“Okay,” he says.
And something inside me loosens a fraction.
Because whatever else he is, he doesn’t look like a man who breaks his word.
The host claps again, delighted. “Perfect! Paperwork in the back, people! And Maverick?”
He glances at her.
She smiles sweetly. “Be nice.”
He grunts.
The crowd laughs.
My heart pounds. My hands shake.
I follow him toward the back of the pavilion.
Toward paperwork.
Toward a cabin in the snow.
Chapter 2
Maverick
Igetsoldlikea damn snowmobile raffle.
Four hundred dollars.
To a woman I’ve never seen before.
The pavilion is still buzzing, Evelyn still smiling like she just solved romance for the entire state of Montana.
I look at my buyer, and my brain short-circuits in a way I don’t appreciate.
She’s young, that’s obvious. Twenty-something.
Curvy in the kind of way that makes men lose their minds. Chocolate-brown hair spills out in soft waves, like she tried to tame it and it refused. Green eyes, big and bright and too honest, framed by lashes that make no sense on a day this cold. Freckles dust her nose and cheeks like someone sprinkled her with cinnamon.
And her mouth.
Full. Soft.
She’s beautiful.
Not the polished, look-at-me, I-know-I’m-beautiful kind.
The other kind.
The kind you don’t see coming because you’re too busy thinking about roofs and obligation and keeping your head down.
My chest tightens.
My hands itch.
My body reacts like it hasn’t gotten the memo that I don’t do this. That I don’t want this. That I didn’t ask for this.
