Snowed in with the Mountain Man (Log Cabin Christmas)

Chapter 3

3

JAKE

C ontentment.

It was something I’d searched for my entire adult life. Both my parents died in a car accident when I was seventeen, rocketing me into adulthood before I was even ready.

These days, relaxing meant gulping down a beer after a grueling day of work, not sitting in my kitchen and enjoying a delicious meal while watching the snow fall outside. But actually sitting and enjoying the moment? That never happened.

“This is the perfect view,” Caitlyn said on a sigh.

We’d both cleared our plates of the scrambled eggs and toast I’d made. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any sausage or bacon in the fridge.

“It’s even prettier when it’s not snowing,” I said. “When all this falling snow stops, that is.”

“Oh gosh, I didn’t even think about that,” she said. “The snow on the ground is going to be beautiful when we can finally see it.”

This woman was just about the most optimistic person I’d ever met. Her SUV, which she said she’d just bought, was crumpled against a tree, yet here she was, appreciating the sheets of blinding snow that had caused it. I, meanwhile, was grumbling about how I couldn’t see my backyard because of all that snow while I sat at my kitchen table with the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

Everyone was right. I was a Scrooge. A true grump. And it went beyond not putting hours into decorating some oversized shrub in my front yard for the four weeks out of the year people would enjoy it.

“Driving back here today, I started to wonder if maybe I have it wrong,” she said, staring out the window, her coffee mug held casually in her right hand.

She had her left arm crossed over her stomach, and it was propping up the elbow that held the mug. I hadn’t seen her take a sip in the two or three minutes she’d held it there.

“I thought living in the city, where I have access to the best coffee shops and restaurants, was the dream,” she continued. “Going to happy hour with my friends after sitting at a computer all day, having museums and festivals and stuff going on all weekend, every weekend. But this is the life. You could prop up your laptop right here and work.”

I laughed. “Yeah, that’s not an option for me. I work in construction. I don’t even own a laptop.”

That brought her gaze over to my face, and my heart skipped a beat as we made eye contact. I tried to avoid doing that because every time our eyes met, a little more of that wall I’d built around my heart crumbled. If I let it go too long, she just might work her way into my heart.

“Desktop?” she asked. “My grammy may as well have a desktop. She leaves her laptop on her desk. I always tell her she could set it on her lap while she’s on the couch watching TV, but she insists on leaving it plugged in on her desk.”

Was she comparing me to her grandmother? I wasn’t sure what to say to that. I was thirty-five, and I was guessing she was in her early twenties, but I wasn’t that much older. Doing some basic math, no way would I even be her parents’ age.

“My grammy raised us,” Caitlyn said. “My mom had my sister when she was fifteen, and I came right after at seventeen. My mother died of a drug overdose when I was a teenager.”

I winced. “I’m sorry. I lost both my parents in a car accident when I was seventeen.”

Her mouth fell open and her eyes widened as she stared at me. She was realizing the same thing I was. We both had similar pasts, although I hadn’t been raised by a grandmother. Instead, I’d moved in with a buddy’s family for my senior year. My sister was already in college at that point.

I felt a little more of that wall crumbling. If I wasn’t careful, this woman would work her way into my heart, then break it when she left town as soon as the snow melted off the roads.

If there was one thing I’d learned in life, it was that people let you down. Sometimes they couldn’t even help it. The only way to stay safe was to avoid caring too much.

“It’s cleared up out there,” Caitlyn said.

Her words pulled me out of my thoughts. I’d been staring out the window for a solid thirty seconds and hadn’t even noticed the snow had, indeed, come to a complete stop. We could now clearly see the white blanket it had left on the ground.

“Is that the sun?” she asked.

I narrowed my eyes. She was right. The sun was shining. Maybe it had been shining all along and we just couldn’t see it through the snow. Was it possible to snow and be sunny at the same time? I really had no idea.

“That’s something that doesn’t happen in Kentucky,” she said. “When it snows there, it sticks around a while. This crap will be melted off by dinnertime.”

She was being optimistic. If there was one thing I’d learned about her, it was that optimism was her default setting. Pessimism was mine, but I wasn’t going to bring her down if she was excited about getting out of here and maybe making it to her grandmother’s in time for turkey and dressing.

But maybe it wasn’t negative to hope the sun wouldn’t melt all this snow by dinner time. Maybe I was hoping the snow would stick around longer. As long as it took to get her out of my system.

Yes, maybe I wasn’t such a pessimist after all.