Page 24 of The Lumberjack and the City Slicker

And not when she’s making my pulse race like it hasn’t in years.

Chapter 4

Clara

Okay, so following some hare-brained scheme to hunt down the artist I’ve been low-key stalking online isn’t the worst idea I’ve ever had, but it’s up there.

Like the time I shaved off my eyebrows because I heard they’d grow back fuller and I wouldn’t have to pencil them in anymore.

They did not.

I walked around looking permanently surprised for three months and thanked every deity available for tinted moisturizer and the invention of hats.

Or that time I tried water fasting during a vacation with some college friends at an amusement park—because apparently I thought dehydration was a personality—and I drank an entire gallon of water right before a rollercoaster.

Then peed on myself during the big dip.

Because what the hell did I expect?

Anyway.

This—this—might actually take the crown.

Because one minute I’m walking into my kitchen and catching Geoff The Asshole having sex with his secretary on my countertop like he’s auditioning for a bad cable drama—and the next I’m on a mountain in Maine during a thunderstorm with a bear and a gruff, bearded stranger.

Which one is scarier?

I don’t know yet.

Bear—huge, loud, definitely capable of killing me.

Mountain man—also huge, loud, definitely capable of killing me if he’s not too busy judging me to death.

Right now, said mountain man has me hauled up like I weigh nothing at all.

And it’s not even “oh, she’s light” nothing.

More like “I routinely carry firewood larger than this woman” nothing.

Which is bullshit because I’m a big girl, and I know I weigh something.

One arm is hooked around my waist, his grip firm and efficient, like he’s transported countless half-frozen idiots off this mountain.

I am not going to analyze how being carried makes my stomach flip because I refuse to let my nervous system have that kind of power over me today.

I’m cold. I’m soaked. I’m barefoot.

And worse?

I’m humiliated.

Which honestly, what kind of woman am I that this embarrasses me more than my ex-fiancé cheating on me?

I should be focused on survival.

Not the fact that he smells like pine and wood smoke and something clean and masculine, like soap that doesn’t come in a bottle with gold lettering.

Or that his chest is a solid wall under my cheek when the wind hits, and my body—traitorous, pathetic—wants to lean into the warmth.