Page 9 of Mountain Man's Naughty List
“Presence?”
“Yeah.” I gesture vaguely, words failing me for once. “You walk into a room and it feels like things might actually get done.”
She arches a brow. “That’s your compliment? Efficiency?”
“I’m new at this.”
Her laugh softens into a smile that hits somewhere behind my ribs.
Later, after dinner and cleanup, she curls on one end of the couch with her laptop, tapping away, while I pretend to watch a hockey game on mute. The truth is, I’m watching her reflection in the window.
The curve of her cheek when she bites her lip in concentration. The way her oversized sweater slips off one shoulder.
She’s nothing like the women I usually orbit—no designer polish, no practiced flirtation. Just warmth and wit and the kind of self-possession that makes a man rethink everything he thought he wanted.
I catch myself imagining what it would feel like to touch her, and immediately shut that down.
She’s Stevie’s best friend. My sister’sride or die.
And I’m the idiot brother she’s warned about for years.
Off-limits. Completely.
Still, as the storm whips against the windows and she smiles faintly at something on her screen, I can’t help adding one more line to the list tucked beside me.
Don’t fall for her.
I tap my pen against the paper, stare at the words a beat longer, and add beneath it?—
Already failing.
FOUR
LIZ
The next morning, I find Thatcher in the kitchen.
It’s a little after 7, and he has his flannel sleeves pushed to his elbows, showing off his muscular forearm smattered in dark hair. My belly does a somersault as he flips a pancake, muscle rippling below his skin.
He’s shaved again. The mutton-stache has been downgraded to something resembling actual facial hair. The effect is unfairly charming.
He catches me watching. “Progress, right?”
“Better,” I admit. “Still not sure you should be trusted with sharp objects.”
He grins, and for a moment the heavy cloud that’s followed him since yesterday thins. But then he turns toward the window, gaze distant, and I sense the weight settling back over him.
I dry my hands and nod toward the folded paper on the counter. “What’s the story with the list, really? You act like it’s a running joke, but you’re still checking things off.”
He stares at it a long moment. “It started as a dare to myself,” he says finally. “When I got suspended, I realized I didn’t know what to do without hockey. My whole life runs on schedules—training, travel, games. Suddenly I had two weeks and nothing to prove.”
“So you made a to-do list for being human.”
“Pretty much. Except the more I look at it, the more it feels like a confession instead of a checklist.”
I lean against the counter. “Confession to what?”
He exhales slowly. “To how lost I am. To how mad I still am about things I said were fine.”
