Page 3 of The Mountain Man's Mail Order Muse
Hell, maybe I’ll just pay her off. Give her enough cash to get her a plane ticket and a spa weekend for her trouble. She’ll probably be relieved.
I walk to the window and peek through the curtain. Nothing yet. Just pine trees and that gravel road winding down the mountain like it has nowhere to go. Maybe the agency figured it out. Maybe Luke told them I’m not interested. Maybe this whole thing gets called off before I even have to face it.
Then I hear a knock.
I freeze.
The sound echoes through the cabin like a thunderclap. It’s soft and polite, not some frantic pounding. But it might as wellbe a gunshot. My blood goes cold. My stomach knots. My hand clenches around the curtain before I even realize I’ve moved.
She’s here.
I don’t move. Don’t breathe. I consider just… not answering.
I could wait it out. Maybe she’ll think she has the wrong place. Maybe she’ll walk back down the path and someone else will take her in. Some other lonely idiot with an empty house and a desperate heart.
Notme.
I stare at the door like I’m expecting it to open on its own. It stays shut, but I swear I can hear someone breathing on the other side.
Do I really owe her an explanation? I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t sign anything. Hell, I didn’t even know her name until today. Daisy. That’s what Luke said.
Daisy.
I curse under my breath and rub the back of my neck. That name alone sounds like trouble.
She knocks again. Still soft. Still patient.
I close my eyes, jaw clenched tight enough to crack a molar.
Don’t answer it.Just walk away.
I stand there like a statue, every inch of me buzzing. Is it dread? Curiosity. Maybe both.
And even though I tell myself this isn’t my problem, that she’ll leave if I ignore her long enough… my hand is already reaching for the doorknob.
CHAPTER
TWO
DAISY
I pressmy forehead against the cold glass of the bus window, watching the pine trees blur past me. My cat, Pickles, is curled up on my lap, purring softly, warm and oblivious to the fact that our lives are about to completely change—or implode. Honestly, it could go either way.
I’ve got forty-three dollars in my pocket, a backpack full of clothes that smell like the laundromat, and no idea what I’m doing.
Well. That’s not true.
Idoknow what I’m doing.
I’m going to meet my husband.Husband.
The word still tastes strange in my mouth, like a foreign country whose language I don’t speak but agreed to live in. I pull the zipper down on my jacket and scratch behind Pickles’s ears, trying not to spiral.
I met with the Mountain Mates matchmaker in a little strip mall office next to a pawn shop and a vape store. The sign on the door was crooked, and the “A” in “Mountain” was a triangle drawn with a black Sharpie. I probably should’ve run right then.
But I didn’t. Because I had nowhere else to go.
Marcy, the matchmaker, was all smiles and bubble gum. She wore a cardigan with little sheep on it and had a photo of her “happy couple of the month” framed behind her desk, but there was something just a little…off.Something about her eyes. Like she could spot a woman with no options from a hundred miles away. And I was her perfect mark.
