Page 4 of Brooding Mountain Man

It was completely wasted on me, but I wasn’t going to argue. All I could think was how nice it would be to share that room with her. The word “honeymoon” had thoughts rolling through my mind that she probably wouldn’t want to know about.

“That works,” I said, keeping my expression as neutral as possible.

Georgia gave me a smile that made my heart skip a beat. “Great.”

Our eyes met and held for what seemed to be an unusually long amount of time. It was long enough that Skye shifted uncomfortably and stepped away, picking up her phone and looking down at it.

“I’m going to get back to my post.” She shifted her gaze to me. “If you need a souvenir T-shirt while you’re here, come to the gift shop and I’ll hook you up.”

It was clear from her tone that she wasn’t flirting. She seemed more interested in moving T-shirts than sharing the honeymoon suite with one of the guests. But the problem was Georgia wasn’t flirting, either, and that would have been some welcome attention.

“So you’ll be staying in town a while?” Georgia asked once we were alone.

“Looks like it. Know any local guys looking for work?”

Georgia had her hand on top of a white box that had suddenly hummed to life while she waited for whatever it was doing. She stared thoughtfully out the front door.

“All the guys I went to school with graduated and moved on,” she said. “Most of the work around here is being done by people who’ve been imported in. I could ask around to see if anyone has some crew members to spare, though.”

“Thanks,” I said, battling the temptation to tell her I’d handle it.

Independence had proven to be a liability at home. Maybe I could try something different here—working with others in the community rather than pushing them away because I was a loner.

But as I watched Georgia head back to the computer and tap around some more, I had to admit this was different for another reason. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I wanted to let someone in. I wanted a reason to come back later today and ask if she’d found anyone yet. Anything that would keep the lines of communication open.

“There you go, Mr. Palmer,” she said.

“You can call me Lucky.”

Was that flirting? I didn’t mean it to come out that way, but with a name like Lucky, there was no way to say that sentence without making it sound like I was lucky to meet her.

“Lucky.” She didn’t crack a smile, so if I had been flirting, that would definitely be a rejection. “The elevators are that way, and the Glacier Bar and Grill is that way. Happy hour is from five to six. One free round of drinks for guests during that hour. You won’t want to miss it.”

I reached out to take the key card from her and our fingers didn’t just make contact. We kept our hands on that card, touching, for a good ten seconds or so before she finally let go. In that ten seconds, neither of us broke the stare.

As cheesy as it sounded, something shifted in that ten seconds. I knew I could never go back to a time before I met this woman, not even if I had to.

“Will you be there?” I asked.

She’d stepped back, but she was still staring at me, her hands clutched in front of her as though she had to hold back from touching me again. My question brought a puzzled frown, though.

“At happy hour?” she asked.

Doubts set in. Was it too much, too soon? I didn’t want to scare her off.

She had an easy out. She could say that she wasn’t allowed to mingle with guests. It probably wasn’t even untrue. So I braced myself for rejection.

“Not usually,” she said. “But I can today. I get off at five. I don’t get free drinks, but I’m pretty sure I’ll need a glass of wine after this day.”

I stepped back, trying to hide just how happy her words made me. “I’ll see you a little after five then. And don’t work too hard.”

Before she could change her mind about having drinks with me, I got the hell out of there, clutching the key card in my hand and smiling to myself. It might not be an official date, but this was by far the happiest I’d been in years.

3

GEORGIA

The locals had taken all the bar stools again. Not that I could blame them. This was the only place within city limits to get an alcoholic beverage, so of course they’d gravitate here.

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