by Mazzy King
“My mother’s watching,” she breathes, then laughs. “You could pass for a wealthy stockbroker. She won’t ask too many questions.”
“Do you want me to look like a wealthy stockbroker?”
“Me? Hell no.” She gives me a onceover. “You look damn good, Asher, there’s no denying that. But I much prefer you in flannel and a Carhartt jacket. And if you ever think about shaving that beard, well…”
I grin, relieved. She wants me for who I am, and nothing more. “Truth be told, I can’t wait to take this suit off.”
“I hope you’ll let me help you with that,” she purrs. “Want to get out of here?”
“Hell yes,” I say. “Let me take you to dinner. Or dessert, if you’ve already eaten.”
“They had a buffet, but I didn’t eat much.” She winces. “I didn’t want to hear my mom’s mouth.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “Tell me you didn’t do that juice cleanse I heard her mention.”
“Maybe just…for a couple days.” She smooths her hands over her dress. “Had to fit into this bad boy.”
“And you look goddamn stunning, and I can’t wait to peel that off you, but, baby, we need to get you fed.” I slide my arm around her waist. “And then I’m eating you for dessert.”
Without a word to anyone but the bride and groom, Stephanie leads me out of the room, then we stroll arm-in-arm out to my truck, which is parked in the vacant lot across the street. When we’re inside, she turns to me.
“I missed you,” she says in this low, breathy voice that immediately grabs me by the cock. “Would it be tacky if we had makeup sex right here?”
“Fuck no,” I breathe, and before I can say another word, she’s in my lap. We continue what we started at the bar, but now that we’re away from prying eyes, we give each other all we have. The only sounds in the car are the smack of our lips devouring each other, heavy breathing, and the quiet rustle of her dress being hiked up to her waist and the zip of my zipper coming down.
“Oh, fuck yes,” she cries as I slide into her hot, wet pussy.
“Jesus Christ, you were ready,” I grunt, gripping her hips. She clenches around me like a fist and I’m this close to losing my shit immediately like a teenager.
“I was wet the second you walked over to me,” she wails, grinding hard on my cock. “God, Asher, I missed you so fucking much.”
“I will never leave you again,” I promise between clenched teeth, desperately trying to get as deep inside her as I can. “I’m yours, Stephanie.”
She cradles my face in her hands. “And I’m yours, Asher.” She bites her lip in a sexy way that drives me crazy. “I think I love you, Mountain Man.”
I slide a hand underneath her hair, drawing her down until her forehead touches mine. “I know I love you, City Girl.”
Epilogue
Asher
Six months later
“So what’s this I hear about a new store in the city?” Mrs. Morris demands, placing a new pair of gardening gloves and a spade on the counter.
“We’re expanding,” I explain, ringing up her purchases. “Clay and I are combining businesses. He’ll help me manage this store, and I’ll be back and forth between here and the new one.”
There’s still a lot of logistics to be worked out, but the expansion thrills me. Hawk City doesn’t have a great hardware store that carries all of the quality items I do, and with the addition of Clay’s dog food line, that’s soon to be expanding to cat food, it’s going to be a goldmine. I still need to find a reliable manager for the new store while I’m away from there, but it’s all coming together.
“Hmm.” Mrs. Morris sniffs, then smiles. “How is your wife dealing with all this? That’s a lot to handle, finding a home, helping set up the store, and being pregnant.”
I grin. Wife. We’ve been married three months, but the novelty of that word hasn’t worn off at all. She’s my wife, and I’m her husband, and…we’re having a baby. Every day, it feels too good to be true.
“Tough as nails and mean some days, but she’s brilliant and strong,” I say with a chuckle.
Mrs. Morris laughs too. “I love to hear that. Tell her to turn up the meanness a notch and give her my best.” With a wave, she leaves.
Thirty minutes later, Stephanie walks through the door, dressed in one of my flannel shirts, open over a white tank top stretched over her five-month pregnant belly, Sadie at her side. We’re pretty sure Sadie can tell she’s pregnant—most nights, Sadie curls up on Steph’s lap, and loves to nuzzle her belly.
