Page 8 of Treated to a Mountain Man (Fall for a Mountain Man #11)

Sawyer

The cabin felt too quiet after Cinn left. I stood at the window watching her taillights disappear down the mountain road, that knot in my gut telling me something was wrong. The way Will had acted. The way she'd deflected. The sudden illness that came on right when things got uncomfortable.

I knew bullshit when I heard it, and she'd been shoveling it hard.

I tried to focus on cleaning up the sugar shack, banking the fire in the evaporator, organizing the filters Will had delivered. But my mind kept circling back to that moment—Will's face going white when he saw her, the way he'd fussed with his wedding ring like a guilty man.

Back in the cabin, I cracked open a beer and sat at my laptop.

The cursor blinked in the search bar, taunting me.

Part of me didn't want to know. Part of me wanted to preserve the image of her I'd been building—the determined candy maker with blistered hands and fire in her eyes, who showed up before dawn with homemade muffins and faced every challenge I threw at her.

But I needed to know who I was really dealing with.

I typed her name: Cinnamon Moretti.

The first results were innocuous enough. Her shop's Facebook page. A mention in the Woodbridge Falls community newsletter about new businesses. Then, buried on the second page, I found it.

Sweet Cinn.

My stomach dropped as I clicked the link. The page was defunct, but cached versions remained. There she was—the same auburn hair, the same brown eyes, but presented so differently. Lingerie. Sultry poses. "Your favorite candy—Sweet Cinn. Taste what you've been missing."

I kept scrolling, each image another punch to the gut. OnlyFans links. "Premium content." Subscription tiers. Comments from men praising her videos, her chat sessions, her "special services."

I pushed back from the desk, my hands shaking.

Not from anger exactly, but from something harder to name.

Betrayal, yes. She'd been lying since the moment she showed up at my door.

But also a fascination I didn't want to acknowledge.

The woman in those images was beautiful, confident, owning her sexuality in a way that made my mouth go dry.

And beneath it all, disappointment that cut deeper than I expected. I'd started to let her in past barriers I'd built after Beth left, after Dad died, after everything went to hell. She'd made me laugh. Made me remember what it felt like to want someone.

Now I knew it was just another performance from someone who sold herself professionally.

I finished my beer and grabbed another, then another. Sleep didn't come until nearly dawn, and even then it was fitful, full of dreams where Cinn's brown eyes looked at me with that same expression Will had—guilty, ashamed, caught.

SHE SHOWED UP THE NEXT morning like nothing had happened. Fresh coffee, orange cranberry scones, that bright smile that I now knew was fake.

"Morning," she said, holding out a thermos. "Ready to finish the harvest?"

I didn't take it. "We need to talk."

Her smile faltered. "About what?"

"About Sweet Cinn."

The thermos slipped from her hand, hitting the porch boards with a metallic thud. The lid popped off and hot coffee splashed across our boots. Neither of us moved to clean it up.

"How did you—"

"Why didn't you tell me?" The words came out harder than intended, but I was too tired and too raw to soften them.

Her chin lifted, defensive armor clicking into place. "Tell you what? That I used to have a different job? Would it have mattered?"

"A different job?" I laughed, but there was no humor in it. "That's what you call it?"

"Yes," she snapped. "That's exactly what I call it. Work. Legal work that paid my bills and kept me alive when I had nothing else."

"You lied to me."

"I didn't lie. I just didn't share my entire history with someone who made it clear he hated outsiders from the moment we met."

"You let me think you were something you're not."

"I am exactly what I said I was—a candy maker trying to save her shop. Everything else is the past."

"The past?" I pulled out my phone, showing her the cached page I'd saved. "This looks pretty recent to me."

She flinched seeing the images, her face flushing red. "That was well over a year ago, when I hit rock bottom. Before rehab. You had no right to search for that."

"I had every right to know who I was letting onto my property. Who I was dealing with regarding my family's legacy."

"Your family's legacy?" Her voice rose, anger overtaking shame. "You think I'm going to contaminate your precious syrup because I used to take my clothes off for money? Think I'm going to seduce you out of your trees?"

"I don't know what to think. I don't know who you really are."

"You know exactly who I am. I'm the woman who showed up every day, worked until her hands bled, learned your family's traditions with respect. That's who I am."

"You're also someone who sells herself to strangers on the internet."

The slap came so fast I didn't see it coming. My cheek stung, but not as much as the look in her eyes.

"How dare you," she said, voice low and dangerous. "You don't know anything about what I've been through. What I've survived. You sit up here on your mountain, hiding from the world because one company screwed you over, and you think you understand struggle? You think you get to judge me?"

"I'm not judging—"

"Bullshit. You're looking at me like I'm dirty. Like I'm something you stepped in."

