Page 7 of Tempted By the Mountain man

What would it be like if this woman distracted me…for the rest of my life?

Whoa, man. Calm the fuck down.

The thought refuses to be silenced, despite my best efforts to shove it way down. But at least it’s a whisper now so I don’t do something stupid, like march across the kitchen and pull her into my arms, kissing her until we’re both breathless.

My cock twitches at the thought of her lips on mine.

“Am I too early?” Jade asks. “I didn’t mean to interrupt breakfast.”

“You’re not interrupting.” I plate the bacon and pat the excess grease with a paper towel, forcing any and all thoughts that’ll keep my cock from going full mast: the pile of laundry I need to do, the Brussels sprouts that need to get cooked before they go bad, the pile of wood that needs to be chopped.

Ah, better.

“I hope you’re hungry, though,” I say to Jade.

“You made me breakfast?”

Because yes is the immediate answer that wants to slip right out of my mouth and blow my cover, I clamp my lips shut for a beat before I speak. “I made enough for your friends, too. You can invite them up to the house if you want.”

“Josh went for a run,” she says. “And Natasha will be passed out until noon, I’m sure.”

“Noon?”

“She does her best work late into the night.”

“She’s an author, right?”

“Yes. She’s actually writing a mountain man romance, so she insisted she had to come with me to Wildwood.”

“A mountain man romance?” I’d never heard of such a thing. It seems ridiculous to me, but I keep that opinion to myself. Who am I to judge a book theme when I impulsively doubled the salary of the woman I knew wasn’t qualified for the job I hired her to do, all because I had a gut feeling she belonged here?

“I appreciate you letting them stay. Josh wanted to make sure you weren’t an axe murderer.” Jade pulls out a chair at the kitchen table that’d been with the house long before I was born. She looks good there. “He’s protective like that.”

The word strikes me, and before I can filter the question, it rolls right off my tongue. “Are you three in some sort of…”

“I think the word you’re looking for is thrupple. And no. We are definitely not in a thrupple. Even if Josh wasn’t hopelessly devoted to Natasha, he’s like a brother to me.”

“Do you have brothers?” I ask, filling a plate with bacon, scrambled eggs, and toast before carrying it to the table. Marty has apparently forfeited his bacon post for Jade pets. Can’t say I blame him. I’d give up bacon too if it meant I got to put my head in her lap.

“Only child.”

“Me too.”

Our gazes snag and hold, this new common ground uniting us in such a simple way. The earlier whispers about forever are growing louder.

I blame my lack of sleep on my irrational thoughts and force myself to return to the counter to fix my own plate.

“Did you organize all these boxes or did the cabin come that way?” Jade asks.

“Granddad did all that.”

“You inherited the house, then?”

“I did.”

I take a seat at the table, feeling that it’s both too big and too small at the same time. I yearn to be closer to the woman sitting directly across from me, but I know how dangerous that might be. What the hell would she think if I pulled her into my lap and kissed her? She’d probably run scared—if she didn’t slap me first.

“Let me guess,” she says. “Your granddad was a military guy.”