Page 11 of The Mountain Man's Irresistible Bride
“It’s not. This thing between us is not real. We can’t let it distract from what matters.”
She hugs the blanket to her chest and nods again. “Understood.”
I turn away before I can say something I’ll regret. Before I can beg her to look at me the way she did last night. If I let myself believe this is more than it is, I’ll lose control, and I can’t afford that. Not with Wren arriving any day now.
I throw myself into the construction, hammering nails with punishing force. The living room expansion is framed in. The bedroom is done. Wren’s room just needs curtains and shelves. It should feel like progress, like I’m doing the right thing. Instead, every bang of the hammer echoes like guilt.
Every time I glance at the window and see Juniper moving around inside, my chest tightens. She’s keeping busy. Organizing the pantry. Scrubbing the baseboards. Cleaning a house that still doesn’t feel like a home.
Not yet.
Not without her laughter, her smile, the way she’d looked up at me last night like I was the only man for her. I ruined that. I ruined her. I couldn’t keep my hands off her. I wanted her more than I wanted to be safe.
It’s late afternoon before I head inside for water. As I stand in the kitchen, I hear her voice from the living room.
“I’m surviving my mountain marriage,” she says with a soft laugh. “It’s rustic and dusty, and loud with all the building going on, but I’m making it work.”
The words hit like a sucker punch. I freeze just outside the archway.
“I haven’t planted anything,” she says. “Yet.”
There’s laughter on the other end of the line. I think she’s talking to her friend, Emily, the one who called when she first got here.
“I’ll send you pictures later,” she continues. “It’s actually kind of beautiful here. Small town. Big trees. Even bigger man.”
My jaw tightens. She sounds so casual, so detached, like none of this means anything. I know that I keep telling her it isn’t a real marriage, but some perverse part of me doesn’t want her to stop trying to make it one.
“I don’t know if I’d call him charming,” she says. “Grumpy as hell, but he built me a huge closet and didn’t complain once about my three bags of shoes, so maybe there’s hope.”
Hope.
I retreat before I can hear anything else. Hope? There’s no damn hope in a fake marriage. No future in pretending. No peace in knowing she’s just surviving me.
The rest of the day is a blur of motion. I finish framing the living room walls, my hands working on instinct alone. My mind stays on her. On the way she looked this morning, the way she laughed on the phone, on everything I can’t say, and everything I want anyway.
I think about her skin, warm and flushed under the early light. How she trusted me, completely, and I pushed her away. Still, I want to drag her right back.
I think about the lie I told her, the one about it being a mistake, and I wonder which one of us I was trying to convince.
At dinner, she’s quiet. Polite, but distant. She serves up bowls of stew without meeting my eyes. I try to thank her, but the words stick in my throat.
She eats in silence. I watch her from the corner of my eye, aching to say something, anything, but I don’t. I already said too much.
When she stands to take her bowl to the sink, I open my mouth and close it again. She doesn’t wait for me to speak.
“I’m going to bed,” she says softly.
I nod. “Okay.”
She disappears down the hall, her footsteps light. I don’t follow.
Instead, I stare at the empty porch swing through the back door. The moonlight spilling over the railing. The same place where I touched her, took her, and held her.
And now? Now I’m the one left cold. She’s right. She’s surviving this marriage, and I’m the one who’s sinking in it. If I don’t pull myself out soon, I’m going to drown.
Chapter Seven
Juniper
