Page 23 of Ms. Fortune
“Umm … can you get to town and send it now? Your mom wants to leave as soon as possible. You know how she is when she gets an idea in her head.”
I couldn’t hide my aggravation any longer. “Dad, I just told you I’m busy. I can’t drop everything because of your wanderlust.” Someone in the family needed to act like an adult.
He sounded wounded when he muttered, “Is it that hard to help your parents out? I think you need to remember the only reason you have funds to put into your vision for the lodge is becausemy parentsleft you everything that was supposed to be passed down to me. We both know they only did that because they expected you to take care of me and your mother.”
If the money ever ran out, my dad could make a fortune playing the professional victim. I had no other choice but to give in. If I didn’t do as he asked, all I would get was a follow-up call from my mother. She would scold me and harass me until I did what she wanted just to get her to shut up. It was better to acquiesce than argue.
“Fine. I’ll do it now.” I hung up before he said goodbye.
The last thing I wanted to do was drive down the pass and into town. Resigned to my fate, I went inside to get the keys to my truck. Risky asked what I was doing, but there weren’t enough hours in the day to get into my complicated family dynamics. I told him I needed to run an errand and wouldn’t be back for a couple of hours.
He told me to be careful. It was a reminder to give my old beater of a vehicle a thorough once-over before jumping in and driving down a mountain. I had visions of someone cutting my brake lines or messing with my steering wheel. I felt like Iwas a background actor in a terrible, low-budget thriller, and I couldn’t wait for the damn end credits.
Seeing that nothing looked amiss, I hopped into the cab and set off to take care of my parents. It wasn’t the first time I wondered if it was ever going to be my turn to be taken care of—or the bigger question was, would I ever let someone step up like that for me.
My first instinct was likely to be pushing them off the mountain.
Maybe I wasn’t as different from Risky as I’d thought.
I was only in town for fifteen minutes to wire the money to my parents, and in that brief window of time, I ran into two different people I used to go to school with, the sheriff, one of my grandfather’s old friends, and Banner’s mother. My quick errand took all afternoon.
Banner’s mom convinced me to swing by the restaurant so she could give me a homemade pie to take home. She also gave me a list of seasonal employees they often hired during the winter for various jobs. There was no way to hire everyone who wanted to work in the mountains during the high season. Considering I needed people with similar skills and wanted to bring in people who were familiar with the area and returned like clockwork, the list was as valuable as gold.
I asked my friend’s mother how I could repay her and ended up stunned and speechless when she asked me to talk some sense into Banner. She seemed to think her daughter was being dramatic and overreacting to the situation her dirtbag husband had put her in. The longer she ranted, the clearer it became that Banner hadn’t disclosed the entire reason she’d left Grant and returned to Blue River in such a sorry state.
Her parents definitely hadn’t wanted her to marry him to begin with. It sounded like she didn’t want to give them a reason to gloat or tell herI told you so. Her mother thoughtBanner had accused Grant of being unfaithful and they’d had a huge falling-out. But Banner hadn’t bothered to explain to her parents how she knew Grant was seeing another woman or why she had rushed home in the middle of the night with the baby. They thought she was being impulsive and immature because she wasn’t getting her way with Grant refusing to move her and Rosie to Denver until he was ready.
I was left awkwardly agreeing to speak with my friend the next time she showed up at the lodge, and I headed for home with two pies instead of one. I hoped Risky liked sweets. I’d never be able to finish them on my own. Maybe I could send one with the tattooed guy if he was still around when I got back to the property.
While thinking about the two men I’d left unattended with my prized possession, I sent Risky a text message, letting him know I was on the way back. The couple of hours I’d told him I’d be gone had long since passed. At this rate, I wouldn’t get back up the mountain until after dark. Typically, I had no issue traversing the steep, winding roads in any condition or light. But all the unusual mishaps that’d befallen me made me leery of whatever might lurk in the dark.
Risky responded with a short and sweet,Be safe.
It irked me that he hadn’t added anything extra.
Why hadn’t he asked what took so long?
Why wasn’t he curious where I’d spent the entire day or asked who’d held me up?
Was he worried about me? Or was it only his paycheck and a free place to crash that concerned him?
I hated the thoughts spinning around in my mind. I didn’t have the time or emotional availability to get all tangled up in whether I was important to a man I hardly knew or not. It seriously irritated me that I knew if I were the one waitingaround for him to return, I would most definitely ask him the questions he hadn’t asked me.
It was the first time I’d ever been more invested in someone than they were in me. I was always the one who was unattainable and distant. It was novel to be on the receiving end of the disinterest I’d frequently shown to others over the years.
There were too many mixed signals firing off between the two of us. Trying to navigate what I wanted from him as an employee and what I wanted from him as a man was as tricky as driving the pass in a blizzard with no working headlights and bald tires. One wrong move, and I was going to crash. Traveling at a snail’s pace and being extremely cautious—that was the only way to arrive safely at the final destination.
I threw my phone on the dashboard and gave my head a disgusted shake.
I was too busy and too unlucky to spend a single second giving any headspace to trying to figure out if a boy liked me back or not. I blamed the last kiss we’d shared. It had been heated enough that it melted some of the icy pillars around my heart and fried my neurons. That, on top of the stress of trying to get the lodge ready for the season while juggling the increasingly problematic incidents, left me more emotionally vulnerable than I’d been in ages. I’d thought I’d gotten the hang of locking my feelings down and operating on logic instead of instinct. Who knew I was as susceptible to uncontrollable attraction as anyone else?
I guessed I was never as cold as everyone had led me to believe I was.
When I was halfway home and the sun started to go down, I noticed there was a large SUV on the road behind me. They were practically touching the rusty trailer hitch on the back of my truck with their front bumper. I knew I was going slower than the speed limit as my old truck rumbled through the hairpinturns of each corner, but that was no reason for the other driver to ride my ass so hard.
I grumbled under my breath when they honked their horn at me and flashed their headlights. The pass was narrow with no shoulder on either side. If I turned sharply in one direction, it would lead to smashing into a guardrail and falling down a steep ravine. The other side was nothing more than the rock face from where they’d blasted away the mountain when they built the road. The impatient driver behind me was simply going to have to wait until we hit a straight part of the road and they could pass me.
The horn blared again, and the lights nearly blinded me in the mirror as they flickered repeatedly. I tried to see if the plates were local or from out of state. My confusion grew when I caught sight of the front of the SUV and realized there were no plates, and all the windows of the vehicle were tinted so dark that there was no seeing inside to identify how many people were in the car or what the driver looked like.
