Page 5 of Stolen By the Mountain Man

He went over to the bread box and opened it, pulling out a loaf of bread. Then he set it on the table before going to the cabinet and extracting two paper plates. I, meanwhile, got to work undoing the twist tie on the bread. My hand was still shaking.

“My sister said this town is going through some serious growing pains.”

“Helena?”

I looked up in response to him saying my name. I loved hearing my name in his deep voice. He’d never said it before?—

Oh, shit. I almost clamped my hand over my mouth when I realized what I’d done. My sister. I was supposed to be her. Daphne was the one who had all the conversations with him about the town.

“She’s done some heavy-duty research,” I rushed to say. “I always joke that she should be a journalist. Or a private investigator.”

“You and your sister went through a lot,” he said. “Going through a divorce brings siblings together, I guess.”

This was where I had to call on what I’d found out while reading through their previous messages. I felt bad about that, but I needed to know what they’d discussed so I didn’t ask questions that would give me away.

“I’m sorry you didn’t have that,” I said, and I meant more than just a sibling.

He didn’t have two parents—divorced or otherwise—who raised him. He never knew his father, who died when he was a teenager, but his dad’s mother raised him and made sure his mom had enough food on the table and all the basics they needed to survive. Isaac had opened up about that in an email a couple of weeks after he and Daphne started chatting.

“And that’s why I want at least two kids,” he said. “Maybe more. I want the big family I never had.”

I had a lump in my throat. Just how many kids was he talking? I could see having three, tops, but really, one or two was ideal.

I hoped my job would give me the flexibility to work from home—if I could ever get anyone to hire me—but the thought of having four or five children running around this cabin exhausted me.

What was I thinking? The chances that I’d have four or five kids with him were pretty slim. It wasn’t etched in stone that I was going to end up married to this guy, and that was tough, considering every time I looked at him, my heart swelled a little. It was even more powerful than the way I’d felt when I looked at his picture.

But he might decide, once he found out the truth about who I was, to head to Philadelphia and convince my sister to marry him like she’d originally promised. Then I’d be an aunt to the zillions of kids he was hoping to have.

I needed to steer the conversation away from my sister. Talk of my sister meant we were talking about me. Pretend me, anyway. The me that was supposed to be at home while Daphne hung out here with the guy she’d promised to marry.

“So, what do you think?” I asked.

He’d grabbed a loaf of bread and put two slices on his own plate, preparing to make a sandwich, but now he looked up at me. “Think of what?”

“Of the development in this town. Are you against it or do you like it? More places to shop, right?”

“I have a feeling the shops will be geared toward tourists until we get more locals in town,” he said. “So it’s not going to help me much. I’ll still be driving to Adairsville for most of what I need.”

Adairsville. That was the town he’d mentioned earlier that was fifteen minutes or so from here. I’d have to go there to get anything I needed. Groceries. New clothes. Makeup. Diapers, when someday we had kids.

That idea filled me with warmth. For just a few days, I’d let myself buy into the fantasy that this was going to be my life. He’d chosen me, not my sister. There wouldn’t be a moment when he realized he’d invited the wrong sibling into his house. A sibling who’d lied to him. We’d live happily ever after with diapers and groceries we’d bought in the next town over.

I found myself buying into the fantasy more with every second that passed.

4

ISAAC

If I had to define the perfect day, this would be it. I’d had lunch on the deck with the most beautiful woman I’d ever met. A woman who was my fiancée. A woman I’d committed to marry, although we hadn’t worked out the logistics yet.

After lunch on the deck, we’d watched a movie in my basement theater and played a round of golf. Daphne was surprisingly good—something she attributed to the many times she’d played miniature golf when she was a kid. I was better, but golf had been my pastime before the military, and I’d had a temporary putting green in my backyard on the military base.

As we pulled into the parking lot of the Seduction Summit Lodge, Daphne’s gasp pulled me out of my thoughts. I glanced over to see her staring at the building in front of us, eyes wide.

“This place is adorable,” she said. “Tell me it has a fireplace. It has a fireplace, right?”

I nodded. “In the lobby. We’ll pass it on the way to the restaurant.”

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