Page 21 of The Lodge

I blink, force myself to look at his face and not, say, his washboard abs, or the line where skin meets fabric, his thick gray sweatpants hanging low on his hips.

He grins, amused. I’ve definitely been caught.

“Couldn’t wait until tomorrow’s lesson?” he says, and—I’m out of practice—but I would dare to describe it asflirtily.

Heaven help me.

“I was on my way to get dinner, and I locked myself out. Any chance I could use your phone?”

“Thought you were waiting on room service?”

“So did I,” I say. “It never came.”

His brow furrows. “You must bestarving.”

“I’ve literally only eaten an oatmeal snack and some maple candies from the café since breakfast.”

He steps back from the door, gestures for me to come inside. “I can make you something, if you want? It’ll probably take them a while to get over here to let you back in.”

“Are you sure? Don’t you have, like… ski work to do?”

Ski work.

Ski work.

“Promise you’re not interrupting anything,” he says, grinning. “Ski work’s all done for the day. How do you feel about salmon?”

“I feelvery goodabout salmon.”

He leads me inside, and I take a seat on one of the barstools at his kitchen island.

“Be right back,” he says, then disappears around the corner.

At a glance, his penthouse has the same layout as mine, only flipped—and the decor is opposite, too. Whereas mine is all white walls and warm wood, his is charcoal everything: charcoal floor tiles, charcoal walls, Edison bulbs inside geometric charcoal-gray fixtures. He’s got potted plants, too—a trio of herbs right here onthe island, and farther into the living room, a couple of monsteras. It’s all very masculine, the entire space extremely well curated.

When Tyler returns, he has a shirt on, a fresh cotton V-neck in lilac. I can’t help but picture him without it, the image of his carved stomach permanently impressed on my memory.

“Here you go,” he says, sliding his phone across the island. “I pulled the number up for you.”

“This says I’m calling someone named Julie.”

He shrugs. “That’s the concierge.”

“You’re on a first-name basis with the concierge?”

“Lived here a long time,” he says. “It would be weird if I wasn’t.”

Fair enough. “Thanks again,” I say, then put the call through.

Tyler pulls something out of his fridge—a piece of fresh fish still wrapped in paper from the market.

“You’remaking me dinner?” I say, still waiting for Julie to pick up. “I thought you had leftovers—Oh, hello!”

“You’re not Tyler,” a woman’s voice says on the other end.

“I’m not,” I say. “This is Alix Morgan—I met you yesterday when I checked in, I’m staying in the penthouse next door to Tyler’s—”

“Let me guess, you locked yourself out?”

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