Page 6 of Claimed By the Mountain Man

“Uh, okay. What do you want to talk about?” I asked.Ugh! I was so bad at this!

“You, of course. Tell me about yourself,” he said

Oh, fuck me. My least favorite subject.“What do you want to know?” There was so much I just wasn’t ready to share with him… or with anyone, for that matter.

“How did you get into making custom furniture? Is that what you’ve always done for a living?”

I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. And he looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “I’m sorry. It’s not really funny… well, to anyone but me, that is. I’ve really only been doing the custom woodworking as an actual career for the last couple of years. Since I moved here, really. Before that, it was very much a hobby. And barely that. It was always what I wanted to be doing, but I just didn’t have the time to devote to it.”

Cooper leaned in even further, seeming to be genuinely interested in my story. “So, what changed? How did it go from barely a hobby to a lucrative career?”

“Well, I don’t know that I would call it lucrative exactly,” I hedged.

“Oh, stop being modest. From what I hear around town, you’ve done quite well for yourself. And your custom pieces have a reputation for being works of art, practically.”

I couldn’t help but blush a little at the compliment.Geez! When was the last time someone actually made me blush? Oh, that’s right. It was this handsome asshole the last time I was in here.

“You’ve been asking about me?” I asked, a little flabbergasted at the realization.

He, on the other hand, wasn’t bothered in the least. “Of course. How else was I going to find out about you? Nothing beats the town gossip mill for getting all the important details. And most of the time, they’re even right.”

“Well, if you know so much, why don’t you tell me? By all means, tell me all about me.” I couldn’t help smirking at him just a little bit.

“I’d love to, but other than a few bits about your business, I’m afraid the gossip mill let me down. It seems you like to keep to yourself, mister. You don’t even really talk to anyone when you come in here. Why is that?”

I shifted a little uncomfortably at the scrutiny. “I just enjoy my privacy, that’s all. I didn’t have a lot of that in my previous life.”

“Your previous life? You make it sound like you’ve gone into the witness protection program or something.”

I chuckled at that. “Nothing so drastic as that. I just changed careers, moved house, and cut ties with my father.”

“Uh, maybe it’s just me with my boring, small-town upbringing, but that sounds like the definition of drastic to me. Maybe not witness protection drastic, but still. I’m afraid I’m going to need you to elaborate on that a little bit, please.”

I sighed, not sure if I really wanted to reveal all of my past to this man. I definitely wasn’t ready to tell him about Jonah and Claire, but I could maybe tell him about the rest.

“I come from a very wealthy family in Chicago. A very stodgy, ultra-conservative, all-up-in-my-business, old-money family who take themselves way too seriously, in my opinion. You asked earlier about how I got into making custom furniture. Well, my grandfather—my mother’s father—taught me all about woodworking when I was a kid. I used to spend summers with him occasionally.” My mind was suddenly inundated with memories of my grandpa—his warm smile, the smell of sawdust and that damned pipe he used to smoke at night.God, I missthat man. “You see, my mother didn’t come from money. Her family was comfortable, but not wealthy by any means. The wealth comes from my father’s side of the family. Him marrying my mother was probably the most scandalous thing to happen in that family for generations.”

“Ooooh, juicy. Do go on.” Cooper was fully leaned in now, hands resting under his chin. He looked like a child being told the best bedtime story ever.He was so damned cute!

“My father was expected to marry someone from the same social circles, someone his family approved of and vetted. But he met my mom while they were both attending Stanford, and they just clicked immediately. He was in law school, and she was still an undergrad there on scholarship. They started dating and by all accounts, they fell hard for each other—hard enough that my father actually stood up to his family. It’s still the only thing I’ve ever really respected him for.” Cooper looked like he really wanted to ask why I didn’t respect my father but was holding himself back from doing it. And from the look on his face, he was just barely accomplishing it. I had to hold in a chuckle at his obvious struggle. “Anyway, he asked her to marry him, and they eloped to Vegas. It caused quite the scandal, and apparently my father was nearly disowned. He was an only child, though, so he was the sole heir. In the end, they just gave him the cold shoulder for a while and then moved on. Although, his family never did fully accept my mother, even though they were married for over twenty-five years.”

“Wow! It’s like a real-life version of Dynasty,” Cooper said, winking at me.

I guffawed at that, but I guess he was actually kind of right. “Yeah, well. Back to the happier topic of my grandfather. Believe it or not, he was actually originally from Missoula, Montana.”

“No way,” Cooper chuckled as he shook his head in disbelief.

“Yes, way.” I laughingly replied. “The cabin that I’m living in actually belonged to him. He bought it near the end of his life, but sadly never got the chance to live in it. He left it to me in his will. Anyway, when I went to visit him as a child and as a teenager, he taught me all about woodworking. I fell in love with it immediately. I couldn’t get enough of it. I would have been more than happy to have followed in his footsteps and made it a career right off the bat. My mistake was telling my father that, because he definitely had other career plans in mind for me. He told me no son of his was going to do blue-collar work.”

“What a prick!” Cooper interjected before I could continue. He was fuming on my behalf. I couldn’t say I didn’t like the idea. But once he realized how he’d actually insulted my father, he tried to backtrack. “I-I’m sorry, Gage. I had no right to talk about your father that way.”

I just laughed. “No, you’re right. He was a prick. Still is, I assume. We were already clashing over other issues, and this just drove the proverbial nail in the coffin of our father-son relationship. You know what the worst part of all of it was?”

Cooper just shook his head, still listening with rapt attention.

“My father never let me spend summers with my grandfather again. I rarely saw him in the years before he died. And it absolutely gutted me. I loved him so much, but my father thought he was a bad influence on me. Not even my mom could talk him out of it. And she almost always got her way with him. I never forgave him for that. I never will.”

“My gosh, Gage. I’m so sorry you had to go through that—that your fatherputyou through that.” Cooper reached over andlaid his hand atop mine, turning it over and giving it a gentle squeeze. And my heart just about melted right out onto the floor.This man.

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