“Hello, wife,” I say, smiling as she walks up to me and gives me a kiss. “How you doing?”
She grins at me. “The doctor just called.”
I cock my head. “Oh? Everything all right?”
Her eyes glisten a little. “Boy. I’ll say.”
It takes me a minute to understand.
We’ve been waiting to find out the sex of our child for weeks now, and I’ve been so wrapped up in everything else, it slipped my mind the doctor was supposed to call today.
A boy.
I vault over the counter and sweep her into my arms. “You serious? Really?”
She nods. “You’re gonna be a daddy to your very own, tiny little mountain man.”
I burst out laughing, then tilt my head down to kiss her. “You are the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me, City Girl. Thank you for giving me so much.”
We hold onto each other, swaying a little, as Sadie dances around us. I never imagined life could be so good. For a long time, I was lost. And so was she. But without the utter destruction we both went through separately we would never have found each other.
We’ll always have our battle scars, but we’ll never suffer broken hearts again.
2 | CLAY
Chapter 1
Savannah Stone
Grief is a son of a bitch.
It does things like take away your energy. It drains your joy for everything you had in life, including the thing you’ve identified as your purpose, your reason for living.
When my dad died a few months ago, he took everything in me with him.
Including, apparently, my common sense. Waking up three mornings ago and deciding to take a spontaneous cross-country trip to find that joy again seemed like The Thing To Do at the time.
Now, as steam boils from the hood of my Ford pickup truck and my cell service is gone, it seems like the dumbest thing in the world.
Why I’m bent over the front of the truck with the hood popped like I know shit about what’s happening underneath is beyond me. What I know about cars would fill up three sentences: They drive. They need gas. Sometimes they need oil, new brakes, and new tires. The end.
“Fuck,” I hiss, and slam the hood shut. That I even knew how to open it in the first place is shocking.
I grip two handfuls of hair and stomp away from Betsy—that’s my truck’s name. I kick a large rock laying just off the road. It’s large enough to hurt my foot, but I’m so pissed off I feel nothing as it tumbles away and down the steep slope of the mountainside.
There’s a flimsy guardrail lining the road, but it doesn’t look like it could do much to prevent my truck from going over the side. However, as I try to draw deep breaths to avoid screaming out my rage, I couldn’t have picked a more picturesque spot to break down.
My GPS said I needed to go over these mountains to keep heading on my journey, final destination unknown. These are the Hawk Valley mountains, and if that huge brown bird I see flying overhead and screeching is in fact a hawk, then I’d say the place is aptly named. The view is gorgeous—clear blue skies overhead, more majestic, craggy mountains all around me, and beneath me, a quaint town surrounded by lush forests.
I saw signs for a hiking trail a couple miles back. I’ll have to backtrack—by foot—and take the trail and hope it leads me to the town. Otherwise…I’m probably fucked. Panic starts to burn the edges of my frustrated anger. I’ve been subsisting on gas station food and drive-thrus o
n the journey. Did I mention I’m impetuous and impulsive and I suck at planning?
All I have in the truck are a couple big suitcases with clothes, and my guitar.
There’s one thing you can do to calm yourself down and pass time until, you know, you die…
I blow out another breath, turn and head back to the truck, and retrieve my guitar. Then I climb on top of the hood, ignore the smoke still coming from it, and tentatively strum a chord.
Wow.
The sound of it in that crisp mountain air, echoing off the mountains… It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard before.
“‘When I think of you…’” I croon softly over the chords. I close my eyes. “‘I remember us the way we were… Late nights under the stars…’”
It’s a song I’ve been dancing around for weeks now. There’s something in me that’s almost afraid to write it, to give voice to it. That’s another side effect of grief—it drained my confidence. My dad was my biggest fan, and now my biggest fan is gone.
