Page 16 of Dangerous Mountain Man

He was right. I’d have my truck by then. I could head out early and Mallorie would never know. I’d just tell her I had to be at the job site a couple of hours before I actually did.

No. I couldn’t lie to her. I just couldn’t do it. I’d always been honest to a fault. It was an unavoidable part of my personality.

But it wasn’t just that. Mallorie meant more to me than even I fully understood just yet. I did not want to start our relationship on a lie.

I’d have to talk to her tonight. She’d understand that I’d made a commitment. And when the next city council meeting happened and we showed up to discuss the progress we’d made, I was not going to be the guy sitting there feeling like crap for not doing my part.

Yes, Mallorie would understand. She had to. Because I wasn’t sure what I’d do if I screwed up the best thing that had ever happened to me.

9

MALLORIE

Ihad a date.

Memphis was picking me up at the front door in his truck and taking me to dinner. It wasn’tmyfront door—well, not the front door of the rental cabin anyway.

No, I’d been called down to the show cabin because a guy said he was going to drop by to get some information about having one built. I’d shown him around the cabin, then paced the floor for the full forty-five minutes until I saw Memphis’s truck through the window.

My heart immediately jumped into double time. This was the first date I’d had in a couple of years—unless dinner last night counted.

But this was different than all my previous dates. I was getting in a truck with a man who was straight out of a fantasy. He was almost too good to be true. And he wanted me. I just kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It dropped as soon as I climbed into the truck. Something was off—I could tell just by looking at him.

“Hi,” he said. “Ready for dinner?”

His voice was pinched, like he was forcing the words past a closed throat. I nodded and pulled my seatbelt over my chest. Maybe I should just stay silent.

But no, that wasn’t going to be the way this went. If I was working a relationship into my busy life, I’d be damned if I’d play games.

“What’s the deal?” I asked. “Something’s wrong.”

He’d been shifting the truck back into drive, but he didn’t move to press the gas pedal. Instead, he sat back and stared straight out the windshield.

“I can’t do it.”

My heart sank. This was it. I was being dumped. Or maybe he was about to reveal that he had a secret wife hidden away somewhere.

No, that was impossible. If he was about to dump me, it was one hundred percent because he just wasn’t that into me.

“Can’t do what?” I asked, sounding a lot stronger than I felt.

I’d put on a brave face if he was about to dump me. I would not beg. But shit, had I really misjudged the situation that much? No way would I have even thought for a second that this was one of those situations my friends were always getting into. They’d fall for a guy, only to be dumped almost immediately. I’d always said I’d never be that person.

Was I that person?

“I can’t kill a deer. Not when I know how you feel about it.”

What? That made no sense.

He turned to look at me at the same time I turned to look at him. Our eyes met and held, and in that long stare, I knew he wasn’t about to dump me. The opposite.

“I made a commitment to help cull the deer population,” he said. “I never break a commitment. I always do what I say I’m going to do.”

I didn’t dare breathe. If he wanted to kill deer, I wasn’t going to stand in his way. I just didn’t want to know about it. But yeah, deep down I knew it wouldn’t be that easy. It would bother me if I knew he went out every morning with his rifle, shooting innocent animals. I suspected he had probably done worse than that during his days in the military, but that was his past.

“The city isn’t going to give two fucks if I don’t fulfill my vow to shoot twenty deer,” he said. “Even if they did, you’re more important than the city or responsibility or anything else. You’re my future. I don’t want to scare you with that talk, though.”

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