Page 2 of One Golden Ring
In any case, it will be nice to get a little break from the office and maybe even get a few minutes to curl up with a book and some hot cocoa.
Just as I start to relax my white-knuckled grip on my seat, something flashes across the road in front of us.
My brain has just enough time to register it as a rabbit as something else darts after it. Mr. Lockwood slams on the brakes and barely avoids hitting the most beautiful red fox I’ve ever seen.
It’s a great display of reflexes, but the sudden slowdown makes the car fishtail and suddenly we’re spinning out, closer and closer to the edge of the mountain.
The whole world slips into slow motion and I’m too scared to even scream. My hand automatically reachesfor the most stable thing in this flyaway universe, and finds my boss’s tree trunk of a thigh.
My whole life would probably be flashing in front of my eyes if I’d ever really had one. Instead I think of my sister and the twins and my heart aches. I’m going to die without seeing Johnny and George grow up.
Mr. Lockwood moves with the confidence of someone out for a scenic drive instead of careening to their doom and cuts the wheel into the turn. A moment later, the tires catch a little friction and we come to a stop in the middle of the road.
“Are you okay?” he asks, his deep voice rumbling inside me as he turns to fix me in his dark gaze. There is concern in his expression and a flicker of something else too…
My heart feels like it just hit the first drop of a roller-coaster without the rest of me, and for a moment I can’t even process what he’s saying.
Then the world comes slamming back in all at once and I realize I’m just staring up at him, my hand still clenched around his thigh.
“I’m fine,” I squeak, pulling back my hand like I was touching a hot stove.
“Good,” he says, scowling and turning back to the road as he pulls us back out into our proper lane to continue the twisting journey up the mountain.
I can’t think of anything to say, so just sit beside him, heart pounding, trying not to think about anything that just happened.
We’ll be at the chalet soon,I tell myself.I’ll probably havea suite on the other side of the house from his and I can just hide out and catch my breath for a minute.
We spend the next few minutes in silence as the sky goes from washed-out denim to a deeper navy blue.
“I apologize that we’ll be roughing it,” he says at last. “As you know, this was last minute.”
I sure do.
But there’s no need for him to apologize. Only Derek Lockwood could possibly think of a massive chalet with a breathtaking mountain view asroughing it.But I guess I should know better since I’ve booked his travel all over the world. The man doesn’t mind nice things. It might not be up to his standards, but I’m pretty sure this place will be nicer than any hotel I’ve ever stayed in.
When I took my initial interview I was a little worried that working for a video game developer would mean wild parties and a little too much informality at the office.
But I had it all wrong—at least when it comes to Derek Lockwood. He runs Hearts & Circles Interactive like it’s a finance company or something—regular hours, pristine offices, and I’ve never seen him out of a suit.
I’m doing my best not to think about him out of a suit as he pulls off the main road onto a smaller one that I know from the online map. It’s the path that leads up past that lodge and onto a mountainside set with those big gorgeous chalets.
But before we even get as far as the lodge he’s pulling off the road into the snowy woods and down a narrow driveway that looks like it’s been freshly shoveled.
The driveway ends at a tiny log cabin tucked betweenthe trees that’s definitely not one of the chalets I saw online.
This is why he said we’d be roughing it.
It might not be very big, but the place is still completely charming with weathered logs and pretty pale blue shutters. There’s even a little brick chimney. And though the place is dark now, I can picture the windows glowing in welcome and a ribbon of smoke curling out of the chimney, like a cabin in a fairytale.
At work, when I close my eyes on a stressful day and go to my happy place, it looks a whole lot like this.
“Here we are,” Mr. Lockwood says, his voice a little rough. “Let’s get unpacked.”
I wonder if maybe that close call up on the road actually shook him a little, even though he stayed so outwardly cool. But he’s out of the SUV and carrying all our bags up the front steps of the little cabin before I have a chance to think much about it.
That’s Derek Lockwood all over—always on to the next thing.
I scramble out after him, breath pluming in the frigid air, wishing I were wearing more sensible shoes. The driveway is just snow-encrusted gravel, not the best match for my heels.
