Page 3 of Forgotten Mountain Man

Because she did.

I cleared my throat. “You’re the woman who’s been asking around about me, are you?” My voice came out rough, like I hadn’t used it in a while.

She was my father’s lawyer. Attorney. Whatever. Jude mentioned her at least once in the last six months, maybe sometime earlier. It wasn’t like I kept track.

And she looked at me like my voice came out strange compared to what she was used to. Hell if I knew what the kids down at White Cap looked and sounded like. It’s not like I had regular company up here, which was kind of the point. I supposed that unless I counted yelling“Fuck!”at the generator when I dropped my screwdriver between the panels at the back last month, it had been a while since I spoke to anyone.

“I’m Faith Somerset. We have a lot to talk about.” Her hands planted on her hips and her gaze transformed into a glare in the space of seconds.

I could have sworn flame tried to roast me, too.

“Do we.” I cleared my throat again and coughed when my voice itched, but the two words still came out flat as fuck.

Faith looked less than impressed. “I called, I emailed, and I messaged. Hell, I even sent you a freaking letter.” Her voice rose at that last one with indignation.

I offered her a gentle smile to lessen the blow. “My post box is in White Cap. I haven’t been in to clean it out in years. Trav has, though.”

She stared at me. As I watched that glossy, patent heel on her left foot actually rose a few inches in slow motion then stamped back down in the epitome of a perfect, spoiled temper tantrum.

“Do you mean to tell me—” She inhaled a long, calming breath that seemed to do shit all for her, but it sure was amusing to me. “—that Travis Beaumont could have told me he’s been collecting your mail for you all this time, right before I drove all the way up your fucking mountain?”

I smirked. “For a pretty little thing, you sure have a potty mouth. It’s cute.”

Her face pinked on cue.Also cute.“I. Am. Not. Little. Or cute,” she added as an afterthought.

I let her have that one. “Didn’t Travis tell you not to come up here with the weather closing in?” I asked.

Her glare returned. “He told me you never came off the mountain. I’m here to change your mind.”

Her declaration didn’t do shit for me. “You might want to move your car before the rain starts.”

“What rain?”

A fat drop plopped right on the middle of her pert, ski-jump nose, washing away half her makeup in a second flat.

“That rain.”

The deluge started as the sky that had been clear a second before darkened. Clouds that had been hiding around the western face of the mountain swirled and blew in, blotting out the sun. Rain that started slow pattered our skin to start. Fat drops turned heavy, then sharp and icy, turning her hair into a crystalline river of flickering copper and scarlet beneath the fast fading daylight.

“You want to get inside.” I held out a hand as the wind picked up, pointing to the front of my cabin, and raised my straining voice to make myself heard over the deluge. “This is going to get torrential.”

The woman standing in the middle of my yard stared at me through her ruined makeup. “I thought they were kidding about the rain.” Her soft voice was whisked away by the wind.

Letting out a bark of a laugh that risked her wrath and probably some other version of fiery death, I grabbed her hand and towed her under the rafters of my cabin, out of the weather that seemed hell bent on giving her a fine mountain worthy greeting.

She squeaked, or made some sort of hyperactive noise that resembled a terrified animal as I pulled her close, but I only wanted to get that glorious hair out of her face. Unfortunately, my thick fingers weren’t really up to the job. I smeared what was left of her makeup across her eyes until she resembled a trash panda wearing a damp party suit.

“You’re not helping,” she muttered, folding her arms across her chest. Her breasts pushed up. I tried not to stare.

“Probably not,” I agreed, my lips twitching beneath my beard.

I sighed and shook my head. The ground shifted. I frowned, tightening my hold on the woman. She squeaked again when I pushed her back against the house, sure my luck had finally run out, but it wasn’t me who the mountain took its wrath out on.

Movement in my periphery had me lunging sideways despite my better judgment, but nothing I did would have stopped the end result, anyway. Her little white car slid backward a foot. She moved with me even as I flung an arm across her chest, knocking her backward. The ground moved, and it was too late. The tiny car that matched the tiny woman lost its battle along with the topsoil remaining on my driveway under what was probably half a year’s worth of rain in less than ten minutes since she arrived, if that.

The top of the hill collapsed, taking her car with it as she watched on in abject horror. A horrendous creak announced the vehicle’s death as it slammed into what sounded like every granite boulder on its way to the bottom of the hill.

I waited until I thought it had fallen all the way down, then coughed into my fist.

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