Page 1 of Frosty Mountain Man

CHAPTER ONE

Elle

The road to Harrison Cole’s mountain didn’t so much wind as dare me to keep driving. Curve after curve with gravel spitting under tires that weren’t made for this. Pine trees crowded so close to the sides of the road I could’ve reached out and touched them if I’d been stupid enough to roll down the window. I gripped the wheel of my ten-year-old sedan and told myself, for the fortieth time, that this was just a job.

Get the approval done. Drive back down. Don’t think about the fact that my boss had been acting strange for two weeks. His usually southern gentleman charm was overshadowed by distraction and impatience. And sending me up here himself instead of one of his top executives? Not normal behavior.

I was on my way to see Harrison Cole, Robert’s grandson and the estranged CEO of Cole Industries. I’d only heard the water cooler version of what happened and I took that with a whole shaker full of salt. When people gossiped the truth usually got lost in some overly prosy version of the truth.

Landing a job at Cole Industries had appeared to be a godsend. Now I wasn’t so certain as my car fought hard to keep my toes warm. But, I’d taken worse jobs. Jobs that paid less and asked for far more. Jobs where men twice my age looked at my curves and my secondhand blazer and decided I wasn’t there to be just an assistant. I’d learned a long time ago, growing up in a singlewide outside Billings with a mother who worked doubles and a father who didn’t work at all, that the world didn’t hand you anything. You went and got it, and you smiled while you did it so nobody could say you weren’t grateful.

I’d also learned exactly one type of man I couldn’t stomach, and it was the kind who thought a name or a bank balance excused bad manners. I’d met enough of those at Cole Industries to fill a phone book. I was hoping Harrison Cole wasn’t going to be one of them. Robert never talked about his grandson like a man drowning in his own ego — just a man who’d built a wall and didn’t plan on knocking it down for anyone.

So I would be professional. I would get his approval. I would leave.

The cabin, when it finally appeared through the trees, was not a cabin. Maybe a cabin McMansion, but not what any ordinary person would refer to as a cabin. While it blended into the landscape, I couldn’t help the shiver that ran through me. It appeared cold and uninviting.

Which was exactly what I expected from the man I was about to meet.

I parked, smoothed my skirt down, grabbed my briefcase, and walked up to the door. I knocked. Waited the appropriate amount of time, then knocked again. I did not want to sound impatient, even though I really was.

The door opened on the third knock, and my rehearsed greeting died on my lips.

The man standing before me was big. Not gym-big, not trying-too-hard big. Broad through the shoulders in a way that made the doorway look smaller, dark hair pushed back like he’d stopped noticing it needed cutting, and a mouth built for exactly one expression, and it wasn’t welcome. Flannel sleeves were shoved up to his forearms with a dusting of dark hair over tanned skin.

I’d been expecting boardroom elegance. Instead, I got this.

He looked at me the way you’d look at something that had wandered onto his porch uninvited. Zero interest. Zero welcome.

Then he shut the door in my face.

I blinked several times, certain that had not just happened.

But the solid oak door in front of me told a different story.

Of course, being the stubborn soul that I was, I knocked again — harder this time. “I’m Elle Marsh, from your grandfather’s office. I should warn you, I am not going to leave until you talk to me.”

I could practically hear him weighing his options on the other side of that door — ignore me, or deal with me. Another gust of wind washed over me, making me shiver in my second-hand heels. I called through the door again.

“I have the—”

The door opened. “No.”

I took a step forward just in case he decided to slam the door in my face again. To be fair, he hadn’t exactly slammed the door, more like closed it with an attitude. “The approval on the Ridgeline project, if you could just… wait. No?”

“No.” He said it like a complete sentence. Which, I was starting to gather, for him it probably was.

“You haven’t even seen what I brought.”

His gaze flicked down my front, quick, like he was calculating how much effort it would take to push me off his doorstep.

“I didn’t read the last one he sent. I’m not reading this one.”

I almost didn’t register his words, a little lost in that dark gaze.

We both knew who the he was in that sentence. His grandfather. My boss. I’d heard rumors at least three other people had been sent up the mountain before me. And came back down the mountain empty-handed.

“Didn’t you listen to the weather report before coming here?” His eyes did another scan of my body and I barely resisted the urge to suck in my stomach. But I couldn’t help but catch the fact that his eyes lingered half a second too long on the way my blouse strained across my chest. I cursed the way my nipples hardened and the heat that shot straight between my legs. Great. Now I was turned on, freezing, and thoroughly annoyed about both.