Page 8 of Owned By the Mountain Man

I’ve never had a break-in, never had a reason to worry about one. But with Laura next to me, I suddenly have someone I would protect and defend with every breath in my body. That’s why I pull her into a crouch on the floor. My arms—hell, my whole body—goes around hers.

These intruders can take anything they want. I’ll even give them the combination to the safe for my shop in town where they’ll find a couple million in designer watches. But they can’t take my girl. I’ll never give her up.

“What the hell, Nash?” Trace’s voice is the first to register in my brain. He’s my friend who lives not too far down the road. He makes metal art that he welds together. He won’t brag about it, but I happen to know he’s in high demand by some of the wealthiest art collectors. Too bad he hides out and doesn’t let anyone know who he is. I suspect it has something to do with that limp of his, a childhood injury he never talks about.

I turn toward the sound of his voice. My own tone is indignant when I ask, “What are you doing here?”

“You sent a text message to the group that you’d found the intruder and stopped responding,” Roman answers, an edge of annoyance clear in his voice. It’s then I realize what this is. It’s not a break-in. It’s a rescue mission. My friends braved the snowstorm, thinking that I needed aid.

“So, these are your friends?” Laura asks and I can feel the tension bleeding from her muscles.

“These are friends,” I reassure her, not taking my arms from around her. She’s shaking, a slight tremor going through her body. I can’t explain it, but I can’t let her go. Not when she needs comfort and soothing. I’ll always be the man who does that. “That’s Trace by the back door and Roman is at the front.”

“Trace?” She asks then gives a soft chuckle that sounds relieved. “He’s the one that helps you sometimes.”

“Brennon and Blade are here too,” Roman announces. He owns a construction company that he started after he got out of prison. He’s the one I consulted on when I built this cabin, and I’m the one who convinced him to move out to Courage County.

Brennon grunts by way of greeting. A stroke took his ability to speak easily. He can communicate in small sentences sometimes. But when situations are stressful or urgent, it can be hard for him to grasp the right words.

He recently married after showing up at his brother’s wedding. He couldn’t stand the way his brother talked down to his soon-to-be bride, so Brennon punched him in the nose and took his bride for his own. Now, he spends his days chasing his wife around their cabin.

“Whelp, this is already turning into a slumber party,” Blade says. “I’m out. Call someone else if you girls need your hair braided.”

No doubt he’s eager to get back to his archery. Blade is a recent transfer to our mountain and there are only two things he cares about. Shooting arrows and drinking whiskey. The first is impressive because he only has one arm. The second is impressive because I’ve never found someone who could drink more. He’s built like a mountain himself and can drink all of us under the table.

Two sets of footsteps retreat from my cabin at the same time that Laura shivers in my arms. It pisses me off that she’s cold. It pisses me off even more that my friends were the cause of it. “What are you two chucklefucks going to do about this? You’ve taken my doors off in the middle of a fuckin’ blizzard.”

“Keep your shirt on, pretty boy. We’ll get it fixed,” Roman says. “This is kid’s stuff.”

“Right now,” I stress. The temperature inside the cabin is dropping rapidly. While I don’t mind the freeze, I can’t stand the idea that Laura and my guys are cold. That’s not acceptable to me.

“Yes, Dad,” Trace mocks.

I ignore him and pick Laura up. Despite her curvy frame, she’s easy for me to lift. She’s light and delicate, and I love the feeling of her huddled against my chest. Yeah, this curvy thief has taken more than my watch. She’s taken my heart, and the thing about it is that I don’t ever want it back. It’s hers for life.

6

LAURA

“It’ll getwarm in here soon,” Nash promises as the fire begins to crackle. I’m in his bedroom again, tucked on the bed under his blankets. I swear he searched the whole cabin until he brought me every blanket he owned.

My teeth chatter, and I glance down at Frankie and Beans who are on the bed next to me. As soon as I was piled high with blankets, he pulled out the sweaters. I helped dress Beans by copying what he was doing with Frankie.

Nash tells me that Frenchies are especially sensitive to the cold. I’d believe it too. They have a bigger wardrobe than Nash does. Dozens and dozens of sweaters plus booties in all different colors. He even has their wardrobe sorted by season. It’s pretty obvious that he adores his boys and loves to dote on them.

It makes me wonder what kind of father he’d be. Definitely the involved kind. He’d take his kids hiking and teach them to mimic the bird calls. He’d show his children how to start a fire and bring them camping. Most of all, he’d love them with that big heart of his.

The sounds of the drill whirring from another room interrupt my family daydreams. Trace and Roman got the back door fixed quickly and easily. It had far less splintering than the front door.

Since I realized that Trace is Nash’s friend and not a girlfriend, I’ve felt a lot more relaxed. There’s no longer that feeling that I can’t breathe when I take a deep breath. “It sounds like they’re making progress.”

“Yeah, well, they’re idiots,” Nash says as he stands and faces the bed. He’s been snorting around ever since he realized I was cold. But that couldn’t possibly be why he’s upset. No, I think it has more to do with the damage to his beautiful cabin.

“It’s nice that you have friends who came to bail you out,” I offer to distract him from thinking like that. Maybe they did something dumb, but I love that they were so determined to get to Nash that they’d risk their own lives in the middle of this winter storm. “I’ve never had that.”

“You have me now, and I have your back,” he declares. But I know what he’s not saying. We have each other for this snowstorm. Then the snow will melt, and I’ll have to disappear out of his life. The thought makes me ache.

My stomach growls, breaking the tension. It’s the middle of the afternoon and with everything that happened, food was the last thing on my mind. But clearly, my body remembers that I should eat.

---