“I'll be right outside the door to keep the ghosts away.” The serious threads of his voice sent more thrills of excitement up and down my spine. I felt zaps of electricity to the tips of my toes when his eyes crawled across my face, landing finally at my lips before blinking and turning away. “Sleep well, Petal.”
I smiled in the darkness at my new nickname.
His Petal.
I was getting used to being on Maverick's lips.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Maverick
“Sunrise over Lovers Ridge has never been prettier.” I tipped my coffee mug to Poppy, who sat across from me wrapped up in two fuzzy blankets and my thickest wool socks.
“It’s not so bad once the clouds clear,” she hummed, tipping her mug back and inhaling the hot steam. She smiled. “The best part of waking up.”
I chuckled, and when she took a sip and her eyes rounded, a shudder coursed through her. “You’re drinking motor oil!”
“It takes energy to keep a place like this going, an average man’s drip coffee won’t do.”
She laughed, wiping at a single tear that’d formed at her eyelash. I pulled a soft handkerchief out of my back pocket and passed it to her.
She took it and dabbed softly at both her eyes. “You’re such a gentleman under all of that…”
I let her trail off, casting my eyes off the covered porch to the mountaintops that were ringed in clouds in the distance. The sound of drips and the songs of morning birds were the only noises for miles and for the first time with her here, I felt more at home than I had in too long.
She took her mug back in her hand then, sucking in another inhale before sipping the dark brew carefully. “You're the strongest man I’ve ever met.”
My shoulders bunched and ached with her kindness. It was so unfamiliar, her words cut like a knife because I’d gotten used to going without human kindness. Once Aspen had left for college, I’d turned into a diehard bachelor...too much.
“You've known me for five minutes, what makes you say that?”
“You drink coffee like this.”
I chuckled, running a hand through my beard. Her eyes skipped to my action, watching intently with her soft petal lips parted. She made me throb everywhere, the thought of what she might feel like when I…
I gulped, forcing the thought from my mind with a sigh and avert of my gaze.
“And you live up here,” she whispered. “Lovers Ridge is more like Death Wish Ridge, every winter Dad tells me about some poor fool or another out on this road after dark in a snowstorm or worse.”
“You were almost that fool last night.”
She nodded, mischievous eyes rolling once before throwing me a clever smile.
Petal had me totally wrapped up in her cute pinky finger and she didn't even know it. And the hell if I’d let her know it for that matter.
“I’m lucky you followed me.”
“Found you,” I emphasized and she shrugged playfully.
“I’m so lucky.” She blew me a kiss and it forced my heart to thunder to a halt.
My head pounded, a sudden lack of oxygen choked out of my bloodstream causing irreparable effects. Pain lodged in my throat and constricted the muscles tightly. I sucked in a violent breath of the rain-wet air.
“Are you okay?” She was at my side, fingertips grazing my bicep and singing me like an iron brand.
“F-fine,” I grit, wishing I hadn’t found her after all, not if it meant this.
“Can I get you anything? Did the coffee burn you?”
“You burn me.”
She paused, hands suddenly off of me. I hated that I missed her touch, even though it burned my skin like acid when she did.
Aspen’s words came back to me the last time I’d seen her at her cafe: go on a date, Dad, you’re losing touch.
I hated that all the women in my life had always been right, even when they’d taken everything from me.
“Mav—”
The way Petal said the word made my brain scream with pain. That’s what she had called me. Lily.
“I forgot to call the road outage in, your dad will be on my ass if he knows the road is out and I haven’t called it into the road commission—”
“Mav—”
I cringed and hunched my shoulders as I ducked through the door, intent on my hunting boots to keep me dry and getting as far away from Poppy’s sweet and reasonable voice as I could. “Please, make yourself at home—I owe you a dinner, I just need to assess the damage on that drain ditch, Petal—”
I cringed then as I said the nickname that I’d grown so used to in my head. I must have been sending her mixed signals. I hoped I wasn’t, but social interaction is my fatal flaw. That’s why I kept myself out on this ridge, far away from the things I hated in favor of what made sense to me, the way the wind ruffled the evergreen needles and the mountain spring tumbled over the cool stones of the riverbed.
“I'll be back later, P—” I caught myself, waving once then shoving my boots on and walking down the back hallway and out the back door, sleeping bag on my back and Poppy O’Henry cemented in my mind.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Poppy
“504 Lovers Ridge,” I read. “I wonder if he made this too.” I slipped my finger along the worn grooves of the wooden sign that hung above the coffeemaker.
Maverick referred to this place as a cabin, but it was more like a grand lodge. It looked like he’d started from the center of the house and built out over the years, a long hallway led to a large attached garage and shop that he worked in, and the other side of the house led to a large mud room and laundry with an office and second bedroom across from that. And the great room, the center of the house, was earmarked with redwood beams that held up the
