Page 1 of Forgotten Mountain Man

CHAPTER ONE

FAITH

“You’re going upwhereinwhat?” Jude looked at my car over my shoulder and managed to suppress his laughter. “Take one of the farm trucks, please, Faith, or I’ll be scraping you off the mountain when the deluge hits in a few hours.” The foreman of Red Hart Ranch waved a tanned hand toward a row of dusty, branded red and white pickups parked in a neat row out the front of the big house.

I plastered a smile on my face that had bore down on much lesser men than Jude Mannering—and much less well-mannered ones, too.

“No thank you, sir,” I declined politely. “Me and Pretty Betty are going to trundle on up that little hill, give our papers to one Mister Walker Roan, and be back before the sun sets.”

I pointed to the manilla folder fat with a sheaf of files stuffed inside where it perched on the passenger seat of my ancient bubble car. Long overdue for replacement since I graduated college, I still hadn’t upgraded my ride despite opening my own office in White cap, a few hours’ drive south of Red Hart. MaybeI should after this. One last road trip in Pretty Betty for my current client.

Or rather, my late client’s son.

“Are you still driving that beat up old thing, Faith? Betty hasn’t given out on you yet?” Travis Beaumont, co-owner of Red Hart with his twin sister, Eve, stomped down the wide front steps of the big house, banging his black hat on his denim covered thigh. “You know a girl should spoil herself when she has her name plastered in big letters in the main street.”

He leaned down from his six-foot, six-inches height to engulf me in a bear hug where I nearly died from lack of oxygen within seconds.

“Letting that same girl breathe helps,” I huffed at him, slapping his shoulders with my hands on his back where I could reach.

“Oops.” Travis sent me an apologetic grin. “I do the same thing to my wife sometimes. She’s almost as small as you.”

I snorted. “Bet she doesn’t grumble.”

His cheeks pinked. “Yeah…”

Jude coughed into his fist, and the sound was fake as all hell. “Still holding to my point, Fatih. With those clouds closing in, you shouldn’t be going up the mountain. Not today.”

I stared at the fluffy white peaks that decorated the imposing peaks behind Red Hart’s big house in a pretty ring. “I can still see the summit, Jude. Seriously?” I eyed Travis, waiting on the landowner to weigh in. Not that I didn’t trust Jude, just that…

Okay, so the ranch foreman was known to be overprotective with pretty much everyone who crossed the land he considered his to protect by right. And I knew he was being a sweetheart, but he also hated leaving ranch land. I was about to cross well beyond anything that was considered Red Hart boundaries, even though I’d spend a good half hour driving right across the eastern boundary to enter the next territory.

Which was where I’d find Walker Roan. Eventually.

My client passed away over two years ago and I’d been emailing, messaging, calling and finally snail mailing his son since then to clear up the little matter of his twenty freaking million dollar inheritance that had been burning a hole right through my desk that entire time.

Anyone else would have been dying to get their hands on the patch of prime Montana land on the outskirts of White Cap. Anyone, apparently, except Walker Roan.

Now, it was time to collect, for both of us.

Walker Roan wouldn’t be able to ignore me when I turned up on his doorstep. Not this time.

Travis kicked up dust bunnies with the toe of his boot. “I dunno that heading up the mountain is such a good idea, Faith. Maybe wait til one of the boys can take you. If you hold out until next week, then Eve or I can go with you. Make a picnic date of it and we can all catch up together?” Hope lit his eyes.

I hated dashing it in one.

“Not you, too?” I placed a hand on his arm. “Is this even about the weather?”

The boys exchanged glances over my head. I stomped my heel in the dirt. “Don’t do that. I amnotinsignificant just because I’m a foot and a half shorter than everyone here.”

Jude snorted and ruffled my hair, the sweetheart–asshole. “No, you’re far from insignificant, Faith,” he rumbled. “But we worry about you. No one’s seen Walker in…”

“A while,” Travis put in softly. “I don’t know that he’s in any sort of consumable human state. Not for you. For all we know he’s turned into a cactus up there,” he tacked a joke onto the end of his anti-Faith-mountain-date-spiel.

A crap one.

I glared at him. “I don’t need Roan to be in a consumable state. I just need him to say yay or fucking nay, sign or come back with me, and the deal is done.”

“He won’t come back with you,” the boys chorused like twins.

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