I write songs for a living. I sell them to big names in the country and soft-rock genres. I’ve made a successful career of it too. I’ve written songs for Taylor, Jason, Miranda, Luke, and Rhett, just to name a few.
A new country artist, Amy Mayweather, who’s had a couple of fantastic singles and is definitely on the brink of stardom, wants to work with me exclusively for her full-length debut album. Her label believes in her so much, they’ve already given her a huge contract. And she wants to work with me.
It’s the biggest deal my agent Karla has ever put in front of me. The catch is, Karla says Amy wants me to write one song just for her first. One song that embodies my view of her style as a singer. It’s an audition. This might be the most important song I’ve ever written.
And…I’ve got nothing.
I shouldn’t say nothing. I’ve got three chords and two lines of lyrics.
My depleted inspiration and my petrifying fear of failure have totally roadblocked me…hence, this trip.
“And now I’m stuck,” I sing, giving my guitar a hard strum. “Ugh!”
Now’s not the best time to be trying to write a song, anyway. I seriously need to calm down and gather my thoughts, and singing is the only way for me to find my center.
I decide on a classic, a song I always wish I wrote—Shania’s “You’re Still the One.”
Of course, I don’t have a “the one.” In fact, I don’t have anyone at all. That doesn’t matter, though. I can write a love song like nobody’s business and the fact that I haven’t dated anyone, much less been in love, for over a year is irrelevant. It’s called artistry, y’all.
Singing and playing one of my favorite songs of all time and listening to how absolutely glorious it sounds in the mountains does bring a blanket of calm over me. The problem is still very much there, but if I’m going to try to solve it with any rationality, I have to get away from the borders of a full-on meltdown.
As I launch into the second verse, I’m calm. I’m centered. I’m even almost at peace. It’s just me and the music. Me and the lyrics. Me, and this joyful noise.
I start the second verse…and then I scream.
A huge, hulking creature streaks toward me from behind the truck, and with a shriek that little town has to be able to hear so many feet below, I topple off the hood of the truck.
Chapter 2
Clayton Lowell
The voice sounds like an angel.
Even Bramble, the half-wolf, half-dog I rescued in the woods last year seems to agree. His head perks up from where he’s intently smelling the side of a tree along the hiking trail, ears pricked forward.
It’s a familiar song—something by Shania Twain. The singer is so incredibly talented, I almost think someone’s just blasting the radio. But it doesn’t sound like Shania. All due respect to the queen my mother’s worshipped all her life, this voice is richer, fuller, sweeter, and the music accompanying it is an expertly played acoustic guitar. The sounds ring off the mountainside, sliding through the thin, crisp air up here like the wisps of a cloud.
I strain my ears a little to identify the direction it’s coming from, but Bramble’s a step ahead of me. Actually, he’s about fifty steps ahead of me, because he shoots off like a rocket down the path.
“Bramble!” I yell, taking off after him. I played college football and was a running back, so speed’s my thing, but Bramble is big and tall with long legs, and he’s around the corner and out of sight before I can catch him.
“Shit,” I mutter, lowering my head and pumping my arms.
Normally, Bramble’s extremely obedient and well-trained. This part of the hiking path I like to bring him on rarely has people on it because the first part of the hike is pretty intense and steep. Since it’s almost always just us two, I leave him off the leash. The last thing I expected was for someone—a singer, of all things—to be somewhere on the path.
But as I get closer, I realize the person isn’t on the path at all—she’s on the narrow driving road that cuts across the mountain range. Our hiking trail slides through the woods just behind the road, hidden from view.
Up ahead, I see Bramble dart off the trail through the trees toward the road. I duck and dodge trees behind him, just in time to see a red Ford pickup parked in the middle of the road. A woman with golden-brown hair in a high ponytail, wearing a black tee and jeans, sits on the hood, the guitar across her lap.
For a second, I lose myself in the sound of her voice now that I’m closer. It’s honestly one of the most humbling things I’ve ever heard.
