It didn’t matter that he was hot.

Or that I was alone and starting to wonder if I was going to die up there on that stupid mountain.

Or that he might have had a way to get me off said stupid mountain.

It was late, and it was dark, and I was cold and hungry, and I didn’t know him, so I didn’t drop the pickaxe. Instead, I held it even higher.

“What do you think you’re going to do with that thing?” He gestured toward it with one ham-sized hand. He was huge. Absolutely enormous in every way. And he could’ve crushed me without thinking twice. His hand was bigger than my head, or maybe it only looked that way when I was terrified and already freaking out before he showed up.

“What do you think?” I asked. “I’m going to cave your skull in if you come near me. I might not look like much, but I can swing this thing like a sonofabitch.”

“I believe you could.”

“I played softball through high school and college. I was the team’s best hitter. They called me Babe, after Babe Ruth.”

“Good for them, whoever they happen to be.”

“So just keep your distance, all right, Scotty?”

He frowned. “My name isn’t Scotty. It’s Owen.”

This was a mess. “Mine is Molly, but that’s not what I meant. I was talking about your accent. Sorry. It probably wasn’t a nice thing for me to say. I… had to say something. I wanted to sound tough.”

“Och, you sounded quite tough.”

“All right, all right. Hilarious. Ha, ha, let’s laugh at the girl on her own in the woods with a strange man bearing down on her.”

He took a backward step. “You would say I was bearing down on you, then?”

“It sure seemed like it.”

“Forgive me. I thought you might be in need of help—you cried out, and…”

Darned if the apology in his voice wasn’t enough to make me lower the pickaxe. I sure as heck wasn’t doing it, or I didn’t think I was. He didn’t seem so threatening when he was talking and being all Scottish whatnot. I didn’t have to go into my batting stance.

Not that I wouldn’t if he tried something sketchy.

“I did,” I remembered. “Sorry. I tripped and aggravated my ankle. I twisted it earlier today. Nothing worse than that.”

“I see. I thought perhaps you’d hurt yourself worse than that. It sounded rather painful.”

“It was rather painful. And you just, like… what? Came on the run? Do you make it a habit of hanging out on the mountain in the dark?”

Just like that, his face went blank, then fell. Like he was just remembering something and wasn’t too thrilled with it. “Oh. I—” He looked up the mountain.

“Why are you out here?” He wasn’t carrying gear. He didn’t have a single thing with him. “Don’t tell me you were out for a walk or something.”

“What if I was?”

“Then, I would have to ask you to leave me alone because you’re completely insane.” I couldn’t help but laugh, though it was definitely an uncomfortable laugh. “It’s a freaking mess out here, in case you couldn’t tell. I was hoping to wait until morning and start hiking down.”

“I might ask you what you’re doing out here, then,” he countered. “Who in their right mind would come up here after such a storm? I’ve seen reports of flooding, entire blocks wiped out. Why would you hike up the mountain after that?”

I let the pickaxe hit the ground and sat on my log. The stupid thing was too heavy to keep up the pretense that I would actually use it. “I didn’t hike up here after the storm. I rode out the storm in the cave over there.” I pointed to the overhang, around a hundred yards away. “It was no big deal. Just the scariest thing I’ve ever been through in my entire life.”

“You must be joking.” He crouched on the other side of the fire, staring at me. “You truly spent the entire storm up here on the mountain? Why haven’t you made your way down yet?”

“The ground is so muddy. I twisted my ankle within, like, ten seconds. I thought if I gave the ground another day to maybe firm up a little…” I shrugged. It sounded like a pretty poor plan when I said it out loud. “Nobody knew it was supposed to be this bad.”

“So I’ve heard,” he murmured. “How is that ankle now?”

I realized he was studying it from a distance and felt my cheeks color at the attention. Like he was going to fall in love with me because I had such attractive ankles.

“It hurts, but not too much. I think I’ll be able to get down there tomorrow, especially if I elevate it.” I paused. “I guess I’d better elevate it, then.”

“I guess you’d better. Do you need help?”

“I think I can manage.” Even so, my fingers fumbled with the laces on my boots. I probably should’ve taken the boot off earlier, like right after I slipped and twisted my ankle, but the idea of hanging out in the mud with one boot on hadn’t appealed to me.

“Are you all right?” he asked when I kept fumbling.

“Could you stop watching me, please? You’re giving me performance anxiety.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m just saying. You’re disturbing me.”

I glanced up to find him turning away, and the way his shoulders shook told me he was laughing. Great. Instead of asking what was so funny—like I needed to ask, like I didn’t know he was laughing at me—I untied the boot and slid it off my foot with a grunt I couldn’t hold inside.

“Let me help you.” Before I knew it, he was right there by my side.

“Weren’t you just over there?” I asked, flinching away. “I like a healthy amount of personal space, especially when I’m with people who never bothered to explain why they’re walking around a half-flooded mountain without so much as a backpack.”

“I’ll tell you why I’m up here if you’ll let me examine your ankle. Just put your leg up here.” He patted his thigh. His very thick thigh that threatened to tear the seams running up the sides of his jeans.

“Are you a doctor?”

“No, but I know my way around ankles. I’m only trying to help.” He held his hands up in the air. “If you don’t want any help, I understand. I’m a stranger, and you’re alone out here. I would be wary of me as well, lass.”

Lass. He called me Lass. If there was a single word that could melt an American girl’s heart, it was that one. At least, it worked on me. My left ankle was on his thigh before I knew it and dang it if the darned thing didn’t feel like granite. Was he a professional bodybuilder? Maybe that was why he understood joints and injuries and such?

He pulled down my sock until my ankle and heel were free. I wished I’d gotten a pedicure sometime in the last, oh, year. Was my heel rough and nasty? He didn’t seem to think so as his hands traveled over my foot. His calloused fingers examined the swollen joint. It had already started to swell within the minute I’d taken the boot off.

“A slight sprain,” he decided. “Your instinct was correct. You need to keep it elevated.”

“Thank you for taking the time to look at it.” I didn’t want to pull it away. It was nice to be taken care of, even if this little way. It was nice to feel his hands on my skin. For someone as big as he was, he had a gentle way about him.

But there was something underneath that gentleness. I sensed it, just the way I sensed the warmth of the fire, the smell of wet soil and leaves in the air, the sound of water still drip, drip, dripping from the trees. He had another side to him. He wasn’t always so gentle.

Or maybe it had been too long since I’d eaten a solid meal.

“So,” I whispered, since he left me a little breathless, “now that you’ve examined my ankle, you can tell me what you’re doing here.”

He blinked, silent.

“You said that if I allowed you to do it, you would tell me what you’re doing here. Remember? It was only a few minutes ago.”

“When you get an idea in your head, you’re like a dog with a bone,” he muttered, shaking his head.

I tried to ignore the way the fire’s light played off his chiseled jaw, his square chin. It was like trying to ignore an elephant sitting on my chest.

How did somebody who looked like that end up on a mountain after a hurricane without a single piece of gear in sight?

“So?” I prompted. “What gives? Why are you up here? I told you. You tell me.”

“Are you an investigative journalist by any chance?”

“No. Do you think I should consider a career change?”

He tried not to laugh, but it escaped him anyway.

A rich, deep laugh that bubbled up from his chest and graced the air. When he smiled, it was like the sun coming up after a long night.

And his hand was still on my ankle, and I wasn’t doing a thing to pull away from his touch.

What was happening to me?