Page 5 of Her Grumpy Lumberjack

We look at each other for a moment, silence falling between us. A thousand crazy thoughts race through my mind—thoughts of pulling this stubborn city girl into my arms and holding her tight, running my hand through her pretty pink hair, kissing those pouty lips…

I snap to attention immediately when I hear the sound of something barreling through the trees toward us. A streak of black and white fur. Moose.

“Shit. Must have left the cabin door open,” I mutter as he bounds toward the girl, yapping with delight.

“Aw!” she cries, her face splitting into a beautiful smile as she pets him. “Hello, baby! It’s so nice to meet you! Oh, look at you!”

“This is Moose,” I grunt. “He’s better with strangers than I am.”

The girl laughs. “He’s gorgeous.” She fusses over him, lavishing him with attention before she straightens up and says, “Well, I know your dog’s name, but I don’t know yours.”

“Chase. But some people call me Grumpy Forest Man.”

She laughs again and the sweet sound makes my heart stutter.

“I’m Sienna,” she says. “Also known as Stubborn City Girl.”

Sienna. It suits her.

I reach out to shake her hand, but before I can make contact, Moose starts yapping again, excitably circling us both before jumping up to lick my face.

“I should get this guy home,” I say reluctantly.

Sienna nods, giving Moose another affectionate pat. “Okay. I better get started on the cabin.”

I grunt. “For the record, I still think it’s a crazy idea.”

She rolls her eyes, smiling. “Yeah, you’ve made that pretty clear.”

“Just be careful. And when you realize you’re in over your head…well, you know where to find me.”

The offer leaves my lips before I have time to think about it. If it was a fellow lumberjack, I’d lend a hand in a heartbeat, but spending time with Sienna sounds like a bad idea. I’m already starting to lose it over this curvy beauty—the last thing I need is an excuse to be around her. Hopefully, she’ll see soon enough that there’s no way she’ll be able to fix the shack. Then she can go back to the city and I can go back to my quiet life without all these crazy thoughts running through my mind. Until then, I need to keep my distance.

“Thanks for the offer, but I got this,” Sienna says brightly. “And once my cabin is all fixed up, I’ll bake you an extra-large humble pie.”

“We’ll see about that.”

With one last look at Sienna’s teasing smile, I turn around and head for my cabin with Moose by my side. I let him in through the front door, but I don’t follow him. Instead, I hover on the threshold, blood pumping hard through my veins until I let out a groan of frustration and turn back around. I circle quietly through the trees and find a hidden spot where I can see the shack clearly. Sienna is staring up at it with her hands on her hips, and my pulse races as I look at her.

If this stubborn beauty wants to spend four days trying to fix up this tumbledown shack, I won’t stop her. But I can’t let her do it unsupervised. I told myself I’d stay away, but I need to make sure she’s safe, even if it means crouching in the undergrowth all day long. With a sigh, I settle deeper into my hiding spot and watch.

3

SIENNA

It’s been at least ten minutes since Chase went home, but I’m still struggling to breathe properly. I’ve been standing stock still trying to recover ever since he left.

Holy crap.

Was he definitely real? Maybe something in the mountain air is making me hallucinate. He must have been a figment of my imagination: I dreamed up the biggest, sexiest, grumpiest, most infuriating lumberjack in the world and had a whole conversation with him in the middle of the woods.

That can happen…right?

I look toward the gap in the trees where Chase vanished and feel a crazy urge to run after him. But that’s not the only crazy urge I have when I think of that grumpy lumberjack. The memory of him makes me shudder, and desire pools between my thighs, hot and wet. He was so big. So strong. I’ve always been heavy, but I reckon Chase could lift me above his head with one hand like it was nothing. He could easily scoop me up and take me back to his cabin…back to his bed…

Oh God, what’s happening to me?

I squeeze my legs together, trying to get a hold of myself. I’ve never reacted like this to a man before, probably because Chase is unlike any man I’ve ever met. He’s so different from the boys I went to college with. Not only is he older, but he’s ruggedly masculine and a little bit wild, almost like he was carved from the forest, his abs whittled out of a tree trunk.

---