Page 8 of Saved By the Mountain Man Ranger

Her hand comes up to my wrist. Not pulling me away. Holding me there. Her fingers wrap around my wrist, and I feel her pulse through the contact. Fast. Steady.

She rises on her toes. Presses her mouth to mine.

The kiss is soft. Brief. A question asked with her lips instead of her voice. And every defense I've built over fifteen years of silence and solitude and telling myself I don't need anyone goes quiet.

I pull back. Her eyes are open. Watching.

"Bad idea," I say again.

"Terrible idea," she agrees.

Her hand is still on my wrist. My thumb is still on her jaw.

The wind screams outside. Snow buries the windows another inch. Somewhere out there, the mountain is keeping its secrets, doing its math, collecting its debts.

In here, Eliza Hart just kissed me, and I let her.

Worse than that. I want her to do it again.

Chapter Four

ELIZA

Morning. Day three. Neither of us has mentioned the kiss.

Weston is at the stove making eggs. Scrambled, with salt and pepper, in a cast iron pan that's been seasoned so long it's practically a family heirloom. He hasn't looked at me since I came out of the bedroom. Just poured my coffee, set it on the table, and turned back to the stove.

The flannel I'm wearing is his. The socks are his. The sheets I slept in smell like him. My own clothes are drying on a makeshift line he strung near the woodstove sometime before dawn while I pretended to sleep. Every piece of fabric in this cabin has his scent woven through it, and my body has spent the entire night cataloging it.

"Eggs?" he asks without turning.

"Please."

He plates them. Sets mine down. Sits across from me. We eat.

The silence should be uncomfortable. Yesterday it was. Today it's loaded with something else. Something that hums just below the surface of every accidental touch, every time one of us shifts in the small kitchen and our bodies almost connect.

"The storm's peaked," he says, eyes on his plate. "Should start tapering tomorrow. Another day after that before the pass is clear."

"So one more full day."

"One more full day."

My files are on the table. I've reorganized them twice since yesterday. Reading the same pages over without absorbing a word because every time Weston moves through this cabin, my attention follows him like a compass needle.

"Your ex wife," I say, because I've been thinking about the books on his shelf. A woman's handwriting in the margin of one. Pencil, faded. Loopy cursive. "She lived here?"

His jaw tightens. "She lived in town. I stayed here. That was part of the problem."

"She wanted you to come down."

"She wanted me to be someone who wanted to come down." He clears his plate, stands, runs water in the sink. "I couldn't do it. Too cold, she said. Too remote. Too much like the mountain I lived on."

"She was wrong."

He looks at me over his shoulder. Something raw flickers across his face before he shuts it down. "You've known me two days."

"You've taken a call from a dead man's mother every November for fifteen years. I've seen you kneel on a floor to warm a stranger's feet. You fed me without being asked, gave me your bed without negotiating, answered every question I threw at you without making me feel stupid for asking." My voice is steady. Calm. The investigator voice, the one I use in interviews when I need someone to hear me. "Two days is enough."