Kisses for the Mountain Man Bonus Scene
ABE
ONE WEEK LATER
The storm has passed.
Snow covers the valley in folds of white so deep and untouched it looks like the world’s been remade overnight. The wind’s gone quiet, the kind of hush that only comes after survival—when even the mountains seem to exhale.
Inside, the cabin glows gold and alive. The fire crackles steady. Jaco snores in his usual spot by the hearth, and Acadia’s laughter—soft, warm, unguarded—turns the cold to memory.
She’s wearing my flannel again. Says it smells like cedar and smoke and something she can’t name. To me, it smells like peace.
“Looks like the sun’s coming up,” she murmurs, tilting her head toward the window. Outside, pink light bleeds over the ridge, brushing the pines in gold.
I set down the coffee mugs, cross the room, and pull her closer. She fits perfectly, as if this space, this life, was carved around her shape.
“Never thought I’d see a morning like this again,” I tell her. “Didn’t think I’d want to.”
She looks up, those wild amber eyes catching the firelight. “You mean peace?”
I shake my head. “Home.”
For a while, we just stand there, the world still except for the heartbeat I feel against my chest. The storm outside was nothing compared to the one I carried inside me. But she quieted both.
I brush a strand of hair from her face, trace her jaw with my thumb. “You know what I used to think when I looked at these mountains?”
“That they were beautiful?”
“That they were all I had left.” I swallow hard, let my thumb rest against her bottom lip. “But now I see them and think—this is where you found me. This is where I get to start over.”
She smiles, eyes bright and steady. “Together?”
“Always.”
I kiss her slow, like the promise it is—warm and unhurried, the kind that builds roots instead of sparks. Outside, the first real sunlight of winter breaks over the valley, gilding the snow, the roof, the trails leading out into forever.
When I pull back, I rest my forehead against hers. “Guess I was wrong all along,” I whisper. “The mountain isn’t just where I live. It’s where I found the reason to stay.”
She presses her lips to my jaw, her breath soft as dawn. “Then it’s home,” she says.
And it is.
Right here.
One cabin. One sunrise. One forever.
Ginger & Roscoe
Worlds collide, hearts ignite, and a rescue fraught with peril forces a wounded, ex-military, mountain man to envision a life beyond his reclusive existence…
Fawn & Bodie
A nighttime escape sparks hot-blooded emotions, sizzling questions, and the drive for revenge when an unexpected curvy girl crashes into an ex-military mountain man’s quiet existence…
Hadleigh & Hudson
A tattoo artist and mountain man’s first look at his employee’s younger sister becomes his last surrender … if he can save her before time runs out.