Page 2 of Eco-Activist’s Mountain Men (Mountain Men Reverse Harem #4)

Jack

" A woman? What the hell are you talking about? No, Luke, there ain't no women around these parts. Not for fifty miles or more in every direction. Jeez, I sometimes wonder about you."

I shake my head as I bustle out of the little shed—the one where Luke keeps all the chainsaws meticulously cleaned and maintained.

He spends many a happy evening in his little domain, tensioning and sharpening the chains.

Sometimes I think he prefers the company of his precious chainsaws to that of human beings.

Mind you, there are times I kinda see his point.

This ain't one of 'em though. A woman? Come on…

I haven't got time for games. Not today.

The storm's hit and hit badly. Getting worse too.

Eric says the anemometer's registering gusts over ninety miles an hour, and the pressure's dropping faster than a politician drops support for a businessman who's been outed as a wife beater. We're in for quite a night!

"Take a look for yourself then. She's in the medi-bay.

" With that, Luke turns back to the Husqvarna 562XP that's on his workbench.

A huge workhorse of a chainsaw, its 60cc engine can just about fell anything, especially when it's coupled with the twenty-eight-inch bar.

Always assuming you can lift it, that is.

But of course, that's not a problem for someone like Luke.

We have two of them, and this one's currently running a little hot, so Luke's giving it a service while he can't get outside due to the storm.

I shrug. A woman in the medi-bay? In the middle of a thunder and lightning storm? Doesn't seem very likely to me, but why would Luke make it up? I sigh. Another thing to worry about, as if battening down all the hatches for this storm wasn't enough.

Still, we were nearly done with storm prep.

Head Office had warned us yesterday about a massive cold front bringing thunder, lightning, and possibly hail.

The morning had started out bright—just enough time for me, Toby, and Luke to get everything secured: shutters closed, gear under cover, generator fired up, and supplies double-checked.

We even made a quick run up to the roof to check for loose tiles. All good. All solid.

Meanwhile, our resident scientist, Eric, had kept himself busy tagging and photographing trees.

He's already logged over a thousand, each precisely marked on a GPS-linked program that'll use satellite imaging to monitor their growth for the next few decades.

He's not part of our crew—he works for the US Forest Service, on loan from Oregon State University.

Arboreal sustainability is his thing. Quiet guy, smart, and easy to get along with. He's made himself right at home.

Oh well, I guess I'd better go check the medi-bay.

The main lodge is a single-story timber structure with a communal kitchen, living room, a large office, and a dozen small single bedrooms. Each of us has our own, which is a big improvement over the bunkhouses we used to sleep in.

There are also several outbuildings of various sizes where we store timber and machinery.

One of the bedrooms doubles as the medi-bay. It's stocked with the usual medical supplies: bandages, painkillers, and antiseptic cream. I turn the handle and step inside.

Curled up on the bed, fast asleep—or maybe unconscious—is what I can only describe as the prettiest little pink-haired fairy you could imagine. Lying there, her mouth partly open, her chest rising and falling softly, she looks pure, delicate, and way too lovely for a place like this.

I let out an involuntary gasp.

I’m a rough, tough ex-Army Ranger, who incidentally is at least twice her age. I'm not some poetry-reading college boy. I should know better.

So why am I going weak at the knees? Why’s my heart pounding like a jackhammer?

For thirty years, I’ve had a dream. Not every night, not even most nights—but often enough that it marked my life.

It started when I was seventeen, fresh into the army, when days were nothing but drills, mud, and gun oil.

But at night, she came to me: a girl with pink hair, blue eyes, and a smile that felt like home.

She was always asleep in those dreams, except once—just once—when she opened her eyes, looked straight at me, and smiled like she’d been waiting.

I told myself it was nothing. Just exhaustion, or my head messing with me. I don’t believe in angels or fate, not magic or fairy tales. I buried it, moved on, forgot.

And now… here she is. The girl from my dreams, lying right here in the medi-bay, real as rain.

Something’s happening to me, and I don’t like how little control I seem to have over it.

I back out of the medi-bay and close the door behind me.

I rest my back against it for a moment. Jesus…

I’m sweating, and my heart is hammering like I just sprinted up twenty flights of stairs.

This will never do. Is this some kind of midlife crisis?

Am I imagining the whole thing? Too many years in the wilderness with only men for company?

But if so, why now—and why her? Why this girl from my dreams?

A coincidence?

I shake my head, not seeing how it can be. Come on, Jack. Get a grip. It has to be a coincidence.

My God… what would my younger brother Toby say if he could see me now?

Laugh?

He’d never stop.

I’d never hear the end of it.

That settles it—I have to pull myself together. I also have to find out who she is, where she came from, and what she’s doing unconscious in our medi-bay.

Time to call on Luke again.

"Luke… we need to talk."

"Sure."

I’ve pounded back down the corridor and headed outside to the chainsaw shed.

Luke hasn’t moved from his workbench. He’s finished servicing the husky (that’s what everyone calls the Husqvarna chainsaws), and he’s refitting the bar.

