Page 13 of Saved By the Mountain Man Ranger

Mabel Sutton takes one look at me and sets down a plate of biscuits without being asked.

"Honey," she says. "You look like hell."

The Ridgeline Diner is warm, crowded for a Thursday, buzzing with the post storm energy of a town that's been shut in for four days. The drive down from the cabin took forty minutes on roads still packed with snow. Weston's truck, not mine. He drove me without speaking, jaw locked, hands white on the steering wheel. Dropped me at Mabel's lot where my rental was waiting with a new battery, keys on the front tire in a plastic bag.

He didn't get out of the truck. Didn't look at me when I grabbed my messenger bag from the back seat. Just sat there, engine running, staring straight ahead through the windshield while I stood in the gravel lot trying to figure out how to say goodbye to a man who'd already decided I was gone.

So I didn't say goodbye. Just closed the door. Walked away. Heard the truck pull out before I reached my car.

Now I'm sitting at Mabel's counter with a plate of biscuits, my eyes burning, wearing his flannel because I never gave it back and he never asked.

"That's Weston McCall's shirt," Mabel says, refilling a coffee I didn't order.

"Yes."

"And that's a face I've seen on every woman who's tried to love a McCall man." She leans both elbows on the counter. Seventy two years old, white hair, eyes that miss absolutely nothing. "What'd he do?"

"Pushed me away."

"Course he did. That boy's been pushing people away since his wife told him he was made of ice. Seven years ago, and he's still using it as a reason to sit on that mountain alone."

My throat tightens. The biscuit sits untouched. "He found my notes. I'm a writer. I was working on the Farrell case, and I had observations about him in my notebook. He thinks I was using him for material."

"Were you?"

"No." The word comes out too fast, too hard. "I write about everything. People, places, my own grocery list sometimes. It's how my brain processes. But the things in that notebook were professional impressions I wrote before anything happened between us. Before I knew him."

Mabel studies me. "And after you knew him?"

"After I knew him, I stopped writing about him entirely. Because he stopped being a subject. He became the man who warmed my feet and fed me soup and answered every question I asked about a dead man's mother without flinching." My voice breaks. Just barely. "He became the man I'm in love with."

The words sit on the counter between us. First time I've said them out loud. First time I've let myself think them fully formed. In love. With a man who lives at nine thousand feet, talks in sentences of five words or less, and would rather freeze to death alone than admit he needs someone.

"Well." Mabel straightens up. Wipes her hands on her apron. "That's that, then."

"That's what?"

"That's you knowing what you want. Question is whether you're gonna sit here eating my biscuits feeling sorry for yourself, or go back up that mountain and tell him."

"He asked me to leave, Mabel."

"He told you the road was clear. Big damn difference." She pours more coffee. "Weston McCall doesn't know how to ask someone to stay. He never learned. His mama died when he was twenty, his daddy a year later, and his wife walked out three years after that. Every person he's loved has left. He's not pushing you away because he doesn't want you, honey. He's pushing you away because he's terrified you'll stay long enough for it to really hurt when you go."

The words settle into my chest. Every one of them true.

"Now." Mabel slides a foil wrapped package across the counter. Biscuits. "Take these up the mountain. And take this." She pulls a folded piece of paper from her apron pocket. "Came through on the ranger station fax yesterday. Briggs sent it to me because he knows I handle Weston's mail when he's snowed in."

The paper is a printout. County records. A property survey from 1998, showing an unnamed structure on Forest Service land in the drainage east of Silver Queen Mine. Coordinates. Elevation. A notation in the margin that reads: Structure standing as of 1998 survey. No subsequent inspection recorded.

My hands tremble. "Mabel. This is the cabin. The one Weston said collapsed in 2011."

"I know what it is." She looks at me over her glasses. "Weston told you it was gone because Bill Pratt told him it was gone. But Bill Pratt never verified that himself. He heard it from a seasonal ranger who heard it from a hiker who said the trail was blocked by rockfall. Nobody actually went to look."

"Why are you giving me this?"

"Because you came here for a dead boy, and you found a living man, and I want you to have a reason to stay that even you can't argue with." She pushes the foil package closer. "Biscuits. Go."

The drive back up takes forty minutes. The road is plowed but still slick, and my rental fishtails twice on the switchbacks. His flannel smells like cedar. Like him. The scent fills the car, and every breath is a reminder of waking up in his arms, his mouth on my shoulder, his hand spread possessively across my stomach.