Page 55 of Shared By the Mountain Men

I wondered where Jack was. It was only eight, so he was probably out somewhere. On a whim, I grabbed the half-drank bottle of whiskey I’d bought my first night in camp and carried it over to Jack’s porch. Two cats were lounging around, so I sat in a rocking chair, poured myself three fingers of whiskey, and waited for Jack to get home from wherever he was.

“Cats are good judges of character,” I said to the nearest one, an orange tabby with a notch in one ear. “You all seem to like Jack, so he must be a good guy. Right?”

The cat looked away from me.

“I’d love to see how you all act around Ash. That dude isterrifying. I thought I was beginning to get him to relax around me, but then I fucked it up by prying into his personal life. Which is the exact thing I hate when people do it to me.” I shook my head at the cat. “Stupid mistake to make, huh?”

One of the other cats jumped up onto the railing next to the chair, checking to see if I had any treats. I scratched her behind the ear, and she purred and pushed her head against my fingertips.

“Do cats overthink things the way humans do?” I asked. “Probably not. You seem to pick up on each other’s vibes and act accordingly. I should learn to do the same. In fact, I did that with Noah—I stopped analyzing things to death and jumped into things with him, and it has been great for me. Just goes to show you, humans aren’t very consistent. Life is easier as a cat. Trust me.”

Suddenly the door flew open and Jack lunged out onto the porch with a baseball bat held in both hands. When he saw it was only me, he relaxed.

“What the fuck are you doing on my porch at this hour?” he demanded.

“This hour? It’s barely past eight!”

“I was sleeping.”

My eyes left his bat for the first time since he appeared. Jack was wearing boxers and a gray tank top, his arms bulging out of the sides in the porch light. To my alcohol-influenced eyes, he lookedgood. He was also wearing wire-framed glasses.

“I didn’t realize you wore glasses,” I said to cover the fact that I had been ogling his biceps.

“I wear contacts. Most of the time.” He pointed with the bat, eyebrows rising. “You didn’t answer why you’re on my porch.”

I raised the bottle. “I was having a drink. I thought I would catch you coming home. Seriously, you’re in bed by eight? I thought you were cooler than that, grandpa.”

He sighed and lowered himself into the other chair. “I have to wake up at three. I’m clearing a section of trail about two hours east of here, near Mount Princeton.”

“Three? Shit, sorry for bothering you.” I started to rise, but he held out the bat to stop me.

“Slide that bottle this way,” he said.

“You don’t want to go back to bed?”

“I hadn’t fallen asleep yet. And it’s rude to let a woman drink alone.”

“How chivalrous of you.” I pushed the bottle in his direction, and he took a long pull directly from it. “How big is Mount Princeton?”

“It’s a fourteener.”

I stared at him. “I don’t know what that means.”

His brow rose in surprise. “You’re hiking the Colorado Trail and you’ve never heard of the fourteeners?”

“I’m from Ohio. And I didn’t do much planning for this trip.”

“There are fifty-eight peaks in Colorado above fourteen thousand feet of elevation,” Jack explained. “They’re known as the fourteeners. People like to climb them.”

“So you’re getting up early to climb the mountain?”

“I’m being paid by the Colorado Parks Department to clear away debris from the trail,” he said dryly. “That storm last night knocked down a lot of trees.”

“Storm?” I asked.

Jack blinked at me. “It was loud. Tough to miss.”

“I guess I was sleeping pretty soundly.”

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