Page 5 of Rugged Mountain Man

“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve never met a virgin before.”

That didn’t make sense. I’d probably met virgins throughout my life. In my younger years, I was surrounded by them. I was one back then, after all.

What I really meant was that I’d never tried to get a virgin into bed. Actually, I’d probably done that unsuccessfully too, especially in my younger years. I didn’t usually discuss this stuff before going home with a woman.

“I don’t meet many these days either.” She smiled. “Even my own age.”

“And what age is that?”

Maybe I’d misjudged her. She sure looked like a woman to me.Allwoman. But she was definitely in her twenties.

“Twenty-three,” she said.

I breathed a sigh of relief. She was young, but that was about the age I’d assumed. Young enough to be a niece or way younger sister, but not nearly young enough for me to be her father’s age.

“I was kind of a geek in high school,” she said.

“Geek?”

“Geek, nerd, dweeb… I kept to myself, mostly. I was kind of into comic books and, you know, your typical nerd stuff. I did a coding camp the summer before my senior year. Most fun I ever had. That’s why I’m a coder now, and I love my job. But it doesn’t exactly surround me with guys like you.”

That raised my eyebrows. “Guys like me?”

“You know.” She gestured toward me. “Guys who look like they spend a lot of time on weight benches like this one.”

“I don’t.” I shook my head. “Well, I did when I was on base. Now, I can barely lift my arms at the end of a workday, let alone lift a metal bar with weights on the end of it.”

She was eyeing me as she chewed the last bite of her patty melt. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt self-conscious about how I looked, which was crazy. Who cared? Either she liked me or not.

But I couldn’t seem to help it. Yes, I definitely cared what this woman thought, and she was a virgin. What the hell was I doing?

I didn’t know, but I couldn’t seem to stop doing it, no matter how far it took me outside of my comfort zone.

3

WILLOW

Had I just told this guy I was a virgin? Yes, I definitely had. What was wrong with me? I should have kept my mouth shut.

It was too late to take it back now, though. It was like squeezing toothpaste out of a tube. You couldn’t shove it back in once it was out in the open. So I just shrugged, closed my to-go container, and looked around for the trash can.

“I’ll take that,” Liam said.

Liam grabbed it from me and set it on top of his. He’d finished his meal several minutes ago. But he didn’t get up to take it to the trash can near the door. Instead, he set it on the ground next to him and looked at me.

“You’re not a geek,” he said. “You’re actually the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

I opened my mouth to protest. Geeks could be beautiful. I wasn’t embarrassed about my tech obsession. My job paid well, and it was something I could always fall back on if the bakery thing didn’t work out.

But coding had gotten far less fun in recent years. What we’d done in coding camp wasn’t how the industry worked now. These days, we used software and basically shuffled files around. I missed building something from scratch.

The thrill I got from creating a pie or a cupcake now was similar to that thrill I’d had in my early days of coding. And that was why I was here, trying to figure out how to turn my passion into profit.

“Thank you,” I said. “But I guess the point was, the guys I dated in high school weren’t exactly the type who would try to get me into bed.”

There. It was out. No guy had ever tried to get me into bed. What Liam said to me earlier about going back to his place had been the closest I’d ever gotten to that. And I was pretty sure he was joking.

If I took him up on it, though, I had a feeling he wouldn’t turn me down. But I didn’t want a one-night stand. I’d never want a one-night stand. It would devastate me to give my virginity to a guy who ignored me the next day.

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