Page 59 of Billionaire Lumberjack's Bride

“Yeah, Lyla’s a pretty decent cook, too.”

The longer she stays, the more I am going to get to enjoy the benefits of her skills in the kitchen.

“Then you’re a very lucky man. Beauty, a good cook, and now, you have someone to help you on the homestead and a warm bed to crawl into every night.”

That’s the last thing I want to think about: crawling into bed with Lyla.

Last night was hard enough, and waking up with my cock very interested in the woman tucked into my arms was a new form of torture.

I can’t do that again.

I can’t do this with her.

I’m going to have to draw a line in the sand.

One I will never cross.

Still, the question lingers in the back of my head until I finally have to ask it. “You said you knew the moment you saw her, but…how?”

Travis releases a long sigh. “That’s harder to explain, son. I just…felt it. One look at her and I knew I would never want another woman again until the day I die.”

He makes it sound so simple.

He wanted her.

He made it happen.

They’ve shared an incredible life for fifty years…

But that’s the difference between Travis and me—he saw her and held on tight; I saw Lyla and wanted to disappear.

This will never be a happily ever after, and I need to make sure Lyla understands that, that we maintain a business-only relationship until I can free her from the contract and send her back to her normal life.

ChapterNine

LYLA

The moment Silas pulls the truck over to the curb in front of the general store and throws it into park, I toss open my door and leap out.

He leans over Whiskey to see me. “Where the hell are you going?”

I stop before I slam the door in his face and scan up and down Main Street in Millsburg, searching for any means of escape. After four days with the man barely saying a fucking word to me, I just need to get away from him, from the tension, from the anger and hate-filled looks, even if it’s only for the hour or so he says we’ll be in town to make his delivery and pick up a few things we need for the cabin.

Not only will it give me a break from Silas, but I can make the calls that might quell some of the anxiety that being stuck up the mountain without any means of communication with the outside world has built up inside me.

I point at a sign with a loaf of bread hanging above a small shop a few feet to my left. “That looks like a bakery. I’m going in there.”

They likely have sugary desserts and other things I haven’t had a taste of since I got here…and hopefully, they have coffee, too. Real coffee. Not that sludge Silas makes at the cabin that turns my stomach and makes me fantasize about a Starbucks drive-thru on the mountain.

Silas scowls and glances at the clock on the dash. “Meet back here at the truck in an hour.”

Not nearly enough time.

But I am not about to start another argument with him right now.

Things have been uncomfortable enough since that night. His eyes always on me, following me, despite him not uttering a word to me and pretending I don’t exist.

The man has made the silent treatment an Olympic-level achievement.

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