Page 2 of Consumed By The Forbidden Mountain Man

The line goes dead before I can respond. Like he needed to get that last part out but couldn't stick around for the conversation it might start.

Unnecessary. Tony's sister is a kid in my head. Ponytail, braces, fourteen years old, following us around at a Caruso family Christmas in Sacramento begging to play football with the big kids. Tony's parents moved there when Ivy was still little, and I'd tag along with Tony for holidays when I didn't have anywhere better to be. I haven't seen her since she was maybe twenty. She came to visit Tony in Whisper Vale one weekend, brought cookies, wore a sundress. I remember the cookies were good. That's it.

I drain the beer, rinse the bottle, and go to bed in the guest room.

Tomorrow I've got framing on the Henderson remodel, a materials run to Reno, and apparently a twenty-six-year-old to look after.

Should be simple.

Nothing about Ivy Caruso is simple.

She pulls up at two-fifteen in a white Honda Civic with California plates, a cracked windshield, and a bumper sticker that says MERCURY IS ALWAYS IN RETROGRADE IF YOU'RE DRAMATIC ENOUGH. The car looks like it survived the trip by sheer force of will.

I'm on the porch of my cabin replacing a rotted step because I couldn't sit still after getting back from the Henderson job, and I hear the engine before I see it. It sounds tired. Transmission's slipping. She needs new brake pads based on the squeal when she stops.

The driver's door opens and a woman gets out.

Not a kid. Not fourteen. Not twenty.

Ivy Caruso is grown.

She stretches, arms over her head, and the oversized sweater she's wearing rides up to show a strip of soft brown skin above the waistband of her jeans. Full hips. Curves that have nothing to do with the scrawny teenager in my memory. Dark hair, long and loose past her shoulders, catching October sunlight. She's wearing sunglasses she pushes up on top of her head, and when she turns toward my cabin, I see her face clearly for the first time in six years.

Big brown eyes. Full mouth. A face that's open and expressive and absolutely nothing like the little sister I agreed to watch over.

Tony's warning lands different now.

She spots me on the porch and her whole face changes. Lights up. Dimples. "Oh my God. Reid?"

I stand, setting the hammer on the railing. "Ivy."

She crosses the gravel between our cabins in about four seconds, moving with the energy of someone who does everything at full speed. She's shorter than I expected. Five-four, maybe. Has to tilt her head back to look up at me.

"You got old," she says.

"Thanks."

"I mean, in a good way. Like, distinguished. Silver at the temples. Very George Clooney if George Clooney swung a hammer for a living." She waves a hand at my face. "The whole thing works."

I stare at her. "You done?"

"Probably not." She grins. "Tony said you'd be here. He also said you'd be grumpy about the babysitting thing. His words, not mine."

"I'm not grumpy."

"You're holding a hammer and frowning."

"I was fixing a step."

"With that expression?"

She's got a mouth on her. Tony warned me, but hearing it is different from being warned. Every sentence comes out fast, bright, slightly too honest. And she's looking at me with this open amusement that makes my chest feel tight in a way I'm choosing not to examine.

"Cabin's next door." I nod toward the smaller cabin through the pines. "Tony left the key under the mat."

"Classic. Very secure."

"Whisper Vale isn't exactly a crime hotspot."