Not the big twenty-eight-inch bar, though, just an eighteen-inch one that’s better suited for the general cleanup we’ll need tomorrow for stom clean-up duties.

"That fai—er… that woman," I correct myself. "Who the hell is she, and what’s she doing unconscious in my medi-bay?"

"I dunno, boss."

"Dunno?.. Dunno? Well… what do you know, for fuck’s sake?"

I love Luke to pieces—we’ve known each other for years—and I’d rather have no one else beside me in a tough spot. But sometimes his reticence to speak drives me insane. He must know something.

He puts down the chainsaw and the adjusting wrench and looks up at me for the first time.

"Why, boss, is she important to you?" Is that a glimmer of humor in his eyes? It had better not be.

"Important? Jesus, Luke, it’s not an unreasonable question.

I’m supposed to be running this place, and suddenly there’s a mysterious young woman with pink hair, fast asleep in one of the bedrooms, with Southpaw snuggled up next to her of all things, and I know nothing about her.

Yes, of course it’s important." I take a deep breath to calm myself down. "Now… please… tell me what you know."

"She’s a stranger."

"She’s a stranger? A stranger? Jesus wept. I already know she’s a stranger, Luke. The point is, who is she, and how did she get here? Now are you going to give me a straight answer, for crying out loud?"

"But I don’t know who she is or why she’s here."

I open my mouth to speak, but he holds up a hand.

"No. Let me finish. Here’s what happened. I was outside lashing down the tarp over the woodpile to keep the logs from flying around in the storm. This was…" he consults his watch. "Oh, about an hour and a half ago, I guess. Anyway, there I was, wrestling with the tarp, and Southpaw came up to me."

"That's unusual." I consider back over the couple of years we've been sort of sharing the lodge with the wolf we'd rescued as a pup from one of those nasty traps that the less pleasant type of hunter sometimes sets for smaller mammals.

Once his left front paw had healed, he'd hung around, coming and going as he pleased.

"Our resident wolf doesn't tend to come up to us, except when he really needs something. "

"Agreed, but he gave me that look—you know, the one that says he wants us to follow him—then he trotted off. So I did follow him. About a hundred and fifty yards down the track toward the river, I found a woman lying on the ground, unconscious."

"What the fuck? A woman? Just one woman, on her own? Out here?"

"Right, boss, just this one woman. Well, first I thought she was dead, but I checked her pulse. She was alive. I picked her up as carefully as I could and brought her back to camp."

"Okay, then what did you do?"

"Well… everyone else was busy, so I put her in the medi-bay. She was soaked through to the skin, so I had to take her clothes off, of course. But I was respectful and didn’t look at her or touch her more than I needed to get her dry and into bed."

"I believe you, Luke. You’re not the kind of man to take advantage of a vulnerable woman." Though I feel the heat rising in my own face, just thinking about her naked.

"That’s right, boss. I’m not. She slept through the whole thing, never woke once.

I gave her a quick once-over, but nothing majorly wrong.

One ankle’s badly swollen, and one wrist even more so—she’ll have a nasty bruise or two, and she’ll probably need a crutch to get around for a few days.

But nothing worse. Then I covered her up with a blanket and left her to sleep. "

"We got a crutch?"

"Nah. We did have one, but if you remember, Stevie took it when he ran over his own foot with the low-loader back in May… or was it June? He went to Portland to get it X-rayed, but he never came back, and he never sent the crutch back either."

They never do. I nod. "Did she have any ID on her? Passport, driver’s license, paperwork of any kind?"

"Nope. Nothing."

"That’s weird."

"Whole thing’s weird, boss. She must have a bag with her. Can’t find it now in this storm, but maybe we’ll spot it in the morning."

"Right, yeah. In the morning… meantime, what do we do about her?"

"No idea, boss. Can’t she just stay in the medi-bay?"

"I guess so. Guess she’ll have to."

"Guess so, boss. You okay, boss?"

I can’t be sure, but I feel myself blushing deeper. Has he seen through me? Guessed the turmoil? I've never told a soul about those dreams.

I turn to leave. As I do, he suddenly grabs my sleeve and looks me deep in the eyes.

"I know she’s pretty, boss. But don’t go falling for her. Not yet, boss. Not until we know who she is."

Once again, heat rises to my cheeks. "I have no intention of falling for anyone, Luke.

" I pull my arm away and head to the door, trying to look dignified instead of humiliated. It doesn’t help when I trip over a screwdriver on the floor and nearly stumble out of the shed, having to use both hands to steady myself in the doorway.

"Jesus Christ!" I blurt out by accident.

"Sure thing, boss. Don’t worry, I've got your back," he tells me quietly as I back out of the shed.

The door swings shut behind me, leaving me alone in the storm. The howling wind and pounding rain are getting worse by the moment. Another sheet of lightning lights up the sky, the buildings, and the forest for a fraction of a second.

I’m glad someone’s got confidence in me. ’Cos right now I’m running pretty low on it myself.