Page 6 of Dangerous Mountain Man

“Sorry,” I called out. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Just having a little car trouble,” he said. “Started smoking as I was coming up the mountain.”

So he had been out late. Maybe he was just hanging out with the guys. He wouldn’t have been working this late, would he? Loggers didn’t work in the dark. But he’d gone in pretty late this morning compared to what I would expect from guys in that line of work. Maybe he had to make up for that.

“That sucks,” I said.

He looked down at it and shook his head. “I’m going to have it towed to the shop downtown in the morning.”

“You need a ride to work?”

The words flew out of my mouth before I even thought them through. It was the nice thing to do. I’d do it for any neighbor. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was shirtless and ripped as hell.

“I could just…” He stopped mid-sentence, then looked around, stepping away from his truck with a tool in each hand. “That would be great.”

He looked back at me then, and I wondered what war had been going on in his mind in those few seconds he’d looked away. Was he going to say he’d hitch a ride with someone he worked with? That was my guess. It probably would be easy for one of his coworkers to pick him up on the way to the job site. They were working toward the top of the mountain this week, according to my friend Cassady, so someone could easily drop by to get him.

But my neighbor wanted me to take him. Maybe he shared my itch to spend time together. Or maybe he’d thought about it and decided it would just be easier to have me take him.

“I don’t want to get in the way of your day,” he said. “If you have schoolwork or a test or something…”

I shook my head. “I pretty much go at my own pace. So I can drop you off and get a full day of studying before?—”

“Before what?” he asked.

“I was going to offer to come get you at the end of the workday, but you might have that already worked out.”

Now I felt awkward. I was standing on the front porch of a cabin that wasn’t even mine, wearing a bathrobe that I now realized was covered in ducks. So much for hiding my “bearly awake” pajamas.

“I don’t want to put you out,” he said. “But I could make it worth your while.”

Shoot, was he serious? I shifted and realized his words had made things start tingling between my legs.

Sex was definitely not part of my immediate plans. I wasn’t going to lose my virginity on a whim. That was out of the question.

But my body was saying otherwise.

“What exactly are you offering?” I asked, tilting my head.

It was a flirtatious move. I was not a flirt. So that was a huge surprise. He was definitely bringing out a different side of me.

“I’d offer to take you straight to dinner, but I need to come back here and get cleaned up,” he said. “I’ll tell you what—I’ll grab a ride with one of the guys. Hopefully, my truck will be ready by then, and I can just grab my truck, come back, take a shower, and take you to dinner.”

I gestured toward his vehicle. “What if it isn’t ready?”

“Then you may have to drive.”

“I have a better idea,” I said. “Why don’t you come over here, and I’ll make you dinner?”

I’d been dying to put my cooking skills to use. They were getting rusty. In college, my roommates would invite all their friends over, and I’d make Italian food just the way I’d had it growing up—straight out of my grandma’s cookbook.

“You have a deal,” he said. “But I’ll still owe you dinner.”

“I plan to take you up on that.”

With a smile, he took a few steps back until he was in front of his hood again. He shifted the tools to one hand, removed the bar holding up the hood, and slammed it down.

“See you in the morning,” he said. “Six forty-five. And I promise I won’t shoot any deer before work.”

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