Page 40 of Against All Odds

Cynthia gaped at me.

“You have a nice day. Alexa is going to pick up Juno tomorrow. She has her next week.”

Unfortunately, they weren’t the only ones who had taken a stance and tried to give me advice. As Sable had warned me, there was ‘your place is with your family, son’contingent—and a smaller ‘screw, the Vikar family’group. They werebothvocal. But I was certain that Sable got more of the remarks and advice than I did. We both had to ignore them and carry on!

“I think I prefer skiing to hiking,” I called out to Sable.

“You can’t ski all year round,” she quipped.

“True, but the season is longer than it used to be. I think we’ll keep the slopes open for at least another two-three weeks.”

“Is that unusual?” she asked.

“Skiing until the end of April? Yeah, that’s not something we could do a decade or two ago.”

She walked ahead of me, her dark ponytail swinging with each step.

She wore hiking shorts with many pockets, sensible boots, and a backpack slung over her shoulders. I was in similar clothes and had brought along a bottle of water.

As we hiked uphill, I had to catch my breath.

“You said this was an easy trail.”

She glanced back over her shoulder, smirking. “If you like skiing, I figured you had strong legs.”

“Yeah, but I usually have gravity working with me,” I shot back. “Not against me. Is this payback because you fell on your ass several times during our last date when I was teaching you important life skills?”

She laughed a soft, musical sound that made me wonder if I was losing my mind being so maudlin about this woman. “Skiing is an important life skill?”

“Sure is.”

The truth was, I didn’t mind the climb. Not when the view was this good—not just the mountains but also her. Seeing Sable out here, flushed from the effort and smiling in the sun was worth giving up my morning run for a later afternoon hike.

“I didn’t come here for years while I was married,” she told me as we walked companionably up an easy trail. “But after the divorce, I started again. It is almost meditative. Plus, the views are better than therapy.”

“Did you ever try couples counseling?” I asked.

“There wasn’t enough time between Jack admitting to adultery and my asking for a divorce for couples counseling.”

“How much time was there?”

“About five to ten seconds,” she told me.

Why did people think this woman had easy morals? To me, she appeared to have enough integrity for ten people.

“Cheating is a hard no?”

“Disrespecting me is a hard no.” She sighed. “Though I didn’t know that until he told me he knocked up Molly.”

I caught her hand in mine because I heard her pain.

“It doesn’t bother me…now,” she quickly added.

“But it did bother you.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah, it did.” She squeezed my hand.

When she didn’t say anything else, I didn’t push her. Instead, I let the quiet stretch between us, the sound of our boots crunching against the dirt filling the space.

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