Page 2 of Oops I Fell For The Lumberjack Next Door

"You're gonna tear that board worse if you keep yanking."

Male. Deep. Unhurried. Coming from the tree line that separates my property from the one next door.

I don't look up. "I'm fine."

"You're stuck in your own porch."

"I'm aware of my situation, thank you."

Footsteps. Heavy, deliberate, crunching over gravel and then pine needles and then gravel again as whoever this is crosses from his property onto mine. Boots appear in my peripheral vision. Big ones. Brown leather, worn at the toe, caked in mud. Working boots. Real ones.

"Let me get that." A large hand appears near my trapped leg. "If you lean back, I can break the board free without cutting you up."

I lean back. Not because he told me to, but because my shin is starting to throb. His hands grip the wood on either side of my leg, and he snaps the rotted plank with zero effort. My leg comes free with a shower of splinters, and I scramble backward on my hands until I'm sitting on the one solid section of porch, breathing hard.

"Thanks." I brush wood chips off my jeans and finally look up at my rescuer.

My whole body goes cold.

He's tall. Six foot three, maybe more, because he's looking down at me from a height that makes my neck crane. Broad shoulders in a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, forearms roped with muscle and tanned from sun. Full beard somewhere between honey and brown. Dark blond hair under a beanie, longer on top, messy because he doesn't care, not because he tried. Blue eyes. Deep, steady blue eyes that crinkle at the corners from squinting against snow glare, set in a face that was put on this earth specifically to ruin my life.

Because it was.

"Briggs Holloway." His name tastes like battery acid in my mouth.

He's already crouching to inspect the broken step, and his head comes up slowly. Those eyes meet mine, and I watch recognition land. His jaw goes tight. The easy, neighborly expression shifts into something careful.

"Margot."

Margot. No last name. No Vance, which is what he'd have known me as. As if he's been saying it inside his head for fifteen years and forgot to attach the rest.

"What are you doing here." My voice is flat. Not a question. A demand.

He stands. Full height, full breadth, blocking half the sky. "I live here."

"You live here."

"Next door." He jerks his chin toward the tree line. "Holloway Tree Farm. Grew up on it. Took over from my dad about eight years ago."

I stare at him. Briggs Holloway. Ryan Prescott's college roommate. The man who spent two years making it his personal mission to destroy the happiest relationship I'd ever had. Who showed up at our dates, who made snide comments about me to Ryan's face, who created friction at every possible opportunity until the pressure cracked us apart. Ryan ended things senior year, and I spent the aftermath convinced that Briggs Holloway had poisoned the best thing that ever happened to me.

And now he lives thirty feet from my new front door.

"No." I scramble to my feet, ignoring the sting in my shin. "No. Absolutely not."

"Margot."

"I bought this cabin because it was remote. Because it was cheap. Because I have zero connections to anyone in this town. Do you understand? Zero. None. That was the entire point."

"I didn't know you were coming."

"Well, I didn't know you were here." My voice is rising. Princess Buttercup is growling from her carrier, which means either she senses my distress or she's plotting her own escape. "Nobody mentioned the neighbor was the six foot three pain in my ass from college who single handedly destroyed my relationship."

His jaw tightens. His mouth opens, closes, and he exhales through his nose. "That's not what happened."

"Oh, that is exactly what happened." I'm shaking. Adrenaline from the porch, fury from the past, exhaustion from three hundred miles of highway, all of it flooding my veins at once. "You made it your personal project to break me and Ryan up. Every dinner, every party, every time I turned around, there you were, making sure he knew you didn't approve. And it worked. Congratulations."

Briggs doesn't argue. He stands there, six foot three of flannel and silence, watching me unravel on my broken porch with an expression I can't read. The wind moves through the trees between our properties and carries the smell of pine sap and woodsmoke, and underneath it, something warm and earthy that I refuse to identify as appealing.