Page 1 of Chiseled Mountain Man

1

BRONTE

Iwas religious about my morning run. My roommate thought I was out of my mind, getting up at seven in the morning to run down the hiking trail the woman at the front desk suggested when I checked in yesterday.

Maybe my roommate was right. It was thirty-something degrees outside and snow covered the ground. Yet here I was in my long-sleeved shirt, coat, and thermal pants under my yoga pants, with a band under my hat to cover my ears.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

The sound of my feet smashing snow was strangely gratifying. I was super stressed about the day ahead. The stakes were high. If I didn’t place in the finals, I had to honor the promise I made to my parents to go to law school. Winning that fifty-thousand-dollar prize, along with help setting up a bakery, could make the difference between doing what I wanted for a living and going down the same road everyone else in my family had taken.

“I can do this,” I said out loud, then repeated it, over and over, with each step. “I can do this, I can do this, I can do this.”

My voice grew louder until I had to remind myself it wasn’t guaranteed nobody was around. I’d passed one cabin about ten minutes ago, and now I heard hammering up ahead. That had to mean a human was up there. Or was there some kind of bird that made hammering noises?

Hell if I’d know. I wasn’t a nature lover or anything. I just needed my morning run like some people needed caffeine.

I saw something off in the distance. It was a guy, I was pretty sure. At first, I thought it might be a bear, the guy was so big.

Suddenly, he stood, and my jaw dropped. He turned to look at me and, while he was too far to make out details, I didn’t need binoculars to see the guy was freaking hot. I wanted to pull out my phone and snap a picture to send to my friends back home.Look what I found out in the wild.

Didn’t they call these mountain men? He wore a black and white plaid shirt under a black vest with a black matching beanie. That was more of a lumberjack look.

I was so busy checking him out, I forgot to watch my footing—something I’d been doing obsessively before I spotted Mr. Hunkalicious. I realized too late that my foot had caught on something. A root, a limb, a rock…who could tell under the snow that covered the path? All I knew was both feet were off the ground, and I was flying, the forward momentum of my run working against me.

I wasn’t sure what was worse—the fact that I might break something or that I was making a complete fool out of myself in front of this guy. At least I had the presence of mind not to brace myself by putting my arms out in front of me. Instead, I did a weird sort of midair twist, which put me on my side and yes, hit my right arm a little too hard.

That was my baking arm. If I couldn’t bake, I was screwed.

“Please don’t let me have broken anything,” I whispered, staring up at the sky. “Don’t let this be my story of how I ended up practicing law in a small town in North Carolina.”

“You okay?”

A face partially blocked my view of the sky. I blinked several times, not sure if what I was seeing was for real. If I hadn’t noticed him before my fall, I probably would have assumed I was hallucinating. Maybe I’d passed out and this was a dream.

“Fine, I think,” I said. “Just really embarrassed.”

“Did you hit your head? Can you sit up?”

“No.” I closed my eyes. “I mean, I think I can sit up, but no, I didn’t hit my head.”

As if to prove that, I kept my eyes closed but pushed myself to a seated position. Perfectly fine. I opened my eyes and moved both legs until my knees were pointing upward, feet solidly planted on the ground.

No pain. That was good, right? I started to push myself up but fell immediately back to my butt again when the world began spinning.

“I don’t feel right,” I said.

Suddenly, it didn’t matter that the most gorgeous guy I’d ever seen was standing next to me. It wasn’t even about the embarrassment anymore. I did not want to throw up. I hated throwing up. I’d rather sit through an eight-hour seminar on the most boring topic imaginable. Get a root canal. Have a stabbing headache that drove me to distraction. Anything but throw up.

“Don’t move,” the guy said. “I’ll get a medic up here. It might take a little while.”

My eyes popped open. I hadn’t realized until then that I’d closed them again. He was standing off to the side, staring at a phone, which he was holding in front of him.

Wow, he was gorgeous. Okay, so maybe I was a little worried about throwing up in front of him. But the nausea was passing, thank God.

I took a deep breath and sat up. Nothing spun—no stars in front of my eyes. I was fine.

“I’m better now,” I said. “Can you help me up?”

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