point.
He was hard and intense, like a man carved from stone. He would be...
He was brisk and demanding. And she somehow had the strong sense that he would be that way in all areas of life.
And she didn’t even know how she had that sense. Was it wisdom? Female wisdom that she just sort of had because on an instinctual level she knew how things could be between a man and a woman?
Or was she just making things up? Because it was too unsettling to have such a big void of knowledge and she wanted to pretend that there was something she could know?
She couldn’t say.
So she angrily worked at grilling burgers.
She tried not to think about him telling her explicitly that she wasn’t to ask about him.
His past.
It made her chest hurt. Because there was something. She knew it.
Maybe that was what drew her to him.
That certainty that on some level she could understand him. She was certain of that. She didn’t quite know how. But maybe deep sadness and loss called out to like wounds. She didn’t know.
She didn’t know a whole lot.
But wasn’t that the point? She hadn’t pushed herself in that kind of situation before. She had been quite easy on herself these last few years. And this was where she... Well, it was where she pushed herself, she supposed.
Grilling burgers and pondering sexual attraction. She sighed heavily.
She had just wanted to open a bakery.
In the beginning.
Now things were complicated.
She finished, and waited. She had been at the house all day. Had run back into town to get some supplies, to get the grill and come back, and she hadn’t seen him at all.
She wondered where he went. Because his truck was here, so he couldn’t have left, and he had indicated that he didn’t often leave the mountain anyway. So what was he working on?
He had the horses, maybe he had even more of a ranch than he let on. It was possible, she supposed. But he hadn’t been over there where she had found the horses, so he was somewhere else, that was for sure. There was another path. One that led in the opposite direction to the one that she had taken the other day. Somebody had to go and get him for dinner.
She ignored the disquiet that flared through her when she took the burgers off the grill, and decided to go and look for him rather than continue to wait.
Because something in her knew that he probably didn’t want to be found. But he hadn’t wanted to be found in the first place, and he was happy enough about it now. And he did like food.
She had noticed that.
She wouldn’t go so far as to say that it soothed the savage beast. He never seemed all that soothed. But he was slightly more...manageable when there was food on offer.
So she took a deep breath and headed down that path, looking around as she did. It really was beautiful up here. She could see why he liked it. Or... Did he like it? He had never really said. He had made it clear that he preferred isolation to the company of strangers. Or anyone. That didn’t mean that he liked it.
She continued walking until she heard the sound of a hammer hitting metal. And then, she came around the curve of the path, and saw the beginnings of the house. At least, that’s what she assumed it was. A foundation and some skeletal wood. And Griffin, shirtless, hammering away. She couldn’t take her eyes off of him. Everything about him was beautiful. His entire body finally honed. As he hammered, the muscles in his shoulders shifted and bunched, his abs, his chest...
And she was mesmerized. By absolutely everything about him.
And as if he could feel her eyes on him, he suddenly looked up, and his expression shifted. And when it did, it was to one of absolute, unquestionable fury.
He pulled the hammer back one more time, then tossed it onto the ground. “What are you doing here?”
“I... I came to get you for dinner.”
“I didn’t give you permission to go exploring, did I?”
“I didn’t know I needed permission. I’m kind of in all your stuff cleaning, anyway.”
“Well, I didn’t tell you that you could come here. And I don’t want you here.”
It was like her fantasy had been a delicate paper lantern, and he’d grabbed it in his fists and buckled it. Extinguished the light.
His anger was painful, and she hadn’t expected