Page 3 of Grumpy Mountain Man

But seriously—if it was about a baking competition, how much could be at stake? It certainly wasn’t life or death. It was cookies and cakes.

“I skipped college,” she said, looking back up at me. “I put all my eggs in the ‘become a baker’ basket and now…”

She crossed her arms over her chest, making me wonder if she was cold. I could put my arms around her to keep her warm, but she didn’t even know me. I was guessing she wouldn’t take kindly to that.

“My cake sank,” she said. “Caved in like a deflated balloon. I assume it was the tree that caused it. My mom always said that I couldn’t run and play in the house when she was baking a cake. I thought she was being ridiculous, but now I see why.”

“Oh.” I turned back to the tree I’d felled just minutes ago. “I had no idea people were baking in that tent. How many other bakers are in there?”

Should I call them contestants? Chefs? I had no idea what the right terminology was.

“None,” she said. “Just me. I’m not even supposed to be in there. Oh God, I’m just trusting a complete stranger. You could go tell everyone in that lodge what I’m doing right now.”

I frowned. “Idon’t even understand what you’re doing, and I don’t know anybody in that lodge. Look, I really need to get back to work. So if you?—”

“Do you know anything about baking cakes?” she interrupted.

Was she really asking me that? I stared at her for the longest time, trying to figure it out. She must be desperate if she was asking a guy standing next to a chainsaw for baking advice. But I did know that a tree falling should have no impact on a cake in the oven.

“You think I caused your cake to fall?” I asked.

“When I looked in the oven window, the cake was all caved in on one side,” she said. “You explain how that happened when it was just fine seconds before.”

“Something in the way it was mixed?” I asked. “The ingredients? Have you made that cake before?”

“Yes.”

So much was packed into that one word. Defensiveness, annoyance, and something else. Something that told me that I’d struck a serious nerve.

“It has a big hole in the middle,” she added after staring at me silently for a long moment. “I can’t work with that.”

Fuck. What I really needed to do was get rid of her and get back to work. I could do that with just one sentence.

But I didn’t do that. Instead, I just stared at her, trying to figure out why she had taken hold of my brain like she had.

“You have to see for yourself,” she said. “Come on.”

She turned and walked back to the tent. I stood there, admiring the way her hair bounced as she walked. Had I ever seen a woman so beautiful? I couldn’t remember one.

And that was why, against my better interests, I followed her into that tent with no idea what to expect once I got inside. After entering, though, I came to a stop, gaping at the room around me.

“It’s useless,” she said.

Curiosity pushed me forward. I joined her on the other side of the room, where a pan of some kind sat on a table. I should be firing up the chainsaw and chopping up a trunk right now, but no. Instead, I was inside a tent, staring at a damn cake.

“You just need a center filling,” I said with a shrug.

She looked up at me with a frown. There was an adorable line between her eyebrows when she looked at me like that, and up close, I now spotted a tiny mole on her cheek.

Damn, she was hot. A woman like this could melt even an ice-cold heart like mine.

“I don’t have any kind of filling,” she said. “And that’s not the kind of cakes I make.”

“Every problem has a solution.”

Yep. Those were the words that actually came out of my mouth as I stared at her. I’d lost my ever-loving mind.

She said nothing, just staring at me and blinking like she was trying to get something out of her eye. Or like she couldn’t figure me out.

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