His gaze holds mine a second too long, like the snow isn’t the only thing falling around here.
Then he says, “That so?”
“Yes.” I swallow. “Why?”
His mouth twitches again, and this time it’s definitely a smile—brief, reluctant, devastating. “Because,” he says, voice low, “that cabin’s on my route.”
My heart does something stupid.
And then, like the universe wants to make sure I’m fully humbled, my stomach growls—loudly—right in the cold quiet between us.
Beau’s eyebrow lifts.
I close my eyes. “I’m just… very brave,” I whisper.
And Beau Wilder—mountain rescue man, storm-proof, apparently unamused by the laws of nature—lets out a quiet laugh that warms the air more than the heater ever could.
“Yeah,” he says. “I can tell.”
TWO
BEAU
I don’t do stranded women on backroads.
Not because I’m heartless—because it’s a liability. Because it turns into a whole thing. Because I’ve learned the hard way that the moment you step into someone else’s crisis, you’re suddenly responsible for their fear, their hope, their tears, their gratitude, their… everything.
Andeverythingis heavy.
But then I pull up behind the little SUV with the hazards blinking like a weak heartbeat in the snow, and I see her through the windshield.
Curled up in the driver’s seat like she’s trying to make herself smaller than she is.
Which is ridiculous, because even from ten feet away I can tell she’s the kind of woman that fills a space just by existing in it.
Not loud. Not needy.
Just…there. Warm. Real. Soft in the places life usually tries to harden.
I’m already irritated—with the road, with the weather, with the idiots who treat mountains like a themed attraction.
And then she rolls her window down an inch and looks at me like I’m the answer to a prayer she didn’t want to say out loud.
“Hi,” she chirps, trying for calm and failing in a way that’s almost endearing.
I identify her immediately:Mila.City. New. Renting Bluebird.
And it hits me like a sucker punch—because I know exactly who that cabin belongs to, and I know exactly whotoldJune about it.
Of course she did.
Of course my grandmother is involved.
I keep my voice steady, professional. “You Mila?”
She nods, and I watch her throat bob when she swallows. She’s nervous. She’s cold. She’s trying to be brave.
The kind of bravery that doesn’t swagger.
