My mountain man grump a.., p.1
My Mountain Man Grump: A Single Dad Grumpy/Sunshine Romance, page 1
MY MOUNTAIN MAN GRUMP
WILD HEART MOUNTAIN: MOUNTAIN HEROES
SADIE KING
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MY MOUNTAIN MAN GRUMP
A grumpy single dad and the curvy girl who steals his heart...
I didn’t mean to send a photo of my boobs to the hot mountain man’s granny.
She’s been catfishing me into thinking I’m here to meet her grandson.
Cole, the widower with two wild daughters, is in need of a wife, or so his granny thinks.
The trouble is that Cole wants nothing to do with me. He’s rude, uptight, and way too protective of his girls.
He’s also hot, disarming, and good with his hands.
Now I’m stuck on the side of a mountain until my car gets fixed with a meddling granny and a grumpy mountain man.
My Mountain Man Grump is a grumpy/sunshine steamy novella featuring a hot single dad and an innocent curvy girl.
Copyright © 2024 by Sadie King.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover designed by Cormer Covers.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, companies, locales or persons living or dead, are entirely coincidental.
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CONTENTS
1. Carrie
2. Cole
3. Carrie
4. Cole
5. Carrie
6. Carrie
7. Cole
8. Carrie
9. Cole
10. Carrie
11. Cole
12. Carrie
13. Cole
14. Carrie
15. Cole
Epilogue
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1
CARRIE
It’s funny how excitement and nervousness feel exactly the same. Since I stepped onto the plane eight hours ago, I’ve yo-yo’d between the two. Never quite sure if my racing heart, turbulent stomach, and sweaty palms are because I’m excited to meet Cole for the first time or nervous as hell.
The rental car shudders as I take the windy corner of the remote mountain road. An eagle soars overhead then drops into the valley below. I slow to watch it dive, wondering how the wind feels breezing past its feathers. It must be freeing.
As freeing as getting on a plane for the first time. As freeing as leaving North Carolina for the first time in my twenty-four years of existence.
I bang the steering wheel in excitement and let out a whoop, which is carried out the open window and into the warm mountain air.
As freeing as picking up a rental car and driving to the ass end of nowhere to meet a man I’ve only ever communicated with via email and text message.
A thrill of nervousness etches up my spine as I think about meeting Cole for the first time. Cole. The axe-wielding single dad who swiped right on my profile pic and reached out three months ago. The widowed mountain man with a wicked sense of humor and a body as taut as my nerves are right now as I drive to meet him.
My rented Jeep Cherokee takes the mountain roads smoothly, and I’m glad I forked over the cash for the upgrade, because I know mountain roads.
I’m heading to the AirBnB Cole recommended run by Joyce, a seventy-something homebody who I also corresponded with at the insistence of my sister to make sure she was a real person and the AirBnB was real and this wasn’t some trap to lure me to a remote mountain location. Why not just lure a local girl was my argument to Suzie, always the overprotective big sister.
“Text me when you land,” Suzie instructed as she hugged me too tight at the airport. “And when you get there. And you can always come home if it doesn’t turn out how you want.”
Her anxious face made me smile more brightly than was necessary. “It will be fine. He’s legit, Suzie.”
If I say it often enough, I can convince myself. Because the closer I get to Sweetheart Falls and the man I’ve only ever communicated with via email and text, the more that excitement feels like anxiousness and I wonder if Suzie was right to be concerned about me, who has never left North Carolina, coming all the way to Montana to meet a man I don’t know.
My GPS tells me the turn off is coming up, and I follow a bumpy road down a trail that winds through towering Ponderosa pines.
The trees are different in Montana than on Wild Heart Mountain where I’ve come from. They’re further apart, as if they too are trying to fill the wide open spaces that I flew over on my way in.
But a mountain is a mountain, and there’s comfort in winding roads and sudden drops into tree-lined valleys as I drive towards Sunrise Cabin, the romantically named AirBnB.
A good headwind bought the flight in early, and I was too excited or too nervous to stop for lunch.
Which means I’m an hour earlier than the time I told Joyce I’d be here. But I hope that won’t be a problem. I’d rather get settled in and start the adventure then hang around killing time.
Another five minutes and I pull into a driveway marked by a rickety wooden fence that has colorful ribbons tied to the top rung that flap in the wind. A kid’s bike is overturned near the drive, one wheel sticking out into the gravel, and I have to drive around it so as not to run it over.
It’s a shared driveway and I pause a few feet in, deciding which place is Sunrise Cabin.
To the left is a large two story cabin with a wooden porch running around the outside. Wicker furniture and colorful bean bags give it a homely, permanently lived-in feel. A rusty trampoline sits to the side and kids toys are discarded on the lawn. There’s a fire pit with log seats around it, and a doll sits on one of the stumps as if waiting for her friends.
