Cracking With The Mountain Man
(2026)(A book in the Cold Mountain Nights series)
A novel by Deidre-Ann Anderson
The temperature is dropping, the leaves are turning, and I've got exactly zero interest in the woman standing in my kitchen holding a pie she baked "as a neighborly gesture."
I know what a neighborly gesture looks like in a small mountain town. It looks like the first move in a campaign. First comes the pie. Then the invitations to community dinners. Then the concerned questions about why I live alone and isn't it sad and don't I want someone to keep me warm when the cold mountain nights roll in.
No. I don't. I have a woodstove, a good dog, and a blanket. I'm warm.
Except this woman isn't playing the game I expected. She drops off the pie, doesn't ask to come in, doesn't linger, doesn't flirt. Just says, "Figured you could use something sweet since you're clearly allergic to it," and walks back down my mountain in boots that are completely wrong for the terrain.
I eat the pie. It's the best thing I've tasted in three years.
I tell myself I'm returning the plate out of basic human decency. Not because I want to see her again. Not because the sound of her laugh when she tripped on my porch step echoed in my cabin for two hours after she left.
It's just a plate.
Cracking With The Mountain Man is a cozy-meets-spicy fall romance featuring a reclusive mountain man whose defenses crack one pastry at a time, a bold heroine who isn't trying to fix him but accidentally does anyway, enemies to neighbors to lovers, cold mountain nights and shared body heat, sassy banter, and the kind of slow burn that catches fire when you least expect it. Steamy. Safe. Guaranteed HEA.
Genre: Romance
I know what a neighborly gesture looks like in a small mountain town. It looks like the first move in a campaign. First comes the pie. Then the invitations to community dinners. Then the concerned questions about why I live alone and isn't it sad and don't I want someone to keep me warm when the cold mountain nights roll in.
No. I don't. I have a woodstove, a good dog, and a blanket. I'm warm.
Except this woman isn't playing the game I expected. She drops off the pie, doesn't ask to come in, doesn't linger, doesn't flirt. Just says, "Figured you could use something sweet since you're clearly allergic to it," and walks back down my mountain in boots that are completely wrong for the terrain.
I eat the pie. It's the best thing I've tasted in three years.
I tell myself I'm returning the plate out of basic human decency. Not because I want to see her again. Not because the sound of her laugh when she tripped on my porch step echoed in my cabin for two hours after she left.
It's just a plate.
Cracking With The Mountain Man is a cozy-meets-spicy fall romance featuring a reclusive mountain man whose defenses crack one pastry at a time, a bold heroine who isn't trying to fix him but accidentally does anyway, enemies to neighbors to lovers, cold mountain nights and shared body heat, sassy banter, and the kind of slow burn that catches fire when you least expect it. Steamy. Safe. Guaranteed HEA.
Genre: Romance
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