CHAPTER ONE
Poppy
The steering wheel of my ten-year-old sedan was vibrating so hard I thought my fillings might shake loose. I’d been driving for what felt like three years, but was actually only two days, escaping a life that had become a series ofPoppy, can you... and Poppy, I need....
I’d spent my entire adult existence being the reliable one. The one who made sure my mother’s rent was paid before she spent it on a cruise she couldn’t afford. The one who bailed my brother out of his latest get-rich scheme. The human safety net of a family of emotional vampires. I’d been a professional caretaker as well, working as a hotel manager, dealing with everyone else’s chaos while my own life sat on a shelf gathering dust.
When my mother announced she was selling the house to move to a condo in Florida—one that didn’t have room for a twenty-six-year-old daughter—I hadn’t cried. I hadn’t even argued.
I’d just packed my bags and headed west. I didn’t just want a new job. I wanted a life that felt as big and wild as the mountains. I wanted to find the version of Poppy that didn’t belong to anyone else.
Which was how I ended up at the base of Lone Mountain, Montana, following a tip from a sympathetic waitress named Barb. She told me about a guy named Cordell who ran a massive nursery and needed a hand for the season. She’d also mentioned he was a lot of man to handle, which I’d taken to mean he was probably just a grumpy old farmer with a bad hip and a grudge against the weather.
The road narrowed as it wound through thick stands of pine and fir, the scent of evergreen so sharp it was almost spicy. Then, the trees cleared, and I saw it. It wasn’t a garden center where you shopped for a rose bush for your mother. It was a sprawling fortress of glass and steel. Six huge greenhouses caught the afternoon light, looking like diamonds dropped into the rugged wilderness. It was beautiful and isolated—exactly the kind of place a man—woman—could go they wanted to be alone.
I pulled my car into the gravel lot, feeling entirely out of place in my dusty sedan. I stepped out, smoothing down my favorite pair of leggings. They were high-waisted and held everything in, but they didn’t hide the fact that I had more curves than a mountain switchback. My t-shirt was a soft, faded pink, and my hair was a wild, dark tumble after hours of driving with the windows down.
“This is private property. Road’s back the way you came.”
The voice didn’t come from a grumpy old man. It came from a man who looked like an oak tree in denim and flannel.
He was standing near the entrance of the largest greenhouse, holding a heavy wooden crate like it weighed nothing. He was massive—easily six-foot-four—with shoulders so broad they seemed to stretch the fabric of his dark work shirt to its absolute limit. His jeans were dirt-stained and hung low on his hips, despite the heavy leather belt around his waist. He had a thick, dark beard that was neatly trimmed, and eyes the color of a stormy forest.
He was, without a doubt, the most intimidatingly beautiful man I had ever seen, and he’d woken something inside me.
Barb had said he was a lot of man. She had not been exaggerating. My pulse didn’t just kick up, it thundered. I knew instinctively, he might be a problem. A big, bearded problem.
“Are you Cordell? I’m Poppy Evans,” I said, pitching my voice to be heard over the sound of the equipment that seemed to be everywhere. I stood my ground, refusing to let the way he was looking at me make me fidget. “Barb at the diner said you were hiring.”
He didn’t move. He didn’t even blink. He just stood there, his gaze traveling over me with a slow, deliberate intensity that felt like a physical touch. He took in my messy hair, the swell of my breasts, and the curve of my hips. It wasn’t a polite look. It was measured. Intent.
My natural instinct was to tug at the hem of my oversized shirt to try and over my curves. But I’d made an uneasy peace with them over the years. Most days I was fine with them. I was what I was—a curvy girl in a world that had opinions about that. Most days I could walk into a room and not think twice. Today, under this particular attention, I felt every inch of myself and then some.
I left my t-shirt alone, but there wasn’t much I could do about the flare of my temper. Because that was just who I was. A little hot headed when I allowed myself. “Is there a problem? Or are you just practicing your brooding mountain man look?”
His jaw tightened, a muscle jumping in his cheek. He set the crate down with a heavy thud and started walking toward me. Each step was long and powerful. He stopped about five feet away, his presence so large it seemed to soak up all the light in the area. Up close, I could see the fine lines around his eyes and feel the raw, masculine power radiating off him. He smelled like damp earth.
“Barb talks too much,” he grunted. His voice was a deep, gravelly rumble that vibrated right down to my sneakers. “What do you know about plants, Poppy Evans?”
“I have a green thumb,” I lied, keeping my expression neutral. I thought of the poor succulent I’d killed three weeks ago by forgetting it existed. “I’m hardworking, I’m reliable, and I don’t need my hand held. I just need a job and a place to stay.”
He let out a low, skeptical sound that was almost a laugh. Almost. “You look like you’ve never seen a day of hard labor in your life. This isn’t a flower shop. We move thousands of seedlings a week. It’s dirty, it’s heavy, and it’s lonely.”
That might explain his grumpy exterior, I thought.
“I like quiet,” I retorted, stepping closer. I was a foot shorter than him, but I wasn’t backing down. “And I’m not afraid of a little dirt. Are you hiring or just looking for a reason to say no to me?”
His jaw tightened, his gaze dropping to my mouth for a split second before snapping back to my eyes. The tension between us was so thick I almost laughed, because what else do you do when a man like that looks at you like that. I wasn’t looking for a husband, and I certainly wasn’t looking for a future, but I wasn’t blind. This man was pure, unadulterated sex on legs. The fact that he knew it and didn’t care made it ten times worse. Hotter. Ten times hotter.
He looked past me at my sedan as if he could tell it held everything I owned, and then back at me.
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay?” I’d expected more questions. A request for references. Questions of how much water a plant needed. Something.
“Yeah. Cabin comes with the job—I’m guessing you’ll need it.”
“Yes, please. If it’s not too much trouble.”
