When JJ breezed into the cabin, smelling like sunshine and snow, with flushed cheeks and a radiant smile, I wanted to throw said paperwork at his head and tell him to leave me alone or give me coffee. The last thing I needed was the equivalent of a Greek god watching me fail.
“Hey.” His smile widened. “You made it.”
He closed the door behind him, darkening the room again. Then he tilted his head back and frowned. “Did the bulb burn out over there?”
I set down a folder full of receipts. “Please tell me you can change it. I need the light and can’t find the light bulbs.”
“Of course.”
He slipped past me and into the back, rummaging in a closet near the bathroom. Less than a minute later, light flooded my disastrous workspace.
“Thank you!”
JJ rolled his eyes. “That’s Mark. Bet you a hundred bucks he didn’t even notice it’d burned out.”
“I think you are a hundred percent correct.”
He propped his hands on his hips. Breath failed me when he pulled his hair down and ran his fingers through it. This was going to be harder than I’d thought. Way harder than I’d thought.
And that had nothing to do with Mark’s disorganization.
“So,” JJ said. “He got the paperwork out for you, eh?”
“This is only some of it.” I ran a hand over my face, already weary. “I haven’t even attempted the boxes in the guest bedroom. I’m a little afraid a mouse will jump out at me when I open them.”
“Oh, I can help with that.”
“Really?” There was entirely too much hope in my voice.
Five minutes later, as I swept an unholy amount of unused lined paper into another pile, he’d stacked four more boxes in front of me.
“That should be the last of it.”
My heart sank to the floor. “This is going to take forever,” I whispered.
JJ rested a sympathetic hand on my shoulder. “I think you’re brave, for what it’s worth. And probably not paid enough even at forty an hour, so go for a raise.”
He moved into the kitchen with a wink.
I used the reprieve to slow my traitorous heart. Eventually, I worked up the moxie to ask, “Where have you been?”
“Climbing.”
“I’m sorry, you were what?”
“Climbing.”
“There’s three feet of snow outside.”
He reached for a coffee mug, his hair still wild on his shoulders. “Well, more mountaineering. Trying to see if I can maneuver back to ice-climb the waterfall at the end of the canyon. I think it was probably too low before the cold hit, but I want to see. The snow is four feet deep in some places, so I think I’ll need a snowmobile.”
Naturally.
Because who didn’t do that during their free time?
While he filled a coffee mug with water and shoved it into the microwave, I tried to recover my senses and not swallow my tongue. Ice-climb a waterfall?
Was that a thing?
I take my adventure indoors, thanks, I thought of saying. With a side of cream and sugar. Like the adventure of trying a new kind of espresso bean.
The life he led couldn’t be farther from mine. I resisted the urge to slip onto Pinnable and create a corkboard for him. Mountains, grasses, and for some reason, I pictured sage. That would be perfect for him. Wild man, wild places.
No, that would only distract me from the mess I had surely stepped into. Two minutes later he stood in front of me with a fresh mug of coffee.
“Cream and sugar,” he said. “I made assumptions on amounts.”
“How did you know?”
“Your withdrawal is obvious.”
The first sip—perfectly warm—slid all the way into my stomach like we were meant to be. I closed my eyes, savored the smell, and waited for the caffeine to recharge me.
“Thank you.”
“Anytime.”
JJ plunked a tea bag into his mug, then wrapped his hands around it and leaned back against the couch. I purposefully turned away from him, feigning interest in a stack near an old printer. Time to sort papers that were far away, facing a direction in which I couldn’t possibly sneak a glance at him.
“I finished setting up your cabin this morning,” he said after several minutes. “Took me a while to dig it out and get the power restored, but now I think you’re good.”
“Oh, thank you.”
“Do you want me to take you to it?”
“Only if I never have to come back to this mess,” I muttered.
He laughed, set aside his tea, and motioned with a wave. “C’mon. Time for a break.”
“Hold on. I have to note it on my spreadsheet.”
“For what?”
I cleared off the top of my laptop and pulled up another spreadsheet. “For time. I have a feeling Mark hasn’t even thought of my time card, so I just created something.”
“Oh. That’s very . . . honest of you.”
I shrugged.
Once I noted the time—it had only been two hours and felt like twenty years—I popped up, slipped on my coat, and followed him outside. A walking path had been cut into the three-foot bank of snow outside. Impressive at any rate, even if it was entirely too cold. I shivered in my jacket and hurried to keep up.
The cabin was a quaint little thing from the outside. A single window and door, with round logs stacked into a perfect square that might be barely big enough for a bed and a small table. Snow, thick and white as a wedding cake, was piled on the roof. Perfect insulation for a chill like this. Weather aside, I predicted it would be warm in there. Lazy smoke drifted upward from a chimney on the left.
JJ opened the door and motioned for me to go in first. Snow flaked off my boots as I stepped inside.
“Oh, it’s so cute!”
The warmth of a homey cabin embraced me. A fire crackled in a small hearth piled high with wood on the side. A narrow bed on a cot filled the space behind the door. The hardwood floor appeared recently swept. Thankfully, no cobwebs lingered in the corners. No trails of mouse poop on the
