Page 4 of Loved By the Mountain Man

No way. I want more out of life than that.

I'm singing at the top of my lungs as my towel shimmies over my wide ass when I hear a noise in the apartment. It might be Angie bringing up a pizza for dinner. She's good like that. I don't know if it’s because she feels like she has to mother me, but I am definitely leaning into that.

I wrap the towel around me and pull open the bathroom door just as there's a loud crash.

My apartment door is wide open, and there's a man standing there. He's silhouetted against the single streetlight from the parking lot below. He looks as big as the mountain, and he's carrying an axe.

I scream.

This is what my sister warned me about when I told her I was going travelling. She warned me I’d get murdered in some small town.

The man is so big he takes up the whole door frame, his broad shoulders barely fitting in the doorway. His coat hangs open, giving me a peek of a tight T-shirt and a hint of muscles, which is weird. I didn’t expect an axe murderer to be wielding such defined pecs.You never see that in the horror movies.

The man takes a step towards me, and I scream again. There's a snow globe of the mountain sitting on the dresser, and I pick it up and launch it at him.

Unfortunately, sport has never been my strong suit.

The snow globe goes so wide he doesn’t even duck. It misses the man completely and smashes through the window beside the door. The tinkling sound of breaking glass fills the silence.

“I suppose I'm gonna have to fix that window too.”

His voice is as low and rumbly as the dark clouds rolling in off the mountain and sends my nipples into hard peaks.

Axe murders are never this sexy in the films.

But instead of moving toward me, the man-mountain slowly drops the axe. Now that I look at it properly, it's not an axe. It's a bright yellow toolbox.

He raises his hands in a placating gesture. Big hands. Rough hands. Working man's hands with calluses. The thought of those rough hands running over my skin and snagging on my nipples fills my brain so utterly that for a moment I can only gape at them.

“You're Angie's tenant, right?”

There's that voice again, low and rumbling, sending tremors through my body and causing my own personal earthquake.

He knows Angie, and I’m beginning to think he’s not here to murder me.

His eyes flick down my body. My body that's only covered in a towel.

It's a big body. I'm not complaining, but the towels here are threadbare and barely bigger than a dishcloth.

I pull the towel tighter around me, unsuccessfully attempting to cover all of my curves.

Yes,” I squeak.

“I’m Kobe,” the mountain man says. “Angie sent me to fix your door. And I guess you want that window fixed too?”

My racing heart starts to calm. He's not here to ravish me and murder me. A little part of me feels disappointed. Not at the murdering part, but a ravishing by this man? That's something I could get behind, or under as the case may be.

As realization sets in that I've just thrown a snow globe at a very sexy man who's come to do some building maintenance, my cheeks flush.

“Umm. Yeah. The lock’s broken,” I say with as much dignity as a large girl in a towel the size of a postage stamp can muster. His eyes travel down my body, and I flush under his gaze.

I'm a curvy girl and I love my body, but I can't help wondering what this man thinks of me. By the time he's taking to look me over, I have a suspicion he’s quite partial to curvy girls. Or maybe there aren’t many women on the mountain, and he is still thinking of ravishing me. My nipples perk up hopefully at the thought.

“Mind if I get to work?”

I realize I’m still staring at him, and heat rises to my cheeks.

“Sure,” I squeak. “I’m just gonna get changed.”

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