Page 5 of Reckless Mountain Man

Crap. I was hoping he’d let that one slide on by. No such luck.

“Yeah,” I said. “After lunch, things were slow here, so I spent a little time browsing. I’m not a stalker or anything weird.”

I saw a hint of a smile. This guy didn’t seem to be the smiling type, so I took that as a good sign.

“I think you might like me,” he said.

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. Like him?

“Maybe,” I finally said with a shrug. “You’re not bad.”

“Not bad? Well, as long as I’ve made a good impression, I’ll take it. You’re not bad yourself. So you wouldn’t object if I asked you on a date?”

He took a couple of steps toward me, pulling his hands out of his pockets. But he seemed to not know what to do with them. He held them at his sides, crossed them over his arms, then dropped them to his sides again.

“What kind of date?” I asked. “There aren’t any fancy restaurants in town.”

“So I’ll take you over to my neck of the woods.” He took another step closer. “But there’s not much in the way of fine dining. I know a place where you can get the best ribeye. You’ve never put anything like it in your mouth.”

Something about that immediately sent my mind to the gutter. “I don’t exactly have experience putting things in my mouth.”

I blurted that out without really thinking it through. In the seconds that followed, though, regret settled in. His expression didn’t change at first. He just stared at me like he wasn’t sure what to make of my words.

Was I flirting? No. I didn’t know why I blurted that out, except when I got nervous, I tended to lose whatever filter kept me from saying crazy things the rest of the time.

“No experience whatsoever?” he asked. “Are we talking about steaks…or something else?”

My grimace probably gave away my answer. “I’ve tried almost every steak imaginable. I’m not talking about steaks.”

“So you’ve never…” He hesitated before continuing, “Gone down on a guy?”

“I’ve never done any of it. Everyone says I don’t know what I’m missing, but I don’t know. It all seems overrated to me.”

His mouth fell open. He didn’t speak for the longest time. His pause told me I’d shocked him speechless. Problem was, I was speechless too as I tried to figure out a graceful way out of this conversation.

“Maybe someone should show you what you’re missing,” he said.

Talk about being speechless. I’d lost the ability to breathe. I just stared at him as seconds ticked by, but finally, some part of me I hadn’t even known existed before now said, “Are you offering to show me?”

He glanced over at the window in the door. While no one was outside, anybody who drifted over to this tucked-away corner of the lobby could see in.

Finally, he said, “Why don’t you show me your back room?”

I thought about jokingly asking him if that was a euphemism, but this was no time for humor. This was very, very serious. I was seconds away from the most exciting thing that had ever happened in my life, and I’d be darned if I was going to blow it.

4

BOONE

Holy fuck. What had I gotten myself into? My goal had been to head down the mountain and go home. I’d grab some takeout from the taco stand near my house and kick my feet up and watch TV until bedtime.

But the sign for the Seduction Summit Lodge was right there as I drove down the mountain after a long day of scouting locations and taking notes and pictures. I also shot a message to the guy advertising custom log homes on a gigantic sign on the main road. Why put all my eggs in one basket?

But work wasn’t on my mind when I turned into the lodge parking lot. I wasn’t sure what my plan was. All I knew was it involved visiting the gift shop.

And now here I was, in the back room of that very gift shop, surrounded by stacks of boxes. Skye was showing me around, her voice shaking slightly as she went through the various supplies and inventory around us.

She wasn’t thinking about any of that, though. No, her mind was likely on what I’d offered to do to her. That much was clear from the look on her face when she came to a complete stop.

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