Page 3 of Fierce Mountain Man

“I think it’ll come out,” she said. “Most of it’s washing down the drain.”

She looked at me over her shoulder. I noticed she had her black dress pants pulled up to her knees. I’d taken her coat when she entered and settled it neatly on the back of the chair at my kitchen table, despite the fact that I didn’t even give my own coat that kind of treatment. But after she removed her coat, I’d had a hard time not staring at the way her curves filled out the sweater she wore underneath.

And now was no different. No matter where I looked, I saw the swell of her breasts out of the corner of my eye.

I held out the bandages and ointment. “I brought these. I can help, or?—”

She shook her head. “No, I can do it. Thanks.”

After handing over the kit, I stepped back toward the doorway. I should leave. She’d want privacy, right? But she was busy turning off the faucet.

When she spun on the ledge of the tub until she was facing me, I questioned if she really did want me to leave. I should ask. But I didn’t. I just stood there gawking at her like a teenager who’d never seen a beautiful woman before.

“I guess you wonder why I was walking around a construction site in the middle of the night.”

It was hardly the middle of the night, but it was past the time I’d expect someone to be wandering around Seduction Summit,even during tourist season. Activity pretty much remained at the ski lodge unless a tourist hopped in their car and went somewhere. If they did, it was to eat at the diner or to cross city lines for some booze.

“That’s where my bakery’s going to be,” she said. “I was visualizing it.”

I didn’t know what visualizing meant. But I could piece together the first part of that.

“You’re leasing space in the shopping center? I didn’t even know they’d gotten that far along yet.”

“Not yet,” she said. “I just won a competition, and the prize is help with setting up a bakery.”

“The baking competition?” I asked. “The one that’s happening at the lodge right now?”

“Yes,” she said.

I knew about the competition because those bakers had been distracting my fellow logging crew members. One by one, they’d been snatched up by the beautiful women hanging out in that tent this weekend.

I didn’t get it. Weren’t they all going back home? What was the point in getting into a thing with a woman who was leaving? I’d say just to get laid, but they seemed pretty darn stuck on the women they’d met. That told me it was more than sex.

This beautiful baker was staying here, though. She wanted to put down roots in Seduction Summit. She had a puncture wound in her foot to prove it.

“So, you don’t have a space reserved in the shopping center yet, but that’s where you plan to set up your bakery,” I said.

“If I picture it, it will happen. That’s what I heard a couple of the other bakers say, anyway. I think it’s hocus-pocus.”

While Emmy talked, she spread ointment on the small area of her foot that had been attacked by the nail. I was shocked to find that my body was reacting to just watching her. I neverthought of myself as someone with a foot fetish. Maybe it was just watching her rub something on her bare skin—wherever that bare skin was.

“I thought visualization was worth a try, though,” she added.

I frowned. “Don’t you just need money and it’s yours?”

She laughed. “Yeah, that comes tomorrow when the banks open.”

“A business loan?” I asked.

Emmy eyed me, chewing her bottom lip thoughtfully. I knew that look. She was trying to decide if it was wise to tell me something. Finally, she spoke.

“I won fifty thousand dollars. That was the grand prize. I don’t know how much it costs to open a bakery. I mean, I looked it up online, of course, and it sounds like it should cover it, but this is a mountain town. It might cost a little more. So yes, I’ll probably need a loan, but I’m also going to deposit this money.”

That was a lot, and I wasn’t sure how to respond to any of it. But I found my face breaking out in a smile.

“Congratulations,” I said. “There were a bunch of bakers there too. You beat out a lot of people, I assume.”

“Just twelve of us. So I guess it’s not that big an accomplishment.”

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