“Have you met him yet?”
Trish closed the door behind her. “Hi, Mindy.”
“The cowboy. Have you met him yet? That Wade fellow. Tall, dark, handsome type.”
Trish plopped down on the bed, letting her head rest against the fluffiest feather pillows she’d ever encountered. “You could say that.”
“Oh, no. This isn’t one of those online dating disasters, is it? Did he look nothing like his picture?”
“Mindy, I didn’t come here todatea cowboy. Please tell me that’s not the real reason you signed me up for this.”
“Of course not. It’s a real writers’ retreat. Honest.”
“Good. I just broke up with Henry like two weeks ago,” Trish reminded her. She left out her secret hope that he’d come to his senses. Mindy would quash that fantasy. Not that Trish could blame her with the way things had gone down. The image of Henry rushing out of their apartment building with his golf clubs slung over his shoulder when he was supposed to be accompanying her to her big celebration still stung.
“Is he a jerk? The cowboy?”
Trish’s eyes fell on her suitcase. “Actually, no.” Trish had been certain any cowboy flaunted on a website for a romance writers’ retreat would be a little arrogant. But so far, Wade surprised her. “He pulled my car out of the mud.”
At that detail, Mindy demanded to know everything. “Start at the beginning. Tell me everything that happened since you arrived.” So, cornered, Trish relayed every agonizing detail from getting her car—and herself—stuck in the mud to meeting Wade on the front porch in her muddy clothes.
“I love it!”
“Excuse me?” Trish wondered if Mindy had been listening to a different story. One that didn’t reek of humiliation. “I made a fool of myself. He probably thinks I’m a helpless city girl or something.”
“You make that sound like a bad thing.” Mindy’s tone was flat.
“I’m not helpless. Not even a real city girl,” Trish finally said. “Just didn’t know how to pull my car out by myself.”
“You need to write this down!”
“Yeah, I’m sure it’d make a great comedy. Did I mention the part where I met his pregnant wife and she’s absolutely wonderful?” Trish followed the lilac pattern of the curtains, admiring how they let in light without allowing the sun to blind her. The room, all in all, was very cozy. It even had a small writing desk.
“I think you have the makings of a great story opener.”
“Maybe.”
“Are you hiding in your room?” Mindy asked, changing the subject as she so often did. Trish had grown used to these abrupt shifts.
“I just got out of the shower, remember?”
“Well, get dressed and go mingle with the other writers. Feed off their energy. I didn’t gift you this retreat so you could hide in your room thewholetime. You need to have some new experiences to write about. Plus, there are other cowboys. One of them might be single.”
Though Trish had been unable to locate the actual cost of this retreat, she’d told Mindy it must be too much. But her best friend wouldn’t hear any of her objections. “You’re like a sister to me, Trish,” Mindy had said at the party. “And this is ahugeaccomplishment. You deserve this.”
Trish dropped her head against a fluffy pillow. “I don’t think everyone’s here yet.” She recalled Wade pointing away from the house, toward a gravel road that snaked around a patch of pine trees. Were the writer cabins around another bend?
“Are you still fidgeting with your story?”
“No,” Trish answered. She’d managed to send off its first three chapters to the literary agent last night. “I finished that, remember? We had a little party?” One Henry had blown off to go golfing because he didn’t think it was important.
“Either start writing your next book or go mingle. But dosomething.”
“Okay, okay!”
“Don’t take this for granted. You’ve practically been dropped into the perfect story setting.”
Mindy had a point. The only reason Trish got stuck in the mud in the first place was because she’d been too busy gawking at sights. The gently rolling hills with snow-capped mountains in the distance; the pastures dotted by wildflowers; the vast openness and promise of solitude with a sprinkle of trees whose leaves were starting to turn yellow.
