Page 13 of The Lumberjack’s Pumpkin Spice Problem

"Harder."

I give her harder. The bed slams the wall. Her nails rake my back. I pull her hips up, angle deeper, and she screams into the pillow.

"Emmett. Fuck. Right there. Don't stop."

I grip her ass with both hands, lifting her into every thrust. She's tight around my cock, pulsing, close. I can feel her building. I reach between us and circle her clit with my thumb.

She shatters. Her whole body clenches, her back bows off the bed, and she comes so hard she takes me with her. I bury myself to the hilt and come inside her with a groan that comes from somewhere I've been keeping locked for years.

We lie tangled together. Her head on my chest. My hand tracing the line of her spine.

"The festival was perfect," she murmurs.

"You were perfect."

"And you carved me a sign."

"You're going to bring that up forever."

"Absolutely forever." She lifts her head and grins. Dimples. Devastating. "I love you, Emmett."

"I love you too. Now go to sleep. You've got another twelve thousand tourists to manage tomorrow."

She puts her head back on my chest. Bear scratches at the door. I let him in. He jumps on the bed, settles across our feet, and sighs the sigh of a dog whose people have finally figured it out.

EPILOGUE

HARPER

SIX MONTHS LATER

Spring in Crimson Hollow smells like wet earth and possibility.

I'm standing in the south field with a set of blueprints and a man who's pretending not to be emotional about them. The plans are for the permanent farm stand. Stone foundation, timber frame (Emmett insisted on sourcing the wood himself from Ridge Brothers Timber Co.), a wraparound counter for the fall baking station, and a covered area for the U-pick wagon.

Coleman's Pumpkin Patch at Drake Field. Permanent. Not a sign anymore. A building.

"The roof pitch should be steeper," Emmett says, pointing at the blueprints with a pencil he keeps behind his ear. "Snow load in this valley is no joke. I don't want the whole thing collapsing in January because we didn't account for the weather."

"January is off-season. Nobody's here in January."

"The building's here in January. Things you build should survive the seasons you're not watching them."

He said it while sanding the porch railing last week too, after I asked why he was refinishing wood that looked fine to me. "Because fine isn't the same as cared for," he said. And then he looked at me in a way that made it clear we weren't talking about the railing anymore.

That sentence does something to my chest every time he says variations of it. Emmett Drake builds things to last. Furniture, structures, relationships. The man who couldn't say what I meant to him six months ago now says it with lumber and blueprints and a sign he re-oiled last month because the winter rain was getting to the finish.

We broke ground yesterday. Emmett, Bear, two guys from the Ridge Brothers crew, and Sage, who showed up with lunch and opinions about the interior color scheme.

My parents came up from Ontario last month. It was the first time they saw the pumpkin patch. My mom walked the rows and the displays and the corn maze path, and then she stood in front of the sign and read it three times. She didn't say what she was thinking. She didn't have to. Her face said what five years of phone calls and careful encouragement never could: that her daughter built something real.

Emmett built my parents a cutting board from the same walnut he used for the sign. My dad keeps it on display in his kitchen instead of using it. He tells visitors it was made by his daughter's partner, the lumberjack, and the way he says lumberjack makes it sound like a title of respect rather than a job description.

My mother FaceTimes every Sunday now, mostly to ask Emmett questions about woodworking. She wants a spice rack. She wants a bookshelf. She wants a hope chest for the grandchildren she's been hinting about since my thirtieth birthday. Emmett writes down every request in a leather notebook.

Saturday mornings, Sage saves us the corner booth at Bean and Bloom. We sit there with coffee and pastries from the bakery case and let the town flow around us. Luna brings over whatever book she's decided Emmett needs to read. Last week it was a romance novel with a lumberjack on the cover. Emmett read the back cover, looked at Luna, and said, "His flannel is wrong." Luna has been laughing about it for three days.

My dad shook Emmett's hand. They stood in the workshop for two hours talking about wood grain and hand tools while my mom helped me bake pumpkin bread and asked carefully non-invasive questions about whether the lumberjack was treating me right.