"That's not—"

"It is. It's exactly what you're doing. Poor, pure Sawyer Blackwood, corrupted by the evil city woman who dared to use her body to survive."

"Survive? You weren't surviving, you were—"

"What? Go ahead, say it. Say what you really think."

"You were selling yourself. Taking money from men like Will, married men, feeding their fantasies—"

"I was taking control of my life after it fell apart.

I was using the only asset I had left after a car accident destroyed my back and doctors got me addicted to opioids.

I was doing whatever it took to pay for rehab, to get clean, to start over.

But you wouldn't understand that, would you?

Because you've never had to choose between degradation and death. "

Her words hit like physical blows. The pain in her voice, the raw honesty, made me step back.

"You could have told me," I said quietly.

"When?" She grabbed the porch railing, knuckles white.

"When you were glaring at me like I was the enemy?

When you made it clear you trusted no one?

" Her voice cracked. "When exactly should I have said, 'Hey, by the way, I used to be a sex worker but I'm totally legitimate now, please give me your syrup'? "

"It would have been better than hiding it."

"I wasn't hiding. I just... I wanted you to see me. Not her. Not Sweet Cinn. Just me."

"But she is you."

"She was me. At my worst. At my most desperate." Tears streamed down her face now. "Do you want to be defined by your worst moment? By the thing you did to survive when you had no other choice?"

"It's not the same—"

"Isn't it? You hide up here, pushing everyone away because you got burned once. That's your coping mechanism. Mine was selling the only thing I had left to sell. Neither one is particularly healthy, but at least I'm trying to move forward."

"By lying about it?"

"By starting over! By trying to be something more than what I was forced to become. That's what recovery means—becoming someone new, someone better."

"Built on a foundation of lies."

She stared at me for a long moment, then shook her head. "You know what? You're right. This was all built on lies. The lie that you might be different. The lie that you could see past the surface. The lie that I deserved a second chance."

She turned toward her car.

"Where are you going? We have work to finish."

"No, you have work to finish. I'm done. The deal's off." She spun back to face me. "Thanks for nothing, Sawyer. Thanks for reminding me that no matter how hard I work, no matter how much I change, I'll always just be Sweet Cinn to people like you."

"Cinn, wait—"

But she was already in her car, gravel spraying as she tore down the mountain road.

THE SILENCE SHE LEFT behind was deafening.

I stood on the porch, staring at the thermos lying on its side, coffee pooling around it and seeping into the wood. The scones she'd brought lay scattered where the basket had fallen.

Slowly, I cleaned up the mess, wiping up the spilled coffee with an old rag. Her words echoed in my head. Choosing between degradation and death. Car accident. Opioid addiction. Rehab.

The sugar shack felt wrong without her. I tried to work, collecting sap from the buckets we'd set together, but every tree reminded me of her. How she'd compared everything to candy making. The way she'd squared her shoulders when things got difficult.

By evening, I found myself back at the laptop, searching differently this time. Found fragments—a Cinnamon M. from Pennsylvania at some charity event, an old honor roll listing, a mention in an article about the opioid crisis. Pieces of a life that had derailed and been rebuilt.

I couldn't find the whole story, but I found enough. The woman in those images hadn't been running a con. She'd been surviving.

I thought about Dad, how losing everything to Sweetland had killed him. But at least he'd had family, the land, something to fall back on. Cinn had faced her catastrophe alone.

The truth hit me like cold water. I hadn't been angry about her past. I'd been looking for an excuse to push her away before she could leave on her own. Just like Beth had.

But Cinn wasn't Beth. She'd stuck it out through every challenge I'd thrown at her. Until I'd finally found the one thing that could drive her off—my own cowardice dressed up as righteous anger.

I stood at the window, looking out at the sugar maples in the fading light. What was the point of protecting myself so carefully that I drove away anyone who mattered?

The hair tie sat on the mantle. Such a small thing, but it felt like evidence now. Proof of what I'd wrecked.

I poured a whiskey and sat in Dad's old chair. Tomorrow I'd finish the harvest alone. Give her the syrup I owed her. Watch her win that competition and get on with her life.

The whiskey burned going down. Cinn was right—I was a coward on a mountain, judging others for battles they'd fought while nursing my own smaller wounds.

My father died, but she'd rebuilt from nothing. My trust got broken, but she'd lost everything and started over. I'd had family support. She'd been completely alone.

And when she'd finally trusted me enough to let me in, I'd thrown it in her face.

No wonder she'd slapped me.

Outside, the maple trees stood silent in the darkness. Tomorrow the work would continue. But tonight I sat with the truth—I'd just run off the best thing to find me in years because facing my own feelings was scarier than facing her past.

I'd accused her of hiding, but I was the one who'd been hiding all along.