Page 10 of Chiseled Mountain Man

For a second, I thought he was going to correct that. I should keep my mouth shut, but instead I reached for my glass—the one with brandy in it—and took a big sip for courage before setting it down and speaking.

“Describe me,” I said. “How do you imagine me?”

He was confused. I should expect that. He just stared at me with that same neutral expression that was driving me crazy. I wanted to know what the guy was thinking, and he hardly wore his emotions on his sleeve. The opposite. They were locked away in a vault, and I had a feeling nobody got the key.

“Rose-colored,” he said.

I didn’t want to ask, but I had to know. “Rose-colored?”

“Your nipples. Am I wrong?”

I frowned. “I guess I haven’t really assigned them a color. I read somewhere that nipples are the same color as a person’s lips.”

At the time, I thought maybe I should go check in the mirror and see. I didn’t do it, though. The thought of staring at myself naked made me blush. It felt like something I shouldn’t do. Like something good girls didn’t do.

“And those hips,” he said. “I picture your chest tapering to a waist that then flares out to the most beautiful hips I’ve ever seen. It’d be hard to look at them without wanting to run my hands over them.”

I wasn’t eating at all now. I wasn’t sure I was even breathing. All I could do was stare at him as he talked to me, his words taking my breath.

“Sorry, is that too forward?” he asked, suddenly looking down at his plate.

He’d stabbed a piece of pork chop with his fork and now held it there, not moving, just looking at it. He’d only eaten one of his pork chops, and I had a feeling normally he would have cleared his plate already.

“No,” I said. “It’s just…nobody’s ever said those words to me. I’m new to all of this.”

His head snapped up. “New to all of what?”

I gestured to indicate the area in front of me. “This.”

But that didn’t make sense. I wasn’t new to eating. I was newish to eating pork chops, if that counted. But what I was really new to was talking to a guy about these things.

“Having a guy tell me I’m beautiful,” I said. “I’ve never had any of that.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You’ve been in relationships, though. You’ve dated.”

I hesitated. How did I say this?

“Nothing serious. A few first dates that never went anywhere. Crushes on guys who didn’t even know I existed, that sort of thing.”

“Any guy who doesn’t know you exist is blind as a bat,” he said. “And stupid on top of it. As I said earlier about the competition, their loss.”

I stared at him, not speaking. I wasn’t sure what to say to all this. I couldn’t imagine a guy like him would see me as beautiful—not even on my best day—and that made little sense since I had plenty of confidence. But guys like him usually didn’t go for girls with my kinds of curves, did they?

I’d lived my life hiding from adventure. I was suddenly seeing that, clear as day. It wasn’t that I couldn’t attract a guy and get naked with him. It was that I hadn’t even tried. New things scared me.

But today, I’d gone for a run on a snowy mountain trail and met a super-hot lumberjack. Today was all about adventure.

So I took another big sip of my drink, summoned my courage, and blurted out what I wanted before I could stop myself.

“I want you to make a wood figure out of me,” I said. “And I’ll pose for it.”

6

SEAN

This was the best day of my life. No question about it.

It had started like every other day. I grabbed a cup of coffee and got to work on things around the house. TheNo Trespassingsign was a last-minute decision, and now I couldn’t imagine what would have happened if I’d ignored that particular chore on my list. I would have never met Bronte. And I certainly wouldn’t be standing here in my workshop while she settled onto a stool with her second drink in hand.

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