Page 1 of Working for the Mountain Man

Chapter 1

Elsie

Ireach for the coffee cup and take a sip, my eyes glued to the road ahead of me. The moment the coffee touches my lips, I wince. God, it’s cold. I glance down at the clock and see that it’s been almost an hour since I purchased it.

I sigh deeply, I really need the coffee, but my mind is working overtime as I choose to drive six hours to a rented cabin in a mountain town I have never heard of. I’m hoping it will help me solve my current situation. I haven’t run. away, I won’t give that ass the satisfaction of doing that. No, I’m on a writing retreat.

A professional, intentional, carefully planned writing retreat that I absolutely did not book in a panic at two in the morning while sitting on my bathroom floor eating cereal.

The mountains ahead of me are grey and enormous, rising out of the valley. The road narrows as I get closer to Forge Creek. The sky is a haze of colors, meaning it could snow at any moment. Snow sits in dirty ridges along both shoulders, the fields between the pines are full of frozen mud and dead grass, and there is not a single warm or decorative thing in sight.

My phone buzzes in the passenger seat, I don’t look at it, I already know who it is. I flip the phone face down and turn up the radio instead.

The thing about being publicly broken up with is that it stays public. That’s the part no one warns you about. It is not just the breakup, it’s the screenshots, the comments, and the very cheerful strangers on the internet who want you to know exactly how embarrassing your reaction was, in detail, with timestamps. It is your ex going on a podcast three days later and talking about how he needed someone less emotional, less romantic, just less. There was nothing I could do knowing that fourteen thousand people have heard the wordlessapplied to you by someone who used to say he loved you.

It is realizing that you’ve written a full chapter of your novel using dialogue that sounded exactly like him and now you want to delete it. But you also can’t bear to because it’s yet another dagger to the heart knowing that you’ve lost the man you thought you loved, also an entire chapter, especially when you have a deadline in six weeks.

I have a romance novel that is forty thousand words of wrong turns and a hero who currently has the personality of a cardboard tube. I’m a romance author who can no longer remember why anyone would choose to fall in love voluntarily.

This is fine. It’ll all work out. I have no other option but for it to be fine.

The road gets narrower after I pass the edge of Forge Creek. I barely see the town, just a glimpse of old brick storefronts, and a lit diner window. Then the GPS has me turning north and the town falls away behind me. I’m now on a mountain road that looks like it hasn’t been repaved in the past two decades.

The rental directions said the cabin was three miles out of town. Scenic and private, it sounds like the perfect spot for a writer seeking inspiration.

What the ad failed to mention was the orange cones.

I slow down when I see them and then I spot the work truck, the machinery, some kind of big articulated thing that is taking up most of the road, and the men in high-vis gear moving around it.

There is a washed-out section on the left side of the road. I can see where the shoulder has collapsed and taken the edge of the tarmac with it, the gravel and mud spilling down the slope below like the road just gave up. A culvert, maybe? The drainage is wrecked, there is water pooling in the ruts.

I pull up behind the cones and stop, nobody comes over. So I wait, but still nobody comes over. I get out of the car and immediately regret it as the cold hits me. I’m in leggings, an oversized sweater and boots that aren’t warm at all. Damn, I really should have done some research on what to wear while I’m here before I left. Then again, I was in a hurry, and it didn’t cross my mind what clothes would be practical.

"Hello?" I call out, over the engine noise.

A couple of the crew members look up, one of them says something to another, but nobody moves in my direction.

Then out of the corner of my eyes, I spot a guy moving toward me. He comes from the far side of the machinery, and the first thing I notice is the size of him. He’s enormous, tall and broad, hard hat, a heavy jacket with the collar turned up, faded jeans, and boots thick with mud. He has a radio clipped to his jacket, and a tablet in one hand. He’s got dark stubble on his jaw, with some grey in it, and he has brown eyes that go straight to me and do not leave my face.

No smile, nowhere even close. Of course he’s attractive. Because apparently rock bottom comes from being cosmically punished for something I have not done yet.

"Road's closed," he says, his voice low and even.

“I can see that," I say. "I have a rental cabin about a mile up this road. I’ve been driving since six this morning and I need to get there."

He looks at me for a moment, then past me at my car. "Culvert washed out in the storm," he says. "The left shoulder is unstable. We need another hour before I can let anyone through safely."

"An hour?" I ask, horrified that I’ll have to wait that long.

He continues to stare at me, his gaze unflinching. "Give or take."

I gape at him. "It's freezing."

"It is," he agrees.

I wrap my arms around myself and resist the urge to say something that will not help. "Is there any way to speed it up?"

"No."