Definitely not Sunrise Cabin. I drive further onto the property, and to the right the driveway splits and heads down a small slope. Colorful gnomes line the driveway, heading down the slope toward a cabin just visible through the trees.
Straight in front of me is a smaller cabin, if you can call it that. It looks like one of those tiny homes that have become popular, but from the nineties. Wide windows are framed in pale wood. A porch runs around this one too, but there’s only a single chair and a wooden table outside and no scattered toys. No sign of the family life that must exist next door.
This must be the place.
There’s a parking spot on the right side of the cabin between the cabin wall and the trees, and I slide into the spot and kill the engine. My legs are stiff from sitting for most of the day, and without bothering to lock the car, I step out of the rental and stretch my arms above my head. Birdsong greets me along with the rustle of the trees. It’s peaceful here, as quiet as home.
I walk around to the front of the cabin and then try the door. It’s locked, which isn’t surprising considering how early I am.
I open the AirBnB app and send Joyce a quick message letting her know I’m here.
The rumble of a vehicle makes me look up from my phone.
Pulling into the driveway and going way too fast, kicking up dust in the gravel, is a large pickup truck. Its dust-coated sides indicate it belongs to a local.
The pickup slows when it gets to my cabin, and I catch a glimpse of the driver.
My stomach bottoms out and my heartbeat, already skittish, jumps up a notch. It’s Cole. Rough bearded, shaggy-haired, and looking just as hot in real life as his photo.
Joyce must have told him where I was staying and he’s come to meet me. My heart does a little flutter at the thought.
I’ve only seen two pictures of Cole, a blurry one of him cutting wood with his shirt off and the smiling one with his kids, their faces blurred out, which I understood. He didn’t want to send their images to a stranger, although that didn’t stop me from sending a rather intimate picture to him.
My cheeks flush when I think of the exchanges we’ve had. The emails, the texts, and one night after I’d had a glass of wine, I boldly sent him a picture of my boobs. He responded with a smiley face and asked when I was coming to visit.
I’ve never been the type of woman to send nudes, but I was feeling bold, and if you’re going to have an adventure you may as well jump straight in.
He’s seen my boobs, I’ve sent him cupcakes I baked, and we’ve had short email exchanges but never quite managed a phone call.
Now here I am, my heart fluttering like a wounded bird and my stomach doing flip flops.
Cole parks his pickup in front of the cabin and steps out of the car.
He’s even more striking in real life. The photos didn’t give a sense of Cole’s height or his broad shoulders. The man’s built as solidly as one of the huge Ponderosa pine
s that surround this property.
His dark hair is pulled back in a man bun, which seems oddly masculine on his bearded, rugged face.
He’s wearing bright orange overalls, which means he’s just come from work. He told me all about his job as a helicopter pilot for the local search and rescue team.
I smooth my hair back, hoping I don’t look as tired as I feel and that my clothes, my favorite high-waisted green skirt that accentuates my hips and hides my stomach rolls and a tucked in Guns n’ Roses t-shirt, aren’t too rumpled from my travels.
My palms are slick and I clasp them together nervously as Cole steps out of his pickup.
“Hi!” I don’t know whether to hug him or shake his hand or do what the daring part of me wants to do, which is kiss him.
I lurch forward, deciding a hug is appropriate for someone who’s come all this way. A heady scent of pinewood and diesel reaches my senses and I stumble, falling the last part of the way into his solid chest. Cole catches me awkwardly, and instead of pulling me into an embrace sets me back on my feet.
I step back awkwardly, jiggling from foot to foot and trying to compose my senses.
He frowns at me. And I beam back at him. But instead of smiling, his frown deepens.
He doesn’t look excited to see me or nervous. In fact, the way he’s looking at me is like I’m a stranger who he’s never met before and not a woman whose boobs he’s seen.
“Are you lost?” His voice is a deep rumble that makes my insides quiver, but what he says makes me stop cold.
“It’s me!” I say awkwardly. “Carrie.”
His dark eyebrows pull even further together, and he tilts his head to one side in confusion. He definitely doesn’t look like a man who’s meeting his potential lover for the first time. He looks like a man who’s trying to figure out why the woman in front of him is smiling at him like they’re old friends.
“Do I know you?”
My stomach drops. This isn’t the man I’ve been communicating with for the last three months. This man in front of me, Cole, if that’s even his name, has no idea who I am.
2
COLE
The woman in front of me skips from foot to foot like a nervous hen. Her dark brown hair has fallen out of whatever messy bun she had it in and the mountain breeze picks up the loose strands, making them dance around her oval-shaped face. One of them catches on her lip, and my gaze is drawn to it.
