Page 4 of Sugar-Shacked with the Mountain Man
"No bra," I observe, the words almost catching in my throat.
She flushes. "It got wet. I took it off with the suit."
The thought of her naked under my shirt nearly undoes me. But even as my body screams to take this further, some rational part of my brain applies the brakes.
"Sophie, wait." I pull back, breathing hard. "We need to slow down."
Her eyes are dark with desire, lips swollen from my kisses. "Why?"
"Because you're here on business. Because this complicates everything. Because..." I struggle to find words that don't sound like excuses. "Because you deserve better than being pushed against a wall in a sugar shack by some mountain man you barely know."
She reaches up, her fingers tracing the line of my jaw. "What if that mountain man is exactly what I want?"
"Sophie..."
"I know this is complicated. I know we're supposed to be on opposite sides. But I've never felt anything like this before." Her honesty is like a sucker punch. "Have you?"
"No," I admit, because lying to her seems impossible. "Never."
"Then maybe we don't have to figure it all out tonight. Maybe we can just... see what happens."
She's right, but it doesn't make this any less terrifying. I've built my life around certainty, around protecting what matters. Sophie represents chaos, change, everything I've been fighting against. She's also the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, standing in my clothes with firelight dancing across her face.
"Just... slow down," I say finally. "I don't want to rush this and ruin something that might be important."
Her smile is radiant. "Slow works for me."
But when she rises on her toes to kiss me again, soft and sweet and full of promise, I realize that slow might be the hardest thing I've ever attempted.
We spend the evening talking by the fire in the sugar shack, sharing stories carefully edited to avoid the landmine of why she's really here. I learn that she grew up in Toronto, that she's never lived anywhere with more trees than buildings, that she makes terrible coffee but somehow always ends up being the one to make it in her office.
She learns that I've never lived anywhere else, that I can identify tree species by their bark, that I once spent three days straight in this sugar shack during a blizzard when I was twelve because my dad wanted to teach me that maple syrup waits for no one.
"Three days?" she asks, curled up on the old couch I dragged in here years ago. "How did you not go stir-crazy?"
"I had books. Comics. And Dad told stories about every piece of equipment in here, every improvement he and his father made over the years." I stoke the fire, watching sparks dance up the chimney. "This place has more history in it than most museums."
"Tell me about your favorite story."
I settle beside her, close enough to catch that floral scent that's been driving me crazy. "When I was eight, there was a late spring storm that knocked out power for a week. Dad fired up the old wood-burning evaporator—the one before the gas model—and we made syrup the way his grandfather did. Just him and meand the fire and forty gallons of sap that needed to become syrup before it spoiled."
"Did you make it?"
"Barely. We took turns sleeping, checking the fire every hour. When we finally finished that batch, Dad said it was the best syrup he'd ever tasted. Not because of the sugar content or the color grade, but because we'd made it together the old way."
Sophie is quiet for a long moment. "That's beautiful."
"What?"
"Having something like that. A connection to your family, to the past. Something bigger than just yourself."
There's something wistful in her voice that makes me study her face. "You don't have that?"
"My parents divorced when I was ten. Dad moved to Vancouver, started a new family. Mom worked two jobs to keep us afloat." She shrugs, but I can see the old hurt in her eyes. "No family traditions. No stories passed down through generations. Just survival."
"Is that why you're so driven? The corner office, the promotion?"
She tenses slightly. "Partly. Financial security feels different when you've grown up without it."
