She came to stand beside me at the railing, keeping a careful distance between us. Smart.
Because if she’d stood any closer, I’d have had my hands on her hips, her ass, the soft swell of her stomach. Would have pulled her in front of me and pressed her against the railing and let her feel exactly what she was doing to me.
We stood there in silence, watching the sunset. She didn’t fill the quiet with chatter this time. Just stood there, breathing, existing in my space like she belonged there.
“This view,” she finally said. “I can’t imagine ever getting used to it.”
“You don’t.”
She glanced at me. “How long have you lived here, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“About five years.”
“And before that?”
“I lived in the city. I got tired of smelling the exhaust fumes every time I walked out my door. The rat race, run by men who take that seriously.”
“What kind of rat race?”
“Architecture. Commercial design. Big firm, bigger clients. I was good at it.” A pause. “Good enough that I could afford to stop. I figured out pretty fast that what I’d been building there wasn’t anything I wanted to come home to.”
“So you built this?”
“I built this.”
She leaned her arms on the railing. I tried not to look, but I failed. The posture flared her hips out behind her, stretching the denim of her shorts tight over her round, heavy ass. It was a brutal temptation. My palms practically ached to slide under the hem of those shorts, to feel the heat of her bare thighs and pull her flush against my groin so she could feel exactly how hard she’d made me.
“So what are you searching for, Roxie?”
She smiled up at me. “Probably the same thing you were. I just decided to go about it differently. Plus, I have no chainsaw skills.” She cast a playful, sideways glance at me, her eyes dancing.
“Those are important if you plan to live in the wild.”
She snorted. “I would not call this living in the wild, Bridger.”
“Just wait until a bear meanders onto the deck and tell me that.”
“Meanders?” One of her dark eyebrows rose.
“We have very calm bears here on Lone Mountain.”
“Good to know.”
“I guess I better feed you.”
“That would be greatly appreciated.” Again, with that megawatt smile.
I waited a moment before following her back inside.
She was just a guest. A stranger who needed a place to stay.
Nothing more.
Even if every instinct in my body was screaming the opposite.
Even if I already knew, deep in my bones, that letting her leave was going to be the hardest thing I’d ever done.
What you find, you keep.