Page 28 of Her Mountain Man Protector

"For the record," I say, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand because I'm still me, "that was excellent. Don't make a habit of being right before dinner either."

"I wasn't teaching you how to kiss."

"Could've fooled me."

He shakes his head, a reluctant almost-smile ruining the scowl, and goes to the window because that's where he puts the feelings he hasn't named yet. I go to the bed against the far wall and sit on the edge, lips still buzzing, wrists still remembering his thumbs, and I start planning what I'm wearing to a mill after dark that isn't yellow and isn't going to survive another lesson if he keeps looking at me that way.

9

Colt

Dark takes the mountain early this time of year, and I use every minute of it getting her down the hidden driveway with the headlights off until the trees swallow the house behind us. Oakley sits in the passenger seat with the receipt folded in her hoodie pocket and her mouth still swollen from my mouth, and I keep both hands on the wheel because the alternative is pulling over and finishing what I started against that table.

I want her. That's the plain fact riding in the cab with us. I kissed her. I backed her into foil and muffins and a mission I was supposed to be running, and now my blood hasn't settled and the mill is twenty minutes of river road I have to survive without putting my palm on her thigh.

"You're grinding your teeth," she says.

"I'm driving."

"You're grinding your teeth and driving. Multitasking. I'm impressed."

"Camera stays in the bag at the mill. You talk when Marin asks. You stay behind me."

"There it is. The decree portion of our evening. I was wondering when you'd remember you're supposed to be a professional."

I glance at her. Streetlight from the edge of town slides across her throat, that same slim line I had my mouth on two hours ago, and the want hits so hard I have to look back at the road before I wreck Alden's approach.

"I remember," I say. "That's the problem."

The Foundry is a black brick shape on the water with only the Watchline lit, a strip of cool glass on the second floor. The lot gate opens on Marin's code. I park where the mill wall hides the truck from the river road and sit a second after the engine dies, listening. Oakley waits. She has gotten good at waiting, which I hate, because good at waiting means she's tracking me.

"Clear," I tell her, and I say it to the lot more than to her.

Alden meets us at the side door in flannel, no suit, a smear of grease on his wrist that says he was in the turbine hall before he was in the loft.

"Receipt," he says.

Oakley hands him the receipt. We climb to the Watchline. Marin is already there, tablet awake, county map blooming across the glass, hair still twisted up from a day that started before ours.

Marin doesn't greet us. She pinches the receipt, photographs both sides, and drops the image onto the map.

"Northline Bonded, dated six days ago, printed from a terminal registered to the landing office by the old boat sheds. That's Eli Cade's badge on the login. He opened the file at 1:14 a.m. He closed it at 1:16. Two minutes to generate a receipt somebody later stuffed in a rock above the lower pool."

Oakley goes still beside me. Her shoulder brushes my arm and stays there. I don't move away. Moving away would be a lie I don't have time to tell.

"He printed it for Helix," I say.

"Or he printed it because someone standing behind him told him to. Or he printed it because he's nineteen and stupid and likes motorcycles. I don't get to pick yet." Marin taps another window. "SUV from the overlook. Sin sent plates. Fleet registered to a Northline subsidiary that doesn’t have a physical address. Driver's face is a blur. They sat in that lot for fourteen minutes after you left and then rolled toward the landing, not toward town."

Alden leans on the table, both palms flat. "I talked to Rowe. She thinks Eli is working extra hours to buy her a birthday thing she hasn't asked for. I didn't tell her about the badge swipes. I will tomorrow if this doesn't clean. Tonight she stays here. Homework. No landing."

"Good," I say.

Oakley's voice is quieter than the room. "If he's using her to get close to this mill, that's on us for letting her get closer to him."

"That's on me," Alden says. "She's my niece. And thank you for telling me."

I watch the river through the glass, black and fast under the mill lights. Dad walked the lower pool this morning. Eli printed Helix paper this week. A fleet SUV watched us eat muffins on a rock. The lines are folding into one road whether I like the map or not.