keeps pace, the way she looks at me like I’m not a problem to solve or silence to fill.

She’s starting to feel like structure, but the last time I built my life around something outside myself, it disappeared almost overnight.

I collapsed so completely, I still don’t fully trust the ground beneath me, and I’m not sure I can survive wanting Wren and losing her.

Not like that.

The floor creaks in the cabin, then a door thuds, and I let out a long breath.

Even though I can’t see their faces, I know my brothers are inside, wrestling with the same truth.

Discovering the cache changes the job, but Wren changes everything else.

CHAPTER 9

WREN

My supervisor schedules a call for the next morning, and I text the Wilders to let them know I’ll be late. When I pull up to their cabin around nine-thirty, all three of them are waiting outside.