No Axe To Grind

My ex carved our initials into a tree. I came to return the favor... with a chainsaw.

Tessa Renner flew to Alaska with engagement cupcakes and a heart full of forever. She caught her fiancé with his assistant instead. So she did what any rational woman would do: bought the biggest chainsaw in the hardware store, marched into the frozen wilderness, and declared war on the tree where he'd carved their initials.

Highlights of the mission: one YouTube tutorial (half-watched), one nearly severed toe, zero exit strategy, and one incoming blizzard.

Also one mountain man. Six-and-a-half feet of flannel, beard, and disapproval, flanked by two dogs who judge her harder than her mother - insisting she wait out the storm in his remote cabin.

Gage Bennett is a former Army Ranger who builds beautiful things out of wood and walls out of silence. He likes his mountain quiet and his heart locked. He was not expecting a hurricane in suede booties who names her plants, narrates her own disasters, and somehow makes his cabin feel like a home.

She came to destroy one carving. He's starting to want to make a new one.