Page 12 of Stone Cold Mountain Man (Cold Mountain Nights #7)
T aylor
Spring has finally made it up the mountain.
The last patches of snow cling stubbornly in the shadows, but most of the world around Cedar Ridge is green again. Buds speckle the aspens, birds sing in the pines, and the air smells of wet earth and sunshine.
I made it through my first winter.
Every blizzard, every shovel-full of snow, every night the wind howled against the cabin walls—I survived all of it, and somewhere along the way I stopped surviving and started belonging.
I step onto the porch with two sweating glasses of lemonade, sunlight warming the boards beneath my bare feet.
Down in the drive, Wade is bent over the open hood of his truck, sleeves shoved up, dark hair falling into his eyes.
Even from here I can hear him humming under his breath—a thing I never expected from a man who used to speak in full sentences only when pressed.
“Delivery!” I call, as I start walking towards him.
He looks up, a slow grin breaking across his face, and my heart does that soft flip it’s learned since he let me in. He wipes his hands on a rag, meets me halfway, and kisses me before taking the glass I hold out. Lemonade and engine grease—oddly perfect together.
“Thanks, Sunshine,” he says, drinking deep. “Exactly what I needed.”
I lean against the fender, watching the way the light catches the silver flecks in his hair. “You planning to work all afternoon?”
“Not if you’ve got a better idea before dinner tonight.”
I feign casual, though my heart is doing cartwheels.
This morning, while putting away laundry, I’d overheard him out on the porch, talking to himself in that low rumble—practicing words about rings and forever. He doesn’t know I heard. He doesn’t know I understand exactly what dinner in town means.
“I think dinner in town tonight would be a perfect time to celebrate making it through my first winter on the mountain.” I suggest.
His eyes soften.
“Yeah,” he says, voice quiet, sure. “A celebration sounds good.”
He turns back to the engine, but his hand slides along my hip as he passes, a warm brush that lingers even after he’s focused again on bolts and belts.
I sip my lemonade, taking in the view—the cabin, the truck, the man who once swore off company and somehow became my everything.
Like the season shifting around us, Wade has changed. My stone-cold mountain man has thawed—not just the surface, but all the way through. And as I stand here, spring sunlight spilling over both of us, I know I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.
With him. Always.