Page 30 of Working for the Mountain Man

She laughs instead, and I pull in a relieved breath, she crosses the room and kisses me, I slide my hands along her waist and pull her closer.

"I fixed chapter twelve," she says, when she pulls back.

"The one with the brown eyes."

She goes still, those gorgeous eyes of hers wide. "You remember that."

"I listen."

She narrows her eyes at me, then reaches past me for the laptop already open on the desk. “Listen to this,” she says.

“I’m not sure I want to.”

“You do.” She clears her throat, far too pleased with herself. “He didn’t think he was a hero, not really, heroes saved the world, he just fixed what was broken.”

My jaw tightens before I can stop it. “No,” I say.

Her smile drops. “No?”

“That’s me.”

Her lips twitch and I see the mischief in her eyes. “I never said it was you.”

God, this woman. “Elsie.”

“What?” She looks down at the screen, all innocent looking. “It’s fiction.”

She’s crazy if she thinks I don’t know it’s me she’s writing about. “It’s not subtle.”

She grins wide and bright. “It’s romantic.”

I sigh. “It’s inaccurate.”

Her smile softens. “No, Hugo. It’s not.”

"Still not a hero," I say.

"You're mine," she says. "That counts."

She came to Forge Creek to hide, I know that, but she’s not hiding now.

She’s in my house, at the desk I cleared for her, wearing one of my shirts and arguing with me about whether I’m a fictional hero or not.

I’ve spent my life fixing things; roads, bridges, washed-out shoulders, and broken culverts. All the problems no one else wanted to carry, because that’s what I do, that’s who I’ve always been.

But Elsie was never something to fix, she was never a problem, and she was never a mistake.

She was something to choose and someone to keep.

So I do, every damn day.

Epilogue

ELSIE

Three months later

The final proof is open on my laptop, and I can’t stop staring at it, not because something is wrong, but because it’s done.