She starts in on the chorus—and it breaks into a shriek as Bramble, thrilled at seeing a “new fren,” charges up to her and actually jumps onto the hood.
“Watch out!” I call, but the woman, still shrieking, jerks back. With nothing under her butt—and what a delicious round butt it is, and yes, I know I’m a bastard for that—she falls right off the hood of the truck onto the dirt-packed road.
Bramble, worried, jumps down and circles the front to get to her, then licks her face.
Oh, God. Not many people are used to a giant wolf-dog getting in their faces. If I were them, I’d probably be seeing my life flash before my eyes.
Goodbye, company. I groan, imagining the lawsuit I’m about to have on my hands. My dog food company is just taking off—in fact, I’m on the verge of a major distribution deal—and now, I’m about to give it to some stranger getting aggressively kissed by my overgrown baby boy.
The woman’s shrieks turn into…giggles.
My jaw drops.
“Bramble, down,” I command, and he steps back, panting and wagging.
The woman whips around, pushing herself to her hands and knees, eyes wary.
Suddenly it’s hard to breathe, and it has nothing do with the thin air up here. The woman is stunning—a rounded face with a slightly pointed chin, pouty lips, and big, crystal-blue eyes starred with thick black lashes. Her skin is a light golden tan, and I swear it shimmers in the sunlight.
I clear my throat and lift a hand in a wave. “Hi. Uh—are you okay?”
She sighs and pushes herself to her feet. Holy hell—if her face was stunning, her body could bring me to my knees. She’s got a full hour-glass shape, and her curves make my knees weak. I love curvy women. There’s nothing sexier to me.
“Great,” she mutters, dusting herself off.
“Sorry about Bramble,” I add, gesturing to my beast, who now sits beside me. “He’s friendly…as you saw. Just a little scary-looking.”
“What? Oh no. He’s great.” She smiles at my dog, then gestures to her truck. The smile drops off her face. “This…this is what sucks.”
“What happened?” Smoke creeps from under the hood.
She shrugs. “It made like a pop-pop-pop noise, then just stopped working.”
“I take it you don’t know much about cars,” I say, swallowing a chuckle.
She shoots me a somewhat dirty look. “That obvious?”
“Mind if I tak
e a look?”
“Be my guest.”
She folds her arms and stands off to the side as I reach inside the truck to pop the hood. “Ah,” I say, surveying what’s underneath. “I’m no mechanic but it looks like you’ve got a couple things going on. The smoke’s from that faulty valve there. Your alternator might be the problem here.”
I glance at her. Her blue eyes are a little glassy as she nods politely. I chuckle. “I’m Clayton Lowell. What’s your name?”
“Savannah Stone.” She reaches for my hand. Her palms are soft, but her fingertips are a little rough—from the guitar playing, no doubt.
I tick my chin at the guitar she’s holding. “Hope that’s all right after your…spill.”
“I held it to my front when I fell,” she replies. I like that she doesn’t seem that embarrassed by the fall. I like a confident woman. “Rather crack my spine than my baby.”
“You’ve got a beautiful voice,” I say. “I heard you back on the trail.”
“You heard me two miles away?” Her brows shoot up.
I cock my head. “The trail’s just there. We were maybe half a mile away.” I point to the trees behind me.
“The trail’s in there?” Savannah asks. “But the sign said… Never mind. Do you know the way back to town? I need to get someplace where I can actually get cell service and call Triple A or something.”
I shake my head. “They won’t come all the way up here. I got a buddy who can help you out. He owns the car shop in town. And the bar. And he owes me one.”
“A favor or a beer?”
I laugh. “Either. Both.” I gesture to the truck. “Got anything of value in there? It’s not two miles to the trail but it is a couple back down to town.”
Savannah turns to the truck, reaches in for her guitar case, and puts the guitar inside. Then she slings it over her shoulder. She uses the keys to lock up the truck, leaving the couple suitcases inside. “Just clothes. They’ll be fine.”
