Page 11 of Snowed In With the Mountain Man
She tucked her hands in her pockets and glanced at the board again. “Do you think it’s gonna be canceled?”
I hope so.
He swallowed the words and shook off the thought. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
She sighed.
“There’s nothing you can do about it either way.”
She frowned. “I know, which makes it all the more frustrating.”
He tilted his head to the side, watching her profile as he thought that over.
She must have felt his gaze because she shot him a quick glance, fidgeting again like she did when he was watching her too closely. “What?”
“What, what?” he teased.
She rolled her eyes. “What words of wisdom did you wish to impart, Yoda?”
His head fell back with a laugh that shook his whole frame. He clapped a hand to his chest, glancing over to see her watching him with a funny, if slightly wary little grin.
“Yoda, huh?”
She shrugged. “You’re all one-with-nature or whatever. And you have this way of talking that makes everything sound so philosophical.”
He kept his head tipped back as he rolled her words over in his mind. Finally he nodded. “I’ve been called worse.”
He caught her smile before she flattened it.
What had caused this woman to be so grudging with her smiles? No one was born defensive, and from what little he knew of her sisters and their family, he suspected it was her upbringing that had her so guarded. And that he could understand.
His relationship with his own family had shaped the man he’d become. And he supposed that was why he felt a certain obligation to this woman. Sure, he liked her company, but he felt sorry for her, that was all.
“So?” she said. “What were you going to say when you were giving me the Yoda look?”
He snickered. “I’d just been thinking that what you find frustrating, I find relaxing.”
Her head snapped to the side, her brows furrowed. “That makes no sense. Are you saying you enjoy it when your plans fall apart?”
He shrugged. “It depends. Getting stuck in southern Spain because of a strike led to one of the best weekends of my life.”
“Yeah, well…” She glanced around the small airport with its stuffed deer heads and moose statues. “This isn’t exactly Spain, now is it?”
He grinned. “Some might say it’s better.”
Her scoff made it clear she was not one of those people. “I bet you’re one of those guys who hates big cities, right? You probably think I’m nuts for wanting to get back to New York.”
He tipped his head from side to side. “They have their advantages. But I prefer wide-open skies.”
She gave another disdainful huff, scuffing her boot heel against the carpet at her feet. “That’s just a nice way of saying you don’t like city life.”
He smiled. He wasn’t about to argue.
She turned to him with a scowl. “Are you trying to tell me that if you were stuck at JFK and couldn’t get back to the ranch, you wouldn’t be irritated?”
“I might not be happy being stuck, but if there was nothin’ I could do about it, well, then… there’s nothin’ to do but relax, right?”
Her eyes narrowed in a confused frown like she was trying to decipher some hidden meaning in his words. “Relax?”