Her lips are full and pink, and there’s a sheen to them like they’re coated in gloss or some other girly shit, and I bet it’s got a flavor. I wonder if she’d taste like strawberries if I kissed her. Which is ridiculous. I haven’t kissed a woman since God knows when, which may be the reason I’m fantasizing about kissing this one.
Her hand brushes the strand of hair away and it falls to her neck, trailing over her clavicle.
She’s smiling at me like we’re best friends, and I search my brain for the memory of her. Did we go to high school together? Is she a distant relative or an old friend of Mel’s?
But I’d remember a face like hers. And I’d certainly remember her figure. She’s got curves just the way I like them. Full breasts and hips and a softness around her belly. She’s wearing solid walking boots with scuff marks and a hint of dried mud.
The boots and the back of the Jeep Cherokee that pokes out from around the side of the Sunrise Cabin makes me think she’s a mountain girl. But it’s a rental, so she’s not from around here.
Maybe she’s a distant relative here to visit Gran. That must be it. Gran’s probably sent her pictures of the girls with me in them, which is why she’s looking at me like she knows me.
“Do I know you?”
Her smile falters, and the brightness goes out of her eyes. It’s like the sun going out, and I wonder what I’ve said to change her happy mood.
“Um, are you Cole?” She bites on her lower lip.
“Yeah. Who are you?”
It comes out gruffer than I intended and the woman folds her arms over her body, folding into herself. “I’m Carrie.”
I search the name in my memory, but I don’t know any Carries. Her eyes narrow and uncertainty crosses her features. She shakes her head slightly and backs away a step.
“You don’t know who I am, do you?”
“Nope.” Her hand covers her mouth, and her eyes widen in horror. I hate that I’m causing her to feel that way, but I have no idea why. “Should I?”
She backs away, her hand clasping her phone. “No. I… um. I’ve made a mistake…”
“You-hoo!” Gran’s voice rings out clear and cheerful as she saunters around from the side of the Jeep. She’s puffing from exertion, and she must have come up the back way from her cabin. “Carrie, right?” She extends a hand to Carrie. “Joyce.”
Carrie looks confused, but her manners must win out because she takes Gran’s hand and shakes it. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here to meet you; I wasn’t expecting you for another hour.”
Carrie’s mouth drops open in confusion, and she looks between us.
“I think there’s been a mistake…”
Whatever she’s trying to figure out gets lost in Gran’s cheerfulness. “No. No mistake. You’re Carrie, twenty-four years old, a nurse from North Carolina who likes hiking, baking, and hopes to have her own family one day.”
Carrie’s jaw juts forward and her eyebrows draw together, the confused look never leaving her face. But as Gran talks it dawns on me what’s going on here.
Gran’s at it again. Meddling in my life and parading yet another eligible woman in front of me. I’ve had the entire single female population between the ages of 18-55 presented to me in one way or another over the past year, ever since Gran decided it was time for me to move on and find my girls a mother.
“And this is Cole.” Gran gestures to me like a waiter presenting what’s on the menu. “Thirty-four years old, ex-military man turned helicopter pilot, a widower with two daughters who are in desperate need of a mother.”
There is nothing subtle in Gran’s tactics. Last summer she organized a singles party at her house and tricked me into coming by saying it was the birthday party for the girls’ piano teacher, who was there alongside every other single woman in town.
When I say it was a singles party, I mean I was the only single man around at least thirty single women. Gran escorted me through the party, her surprisingly strong fingers gripping my arm and pulling me from one woman to the next as she whispered their credentials into my ear. “Kirsty, twenty-eight, single mom to a five year old. Fertile.” She nudged me and her right eye spasmed in what for one horrible moment I thought was Gran having a stroke until l realized she was trying to wink.
That was a nudge too far. I ordered everyone out and swore I’d take the girls further into the mountains if she ever tried something like that again.
But here we are. She’s managed to convince some poor sap to come to Montana all the way from North Carolina to try out for the part of mother of my children. As if me and the girls aren’t doing just fine on our own. I don’t know what scheme the two of them have cooked up, but I want no part of it.
“Gran.” At my gruff tone she puts a hand on my shoulder, knowing what must be coming.
“Now, Cole, I’ve been corresponding with Carrie for the last three months…”
Carrie gasps. “That was you?”
The look of horror lets me know she wasn’t privy to Gran’s schemes, which makes me feel sorry for her. But also, who comes all this way to meet someone they met online?
“…and according to the dating app, she is a perfect match for you. Same interests, you both work in the service of others, and you’ve both experienced a loss.”
Anger flares inside me. Gran’s been telling a complete stranger about my personal life. This is too much.
“Now Cole…” Gran begins, but I cut her off before this can go any further.
I turn to Carrie and she’s looking as horrified as I am, which means her perfect mouth is popped open and her cheeks have a flush to them that gives them a youthful glow. That stray hair is caught on her lip again, and I almost reach over and pull it away before stopping myself.
