Retreat to the Mountain by Rocklyn Ryder

Eddy Jones
Now that the rafting season is over, I won’t need to leave Moonshine Ridge to go down to the big warehouse stores till next summer and that means doing more of my shopping locally.
Stepping inside the market, the bell on the door jingles, and I’m about to give Alice my customary greeting before grabbing a basket, when my head snaps back to the woman behind the counter.
The curvy brunette at the register is not the octogenarian store keeper that I’ve known my whole life and I know for a fact she doesn’t belong to any of Alice’s grandsons, the McAllister brothers, either.
Because this woman is mine.
Pepper’s too young to have already suffered such big disappointment. She thinks her life is already over, but I’m here to show her that it’s just beginning.

Pepper
At only twenty-one years old, my career is over. A broken shoulder ended my Olympic snowboarding dreams before I’d finished high school.
After years of healing, therapy, and just plain feeling sorry for myself, I finally found myself retreating to the mountains hoping to find a new purpose.
The day Eddy walks into the market where I’ve been working, everything comes into focus for the first time since the accident.
Impossibly tall with wild hair streaked blonde from the sun and a beard that makes me weak at the knees, he’s all toned muscles and tanned skin from summers of working as a guide for his family’s river rafting business.
He says I’m his and I want to believe him, but a man like Eddy Jones can have his pick of women, why would he want to be stuck with someone who’s only going to hold him back?