Page 111 of Snowed In With the Mountain Man
Strong and silent? Dahlia? Hardly.
“She’s not, though,” he muttered.
He hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but maybe some part of him actually did need to talk it out.
Not that he’d ever tell Boone he was right.
“She’s not what?” Kit asked.
JJ shrugged. “Strong.” He frowned. No, that wasn’t right. “I mean, she is. For other people she’s a pillar of strength…” He frowned down at the table as he tried to explain it. “She’s been through a lot, you know? And she’s had to be brave and step up. But that’s also left her…”
“Vulnerable?” Nash offered.
Kit sighed. “I knew all along that whole dragon routine was a ruse.”
Cody elbowed him. “You did not.”
JJ ignored their banter. He was too busy thinking about Dahlia. About how she’d acted in the truck. That hadn’t been her, not the real Dahlia he’d come to know. She’d activated every dang defense she had…
But why?
The answer was so clear it nearly winded him.
Because she liked him too. She’d fallen just as hard as he had… and it terrified her.
His heart twisted with affection for that complicated, sweet, loving, irritating woman.
But Nash was right too. She was vulnerable. He’d known from the first time he’d met her that she was like a spooked colt. It had taken an age to get past her prickly armor, and the fact that he had must have scared her senseless.
Because…
He gripped the table’s edge as realization struck.
Because he could hurt her.
And while he wished he could say he wouldn’t—much as he knew he didn’t want to—that didn’t change the fact that he could, whether he intended to or not.
Hadn’t his marriage to Rena taught him that? Good intentions meant little in the grand scheme of things.
But this wasn’t the same as that. This was something totally different.
He’d cared for Rena. She was his first crush, his high school sweetheart. But what he felt for Dahlia was something completely different.
It was rich and deep and—
He pushed his chair back so quickly it scraped the linoleum.
“Where are you going?” Nash asked.
“I’ve got to head back. I’ve got some thinking to do.” He stopped as he started to leave. “But thanks.”
He headed out to his truck and got back to the ranch in record time. Once there, he took Zion out of the stables and rode. He rode with no clear destination in mind, and it wasn’t until he reached the lake where they’d gone ice fishing that he stopped.
Steam billowed up from Zion’s nostrils as flurries landed on them both. From where they’d stopped, he had an epic view of the sun sinking behind the mountaintop, a burnt orange hue painting the sky.
After all that riding, one thing had become clear.
He wasn’t the kid he’d been when he’d married Rena. Sure, he was still human, and he could make mistakes, but he knew himself now. He knew what he wanted.
