Page 5 of Wishing for the Mountain Man

But soon enough, I had to get serious. He was trying to teach me something, after all.

“And then you just whip it,” he said. “Smooth and steady.”

With a lightwhoosh, the line cut through the air, landing not far from where his earlier cast ended up. I let out a squeal of excitement—another sound I should have suppressed.

This guy had a poker face while I wore my heart on my sleeve. We’d make a perfect couple.

I gasped as that thought slammed into me. And then he stepped back a little.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

I looked back over my shoulder at him, but he was still only in my periphery. “No, everything’s fine. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” He shook his head. “I take it you don’t spend much time in the great outdoors.”

As he said that, he moved over to stand next to me. But his attention was on the water. No doubt he was watching for any sign of a tug on my line. He probably thought I’d miss it if it happened. He wasn’t wrong to think that.

I shook my head. “School keeps me busy, but this summer, I took a part-time job pet sitting and dog walking. I’m still going to do that on the side. Does that count as the great outdoors?”

“But you’ve never been fishing. Or camping.”

Yeah, I should’ve known I wasn’t going to get away with pet walking in suburbia as “outdoor experience.” But it wasn’t like I’d spent my entire life inside.

“My parents rented an RV when I was eight,” I said. “We went out west. Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore… It was one of the best vacations I’ve ever had.”

He was looking at me through narrowed eyes. That was probably the closest thing I’d get to a non-neutral expression with this guy.

“RVs don’t count, do they?” I asked, relieving him from having to say so himself.

He shrugged. “My cabin has all that, and I spend most of my life outdoors, so I say it counts.”

I wasn’t sure about the comparison between where he lived full-time and camping, but at this point, I was doing well not to let my brain go wonky every time I looked at him.

That video of Jax had gone viral for a reason, but the video didn’t do justice to how handsome he was in person. Nothing had prepared me for that. But he was arguing for my side here, so I’d take it.

“So you live in the suburbs,” he said.

“Downtown Chattanooga.”

I paused because I thought I felt a tug on the line. When I lifted upward, as he’d shown me earlier, there was no resistance, so I continued.

“What made you think I live in the suburbs?” I asked.

“The whole dog walking thing,” he said. “I guess that would work in the city too.”

I nodded. “I have some clients who live downtown, but we aren’t like New York or Chicago or even Nashville, where tons of people live downtown. So yeah, I drive out to the suburbs a lot.”

“Thought so,” he said. “You’ve never lived in a small town like this one?”

I shook my head. “I’ve dreamed about it. Every Christmas when I watch those romantic movies on cable, I decide that’s what I’m going to do. Get my degree and open my own practice in a charming little town like the ones in those movies.”

He laughed. It was just a one-syllable laugh, and it didn’t come with a smile, from what I could tell in my peripheral vision. But I decided it counted as a laugh. I needed to get more of those out of him.

“This place is hardly like the small towns in those movies,” he said.

“Seems like it to me.” I shrugged. “Beautiful ponds like this, cabins with hot mountain men, and that old downtown area. Even with the tornado damage, it’s so charming.”

I expected another laugh at that statement, but it didn’t come. In fact, nothing came for the longest time. Just silence. The only sounds came from the water ahead of us and the insects and night creatures in the woods surrounding us.

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