Page 10 of Making a Mountain Man (Summer in the Pines #16)

Wesley

M y smile was all but tattooed on my face the day after Jill’s visit.

Getting laid would do that for a guy. Especially given how long my dry spell had been.

I had already been single for months when I joined the online dating site.

I didn’t even have one date before my selfie broke the internet and I went into hiding.

Now that I had been with Jill, it felt worth the wait. Not to say I wanted to wait that long for a repeat. There was something about being with someone you were totally comfortable with that made the whole thing better. The anticipation was higher. The payoff was indescribable.

I didn’t want to jump the gun and start seeing a future that was us since I didn’t know where she stood, but when I really thought about it, she came to me.

Both times I’d seen her she came to me. Granted, I had initiated the first kiss.

And I was the one who made the hammer-dick jokes and put my arms around her and suggested she take her top off…

what was my point? Right, she came to me.

We both came, but it started with her. Her perfectly polished image stepping into my driveway.

Her grabbing a tool and jumping right in like she used to when we were kids.

And the whole new experience of her naked skin under my lips.

Getting ahead of myself was something I needed to avoid, but the reality was, for the first time since I saw my face on a meme about assholes on dating sites, I felt like I wasn’t in survival mode.

Maybe my future wasn’t going to revolve around one crappy selfie.

Maybe I could trust someone and they could trust me and the whole viral bullshit could just be a blip in the story of my life.

Maybe.

With the way my life has gone, I should have known that my good feeling wouldn’t last long.

I could all but feel the temperature dip to sub zero as I walked into the seniors center.

I was there to fix a leaky sink, but it seemed like I should check the air conditioning unit while I was there.

Then my eyes landed on Agnes and I realized the chill was coming off of her.

She was pacing while Franny, Bill and Henry watched from a nearby table.

“We need a plan. We can’t let this story get published.”

“What’s going–“

Henry grabbed my arm and steered me away from the table before I could complete my question. “I hate to break it to you, son, but you’re up shit creek without a paddle here. You know what I’m saying? You’re caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. You’re in a spot tighter than a–”

“I get what you’re saying Henry, thank you. But, what are you talking about?”

“Agnes is all up in a tizzy over your article and is fixing to raise hell.”

My eyebrows dropped. My heart dropped even further. “What article?”

“That reporter woman, Jill something, was sniffing around for a story about you last week. Well, you better believe I shut that down. I told her what she could do with her questions. Talked to everyone I knew too about not telling her a thing. Told them you were a good egg and that if they said anything, they’d be dealing with me, by god.

” Agnes sniffed. “When the Sunday paper came out with no mention of you, I thought it was all over. But, my grandson was at the newspaper office fixing the copier yesterday. You know my grandson, Kason? Terrible name, which I told his mother when he was born, but he’s a good kid. You know what he saw?”

I shrugged, trying to follow as she bounced between topics.

“A list of stories they were planning for the next edition including Misogynistic Meme Guy Hiding out in Springwood. The list could be from the week before I suppose, but we can’t take that chance. Of all the nerve…”

She continued to grumble but I stopped listening.

A numbness had spread out from my hands and was working its way through me.

I realized I was clenching my fists but didn’t seem to be able to do anything about it.

When Jill and I had been talking at my place, we hadn’t talked about work much.

Mostly I had skirted the topic. I was pissed I’d had to sell my business, thanks to going viral.

She had said in passing that she was a writer, but hadn’t stayed on the subject long.

I thought she had sensed I didn’t want to talk about work and had changed the subject for me.

Now I wasn’t so sure. My oldest friend wouldn’t have come to my house, flirted with me and implied she wanted more just to use me for a story.

She definitely wouldn’t fuck me for one.

Would she?