Page 27 of Snowed In with Three Mountain Men

He chuckles. “Well, there’s a store in the nearest town,” he replies. “When I’ve had a few bad harvests, I’ve gone down there to replace them. I’m not too proud for that.”

“How do you make the money for it?” I wonder, the words escaping my mouth before I can stop them. I cringe as soon as I hear how they sound. “Sorry, that’s none of my business…”

“No, it’s fine, you can ask,” he replies, seemingly unbothered. “We all get payouts from the SEALs, Dax particularly, because of his injury?—”

“His injury?”

“His leg, yeah,” he replies. “He tries to cover it up, for the most part, but he…he got it bad in his hip. Struggles with it sometimes even still.”

“Oh, shit,” I mutter. I had no idea. I noticed him walking a little funny a few times, but I never thought much of it—I guess it makes sense, given that he was a SEAL too.

“And we get our dad’s military pension, as well,” he continues. “Between the four of us, that’s more than enough to live on, especially given that we own the cabin.”

“Right, of course,” I agree. “Your father owned it, right? Callum told me, when we were…”

I trail off. I don’t know how much Callum has said to them about our past, but I figure it’s best not to go laying it all out without speaking to him first. Especially when our present seems so murky.

“Yeah, he bought the place when we were kids,” Chuck replies, a small smile crossing his face. “We used to come up here all the time when we were growing up. It was his way to get away from it all. Same as us.”

The words hang heavy in the air. I still don’t know what happened to their father. I knew he’d passed, but Callum hadn’t said much more to me about it than that. I didn’t want to push him at the time, wanting instead to give him a place where he wouldn’t have to focus on all the hard stuff, but maybe I should have tried more…

“Well, you’ve done an amazing job with the place,” I remark, trying to change the subject to something a little more positive. “I don’t think I would have lasted five minutes out here, trying to live on my own.”

He laughs.

“Hey, you’d have done alright,” he teases. “You could have used your pastry chef skills. They teach you how to hunt in pastry school, right?”

“Pastry school?” I shoot back, unable to hold back a laugh. “You think that’s what it’s called?”

He shrugs. “Sue me, I’m a military guy. I don’t know shit about baking.”

“Maybe I could show you,” I offer. “And you could give me some gardening hints in return. I’m sure that’ll come in useful, when I…”

I trail off. When I what, exactly? Get back to reality? Get back to my life? It’s not like I had much of a life to get back to, even before the wedding. Shit, that’s how James made it. He never wanted me to have anything else to fall back on, and he all but succeeded. When I leave this place, I don’t have a damn thing to walk back into. I’m starting from scratch.

If James lets me live long enough to start at all, that is. A shiver runs down my spine at the thought, and Chuck seems to notice the shift in my mood.

“Sure, I can show you,” he replies smoothly. He reaches for my hand, pressing the shears into them.

I stare down at the large metal pincers, and then glance up at him. “I’m not sure you want me holding something this sharp…”

“Here, I’ll help,” he assures me, and he quickly covers my hands with his own—his hands are a little rough, calloused, but it’s not exactly an unpleasant feeling. He moves in behind me, his body mirroring mine, and I can feel the warmth of him just a few inches from me.

“Just cut away these weeds,” he explains as he guides the shears in my hands to a large sprout of greenery emerging from one of the tomato plants. I try to stay focused on the task at hand,but all I can think about is how near he is to me right now—how close I’ve been to his brothers, and how good it feels for his steady hand to be showing me just what to do.

He snips at one of the plants and it falls to the ground, bouncing off one of my boots on to the floor below.

“Not so hard, huh?” he remarks, moving my hands over to the next one.

“Not so hard,” I agree. I can feel his breath on the back of my neck. Is he doing that on purpose? Is he even aware of it? I wish I had the nerve to ask him, but saying it out loud would be all kinds of stupid and all kinds of dangerous, given how complicated things already are.

“You think you can manage this one on your own?”

I bite my lip. I probably could, of course. It’s not exactly rocket science. All I have to do is make sure I don’t spear myself on the end of these shears somehow, and I’m going to be just fine. But instead…

Instead, I find myself wanting him close to me. Needing it. Which I know is crazy, given what’s already happened between Dax and Callum and me, but…

But I can’t help it.

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