Page 35 of Love You
Outside, she found the group sitting at Rachel’s prettily set table, eating. Win was telling a story that had everyone laughing and as usual was the center of attention.
“I saved you a chair,” he said, and patted the seat next to his.
“Thanks.” She looked down at the heaping plate of food and the tall glass of ice tea he’d fetched for her. Yep, Win Garner was just full of surprises.
Chapter Nine
Win rode back to the trailhead to get the van. Without the others in tow, it took half the time as the ride to TJ’s. Even though the trek was quick, he enjoyed the solitude. It wasn’t easy being on 24/7 but that’s what people expected from him. Win Garner, the charming one. Instead of being the brightest or the most heroic, he was the brother who made people laugh or smile. It was a role he’d learned to play as a little boy who’d been dubbed “slow.”
Laugh with him, instead of at him.
The other thing he’d learned was to do everything else fast. Riding a bike, throwing a ball, skiing down a mountain, getting a woman into bed. Skills that had earned him a strange amount of admiration, despite his learning disability. After lots of educational specialists and therapists he could read now. But once you’ve been labeled “the life of the party” it was difficult to lose the tag. He should know, not that he was complaining. It was better than being a wet blanket, like a certain blond sprite.
Granted, he’d blown up her detailed schedule but there was a method to his madness. To get the account, GA had to stand out from its competitors. He’d been in the adventure business a long time—his whole life if you counted coming to the office as a little tyke with his parents—and everyone made their pitch Darcy’s way. A basic orientation that highlighted the area and its attractions with a really good spiel of why the . . . fill in the blank . . . company would best serve the client’s needs. Effective but definitely not a slam dunk, especially because it was the cookie-cutter approach. Safe but not ballsy.
His method was the same as Nike’s. “Just Do It.” If they spent the weekend actually team building, instead of talking about it, Garner Adventure would have the edge. Of course, there was the risk that everyone would have a miserable experience and go home mad at each other. Then Win would wind up with egg on his face. But he was willing to chance it. And so far, it was going pretty well, he thought. The only one who appeared to be having a bad time was Darcy.
But when this was all over and GA had the FlashTag account, Darcy would get her promotion. Win would make sure of it.
By the time he returned to TJ’s with the van, Darcy had cleaned up from lunch. The woman was efficient. And cute, even if she wanted to cut off his balls right now. Sometimes he wondered what it would’ve been like if he’d slept with her. A few times this last week he’d even considered asking her if sex was still on the table but at the last minute had stopped himself.
He loaded up the bikes while the others dipped their feet in the lake. If he’d been thinking ahead, he would’ve asked TJ for use of his boat to take everyone out on the water.
“What now?” he asked Darcy as they piled back in the van.
She threw up her hands. “Who knows, the schedule’s so screwed up.”
“You’re adorable when you’re mad, you know that, right?” He said it in her ear so no one else would hear.
She held up three fingers. “Read between the lines.”
“I think TJ’s bad attitude is rubbing off on you.” He had taken the driver’s seat to give Darcy a break from shuttle duties and started the engine. “I’ll take them back to the hotel so they can have a little downtime before we do the cave tour. We can end the night at Old Glory.”
“A cave tour was never on the itinerary,” she huffed. The others were too busy carrying on a conversation in the back to hear.
“It is now.” He nosed the van toward the road to the Four Seasons.
The next day was better between them because this time he stuck to her timetable. For the most part, anyway.
At nine they picked up their crew at the hotel, stopped at the Morning Glory for breakfast, and made the thirty-minute drive to Nugget. Compared to Glory Junction, Nugget looked a little worn around the edges. Not shabby exactly but devoid of the frills that came with a ski-resort town. Instead of wealthy tourists, Nugget catered to the area’s cattle ranchers and the Union Pacific Railroad. No fancy shops, no sidewalk cafés, no more than one hotel, which Win admitted was impressive. An old Victorian, dripping with gingerbread, that took up roughly a quarter of the town’s commercial square and looked pretty as a postcard with its inviting front porch and pleasing color scheme. According to TJ, some big San Francisco hotelier and his sister had purchased the mansion and brought it back from the dead.
The Ponderosa, also on the square, was the town’s only sit-down restaurant and doubled as a bar and bowling alley. As a kid, Win and his brothers had spent many Friday nights at the old-timey Western saloon. In recent years that too had gotten a facelift. Two women from the city had rescued the falling-down place and now ran it.
Darcy leaned over the console and told Win, “I’ve never been here before.”
“You grew up in Reno and never came to Nugget?” How was that possible? The two towns were less than an hour away from each other.
“I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe we just don’t get around that much in Nevada. It’s cute, sort of.”
“We used to kick their ass in football, though they always made it into the National High School Rodeo Finals. Glory Junction didn’t have a team.”
“Do you know where you’re going?”
“Of course I do.” He didn’t have a clue but how hard could it be to find a dude ranch owned by a celebrity bull rider?
Twenty minutes later, on a dirt back road, he admitted he was lost. Their guests were too enthralled with the breathtaking landscape to notice. Win rolled down his window as he approached three men on horseback. On closer inspection, it was a man and two teenage boys.
“Hey there.” He stopped, careful not to spook the horses, and stuck his head out. “We’re looking for Lucky Rodriguez’s Cowboy Camp. Any chance you know where it is?”
