Page 56 of Billionaire Lumberjack's Bride

He lifts his head at my approach, bleating softly before returning to munching away like he didn’t cause that catastrophe last night with his shithead behavior.

I slide from the saddle and tie Lasher loosely to our usual tree. Whiskey runs ahead toward Billy, spooking the goat and sending him racing a few yards farther down the bank.

“Whiskey, stop.”

He slows and turns back toward me, waiting for me to catch up, and I rub his head. “Stay here.”

I approach Billy slowly, and he’s too busy searching for another snack to notice me get close enough to slip a rope on him. He lets me lead him back to Lasher, and I secure him to another limb and release a relieved breath.

Lyla will feel better knowing he’s okay, but finding him doesn’t undo anything that happened last night. I can’t take back those moments with Lyla, the ones that came out of nowhere and have made everything far too complicated now.

She’s too sweet. Too vulnerable. Too caring. Too open in a way that only makes me want to shut down more.

All I can do is try to forget last night. What it felt like to have her in my arms. To have her body pressed to mine. To see the trust and longing in her eyes.

Even if it may be a fruitless effort.

I grab my fishing rod and bait from the saddlebag and make my way toward my favorite spot on the river. Whiskey nips at my heels, excited that he might get a piece of fresh fish if I do well today.

“I’ll see what I can do, boy.”

It’s far too late in the day to expect much. The pre-dawn magic hour has long passed, but I wasn’t about to leave Lyla in that bed—for a lot of reasons. Most that scare the ever-loving shit out of me and sent me running out here.

That woman isdangerous.

She pushes me in directions I didn’t know existed and twists me in ways I couldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams. Lyla is everything I shouldn’t have, yet the longer she’s here, the more I don’t want her to leave. And that’s a big fucking problem when this is all supposed to be fake.

When ithasto stay that way.

For both our sakes.

I set my gear on the massive flat rock that hangs out over the river and lower myself onto it, casting my first line to the center of the rapids, where the biggest pool collects the largest fish.

Birds swoop overhead, swirling in the warm breeze before darting into a nearby tree. The smells of spring permeate the air—fresh flowers, trees in bud, the long, marshy grasses along the shoreline sprouting up all around us.

It’s moments like this that made me fall in love with this place. The pure, simple, unadulterated beauty of it all. Nothing compares. Except maybe the brunette back in my cabin…

“What are we going to do about Lyla, Whiskey?”

He lies down next to me, ears perked. Part of me wishes he understood what I was saying, so he could give me some fucking advice about what to do. Because it feels like I’m a stick caught in the middle of this river, getting carried in the rushing water, smashed against jagged rocks, pushed miles and miles a day, tumbling and spinning with no end in sight.

Out of control.

She was right about what happened in that tub last night—things got wildly out of control. We got far too close to doing something that would be wrong. Something we would have regretted in the harsh light of morning.

She’s your wife…

That voice at the back of my head keeps reminding me of that fact, and it won’t shut the fuck up. It taunts me, trying to stick me in an even worse place than I’ve already found myself. Somewhere there’s a possibility of something more than the life I’ve been living up here alone.

I need to lock it away, at least for today, so I can try to find some peace and quiet out here before I have to return and faceherat the cabin. Maybe the fresh air and solitude I’ve always relished will help me get some clarity.

Wishful thinking.

Something tugs at my line, and I reel it in, the smallmouth bass wiggling at the end as I drag it up on top of the rock. I pull out my knife and quickly end its suffering, then immediately give it to Whiskey.

“You can have this, boy. I’ve lost my appetite.”

The only thing my body craves now is the woman I can never have. The one who wears Grandmother’s ring and is sitting back in my home, thinking I’m a huge jackass for the way I’ve been acting and treating her.

---