Page 101 of Beastly Mountain Man

Bear padded in behind him and headed for the rug.

Lucky looked across the room at me.

That was all it took.

I was already smiling when I went to meet him.

“You’re cold,” I said, sliding my arms around his waist.

“Occupational hazard.”

His jacket was chilled beneath my hands, but when he bent to kiss me, the cold stopped mattering. His beard brushed my cheek, his lips were warm, and he smelled like pine, clean winter air, and the faint woodsmoke that seemed to settle into every coat on Fire Mountain by December.

I kissed him again before he could straighten.

Lucky smiled against my mouth. “That kind of welcome could make a man drag out his rounds.”

“Don’t you dare. I’ve been home waiting for you.”

Lucky’s arms tightened around me for another second before he looked past my shoulder toward the kitchen. “Something smells good.”

“I did the potatoes,” I said. “They’ve been in the oven for twenty minutes, and so far they look exactly like potatoes are supposed to look.”

His mouth twitched. “I’m impressed. You’ve come a long way since you called to ask whether a simmer was supposed to look nervous.”

“It did look nervous, and the soup recovered.”

Lucky laughed, low and warm, then kissed my forehead before finally stepping away to strip off his jacket and cap. He hung both in the mudroom, kicked the snow from his boots onto the mat, and rubbed Bear’s head as the dog passed him on his way to collapse near the woodstove.

“How were the upper rentals?” I asked.

“Full and quiet. One guest needed help with a frozen lock on a storage box. Somebody else put a cardboard pizza box too close to a fireplace, so I moved it before it became a problem.”

I winced. “At least nobody lost their pizza.”

“No. Dinner survived.”

He crossed back to me with that patient smile I’d fallen in love with long before I had any idea what I was going to do about it.

“What about you?” he asked. “How’d the call go?”

“Good. We moved one location day, cut a setup that wasn’t earning its cost, and solved a timing problem that would’ve wrecked Thursday.”

Lucky nodded once and reached for my waist, drawing me close enough that my sweater brushed the front of his thermal shirt.

“Then I got home at the right time.”

“You did.”

His fingers settled against my back. “You hungry?”

“Yes. The potatoes are almost done, the green beans are washed, and I left the rest to you.”

“That works for me.”

Lucky smiled and kissed me once, slow enough that I forgot the potatoes for several dangerous seconds.

Then the oven timer sounded.