Page 19 of My Three Mountain Men

Or could I?

CHAPTER9

Brooks

Simone had a distinct change in attitude over the next day. Rest, food, and a shower seemed to mellow her out substantially. Coupled with the conversation I’d had with my cousins over breakfast, where I’d urged them to lay off her, we seemed to have reached something of an understanding among us.

She joined us late in the morning. Knox had retreated to his office, and Ryder was out in the woodshed, still doing inventory, he claimed, but I suspected he was just putting distance between us.

“Did you sleep well?” I asked Simone as she ambled into the dining room, her golden halo shining and brushed.

She looked like a totally different person without the brambles in her hair, and I couldn’t stop looking at her flawless complexion, which had regained what I assumed was its normal, healthy parlor. She was truly breathtaking.

“Yeah,” Simone replied, sounding astonished by the admission. “It’s like a vault in here. You can’t hear anything at all.”

“The wind can pick up pretty heavily some nights, so Ryder ensured that the house was well insulated when it was built.”

She slid into a chair and gawked at me. “He built this place?” she demanded. “When he was in his twenties?”

I faltered, again realizing that I was probably telling her more than Ryder and Knox would like, but I didn’t stop myself this time. Eventually, she was going to learn the truth about us. No matter how hard we tried to keep it from her, two or three months of living like this, our secrets were bound to come out.

“Um… yeah,” I replied hesitatingly. “I mean… we all designed it… kind of… it’s complicated.”

She dropped her fine chin into the flats of her palms, huge, clear eyes fixed on me as if searching my soul across the table. “It sounds complicated,” she said softly.

I chuckled nervously and stood up. “Why don’t I get you some breakfast?”

“I don’t eat much in the morning.”

I laughed again. “Well, seeing as it’s almost lunchtime, you’re in the clear. How about coffee and toast to start?”

“What?! It’s not almost noon!” she choked, head jerking around for a clock. “Is it?”

“It’s ten thirty,” I corrected myself. “But that’s the middle of the day for us.”

Embarrassed, she sat back, and I busied myself in the kitchen, keeping an eye on her through the breakfast window as she studied the dining room, her gaze resting on the bay window. “I can’t believe it’s still snowing.”

“It does that… for days sometimes.”

I waited by the toaster oven, one eye still on Simone’s classic profile, but she remained in place, her rosebud lips pursed pensively.

“I take it you’re not from around here,” I added, stirring the conversation gently as the smell of toasting bread rose into the air.

“I’m from LA,” she told me. “I thought you knew that.”

I snorted. “I know you live in LA, but you don’t seem like the type that was born there,” I quipped.

Simone chittered. “Hmm… perceptive. I live in LA now, but I do travel a bit.”

“Where were you raised?”

She fell quiet for a long moment, and I opened the oven door, pulling out the pieces of bread before stealing another look at her.

“Utah.”

“Ohhh,” I murmured. “You’re a—”

“I’m not a Mormon.”

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