Chapter One
CARMEN
The last patient I lost was a nineteen-year-old girl who came into the ER on a Tuesday with a stomach ache that turned out to be a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. She bled out while I held pressure. Her boyfriend stood in the hallway screaming her name, and security had to pin him to the wall because he kept trying to get through the doors.
That was six weeks ago.
I haven't slept through the night since.
My sister Cat thinks I'm taking a job at a mountain retreat in Colorado. Live-in caretaker, room included, one month minimum. The ad was specific: remote property, help with upkeep, solitude guaranteed. Exactly what I need. Somewhere quiet enough that I can stop hearing monitors beeping in my sleep.
The drive from Houston took fourteen hours with two gas station coffees and one breakdown in the parking lot of a Buc-ee's outside Amarillo where I sat in my car crying so hard the steering wheel got slippery. That's the kind of tired I am. Notsleepy tired. Emptied-out tired. The kind where your body keeps moving but the part of you that cares about anything has packed up and left the building.
Bear Creek Valley, Colorado. Population 847. One road in, one road out, cell service that dies about thirty minutes before you get there. My GPS gave up somewhere around a switchback that made my Honda groan in protest.
Now I'm pulling into a gravel lot in front of a cluster of cabins that look like they belong on a postcard. Log walls. Tin roofs catching the late afternoon sun. A creek running behind them, the sound of it reaching me the second I cut the engine.
Quiet.
Real, actual quiet. No sirens. No overhead pages. No beeping, no alarms, no family members sobbing in the waiting room at three in the morning.
My hands are still shaking on the wheel. They've been doing that for weeks. Adrenaline withdrawal, maybe. Or just my body forgetting how to stop bracing for the next emergency.
A wooden sign reads MCCALL CABINS in hand-carved letters. Underneath, smaller: CHECK-IN AT MAIN HOUSE.
The main house sits at the end of the row. Bigger than the cabins, with a wraparound porch and smoke curling from a stone chimney. Someone left a pot of yellow wildflowers on the top step. The whole place smells like pine and cold water and something baking. Bread, maybe. Or biscuits.
My stomach growls. Can't remember the last time I ate something that wasn't wrapped in cellophane from a vending machine.
The front door opens before I reach the porch.
He fills the doorway.
That's the first thing I register. Not his face, not his clothes. Just the sheer amount of space he occupies. Broad shoulders in a flannel shirt rolled to the elbows, forearms corded with muscle,hands braced on either side of the door frame like he's holding the house up. Sandy brown hair, a little too long, falling across his forehead. Warm brown eyes that land on me and stay.
Something in my chest flickers. Not attraction. Too tired for attraction. More like recognition. The way you notice a fire when you've been cold for a long time.
"Carmen Reyes?"
His voice is low. Not rough, just steady. The kind of voice that belongs on a porch in the mountains, unhurried, like he's got nowhere else to be.
"That's me." My own voice sounds like gravel. Fourteen hours of driving will do that. "I'm here about the caretaker position."
His expression shifts. The easy warmth tightens into something I can't read. His hands drop from the door frame.
"The what?"
"The caretaker position. Live-in help with the property? The ad said room and board included, one month minimum, duties include general maintenance, guest coordination, light cleaning." I've memorized the listing. Read it forty times on my phone during those fourteen hours. "I applied through the Mountain Match site. Got a confirmation email three days ago."
The color drains from his face.
Not slowly, either. One second he looks like a man who runs a mountain retreat. The next he looks like a man who just swallowed a lit match.
"Mountain Match," he repeats. His jaw works. "That's not a job site."
"What?"
"Mountain Match is a matchmaking service. For men looking for..." He stops. Scrubs a hand down his face. When he drops it, his ears are red. "It's a mail-order bride site, ma'am."
