Page 27 of The Strongest Wolf

“We’re here. Let’s go,” he says, unsnapping his seatbelt.

I scan our rural surroundings. There’s little else but trees and wildlife around us. “And here is…?”

He shoots me a glance but doesn’t say a word. Just grabs the bag of pastries from my lap and shoves his door open.

Here, I learn after following him up the mountain for a good fifteen minutes, turns out to be something I never could have imagined.

“Galen,” I whisper, my eyes fixed on the snow-topped mountains in the distance.

Holy crap, this is amazing.

“Yep?”

“Am I looking at the Rockies?”

Galen snags my free hand and tugs me over to a tall tree just ahead before sinking to the ground. I’m happy to join him when my bare feet sink into grass so soft and spongy that we don’t even need a blanket. “Yep, Dayne told me about this place.”

“When?”

“After the run last night. He told me if I needed to take you to a place with a view, I should bring you here.”

Lifting my coffee to my lips, I nod. “Who’d have thought the cold-blooded alpha would be a romantic?”

“A romantic?” Galen asks with a smile in his voice. “And I think those might have just been rumors. False ones.”

A pastry enters my line of vision, and I take it, still absorbing the picture-postcard beauty of the mountain range. “All that’s missing is a proposal.”

And then it hits me what I just said.

Shit.

Silence.

“A proposal, huh?”

I brave a quick peek at him. Unlike my cross-legged position, he’s resting his back against the tree, but he’s not eating. Just sitting with his legs stretched out in front of him, arms crossed, and his full attention on me. The hint of a smile tugs at the corners of his lips.

“That doesn’t mean I’m expecting one,” I tell him. “I was just summing up the mood. That’s all.”

He nods. “Well, there’s no need to fear a proposal is coming. This is just breakfast with a nice view.”

My eyes narrow. “Way to kill the mood, Hunt.”

His lips twitch with mirth. “Eat your pastry.”

“And then?” I ask, not unhappy to get back to stuffing my face with what has to be the most delicious apple pie I’ve ever had in my life. The flaky pastry is so rich and buttery that it has to be homemade.

He shifts his gaze from me to the nice view. “And then I’ll see what I can do about returning you to that romantic mood.”

Despite the pulse of arousal that his words provoke, my hand tightens around my coffee. “We’re in a public forest, Galen.”

“Are we?” he asks, all innocence.

He doesn’t mean it. He can’t possibly intend for us to… can he?

But as I study him, reclining against a tree, as relaxed as I’ve ever seen him, I can’t be sure.

“Sierra.” He nods at my pastry. “Eat.”

---