Page 13 of Wounded Mountain Man

“How’s it going?” He stepped back and looked around. “Looks great.”

I beamed with pride. I’d put a lot of work into making my classroom ready for the kids that would come in just two short days.

“Thanks,” I said. “I probably overdid it, but it’s my first time. I’ll settle into it after a while.”

Our eyes met at those words, and we both smiled. I knew we were each thinking about the same thing—that first time on the motorcycle. It had been painful, and so had the next time, just a few hours later in his bed. But it had gotten easier in subsequent days, and I’d never left that RV. We lived there for our first two years together, only recently moving into a cabin on Memory Lane where a lot of the town’s loggers lived.

Duke had become friends with a few of them. Gradually, he was easing into being around people again. Loving me—and being loved back by me—had shown him that, yes, opening your heart came with some risks, but they were well worth it.

“Thank you,” I said as he continued to take in the decorations I’d put around the room.

He turned his attention back to me. “For what?”

“Without you, I’m not sure I’d be standing here right now. I definitely wouldn’t be pregnant. You’ve given me so much.”

He moved closer to me, putting a hand on each of my shoulders. “Are you kidding? You’ve given me everything. My life was empty before you came into it.”

“Same,” I said. “I didn’t even know what I was missing. And now I’ve found my home.”

“We both have. It doesn’t matter if we live in my RV or the cabin. Home is where you are. But I do have a surprise for the three of us.”

He looked down at my baby bump. Yes, we were already thinking of ourselves as a family of three. Our little girl would be the most loved little girl in history.

“We haven’t gotten a chance to use the RV much lately,” he said. “So I planned a trip.”

My eyes widened. “A trip?”

We’d both agreed to stay close to home until the baby was born. Before I found out we were pregnant, we traveled every time we could get a long weekend away. We even took the RV to the beach. But we planned to sell it soon and maybe buy another one someday when our kids were older and they could enjoy camping.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t take us too far. I looked into campgrounds in the area and found one just a few miles away. You know…we might want to think about that.”

“Think about what?”

“Opening our own campground someday, right here in Seduction Summit. It could be our retirement career.”

“I do get a pension after thirty years,” I said.

“Then that’s what we shoot for.”

I liked the thought of that—just picturing the two of us running a business together, meeting guests from all over thecountry, gave me something to look forward to. But for now, he’d given me something even better.

“Let’s do it,” I said.

His mouth broadened into a big smile, and I wrapped my arms around him, clutching the apple in one hand behind his neck.

“Now kiss me,” I said. “For luck.”

And that was exactly what he did, in the middle of the classroom where I’d spend most of my days for the next few years until I got my degree. Maybe even longer. I’d been told I could eventually move to middle or high school, but I liked the younger kids. And since I was going to be a new mom, elementary school was perfect for me.

Everything was coming together better than I could have ever planned. I was going to have the family I’d always longed for, in a town I could have only dreamed of, making my home. Best of all, there were many, many hot nights in my future—summer and otherwise—with the man of my dreams.