“F-fine,” I grit, wishing I hadn’t found her after all, not if it meant this.
“Can I get you anything? Did the coffee burn you?”
“You burn me.”
She paused, hands suddenly off of me. I hated that I missed her touch, even though it burned my skin like acid when she did.
Aspen’s words came back to me the last time I’d seen her at her cafe:go on a date, Dad, you’re losing touch.
I hated that all the women in my life had always been right, even when they’d taken everything from me.
“Mav—”
The way Petal said the word made my brain scream with pain. That’s what she had called me. Lily.
“I forgot to call the road outage in, your dad will be on my ass if he knows the road is out and I haven’t called it into the road commission—”
“Mav—”
I cringed and hunched my shoulders as I ducked through the door, intent on my hunting boots to keep me dry and getting as far away from Poppy’s sweet and reasonable voice as I could. “Please, make yourself at home—I owe you a dinner, I just need to assess the damage on that drain ditch, Petal—”
I cringed then as I said the nickname that I’d grown so used to in my head. I must have been sending her mixed signals. I hoped I wasn’t, but social interaction is my fatal flaw. That’s why I kept myself out on this ridge, far away from the things I hated in favor of what made sense to me, the way the wind ruffled the evergreen needles and the mountain spring tumbled over the cool stones of the riverbed.
“I'll be back later, P—” I caught myself, waving once then shoving my boots on and walking down the back hallway and out the back door, sleeping bag on my back and Poppy O’Henry cemented in my mind.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Poppy
“504 Lovers Ridge,”I read. “I wonder if he made this too.” I slipped my finger along the worn grooves of the wooden sign that hung above the coffeemaker.
Maverick referred to this place as a cabin, but it was more like a grand lodge. It looked like he’d started from the center of the house and built out over the years, a long hallway led to a large attached garage and shop that he worked in, and the other side of the house led to a large mud room and laundry with an office and second bedroom across from that. And the great room, the center of the house, was earmarked with redwood beams that held up the large A-frame center. A flagstone fireplace anchored one wall, family photos scattering the mantle.
“So alone for a man with so much family,” I hummed, dragging a finger along the edge of a frame. I gasped when I realized what I was looking at. A photo framed in white pearls that saidnuptials,a man that looked like a much younger version of Maverick was smiling with a beautiful brunette in a long white dress at his side.
They overlooked the ridge with the bay in the background.
Lily and Maverick - May 4
“504 Lovers Ridge,”I repeated the sign I’d read in the kitchen. A wedding day.
“It should be renamed Heartbreak Ridge,” I uttered to myself, a sudden chill sweeping through me as I backed away from the cold fireplace and into the warmth of the kitchen.
I went to the pantry, intent on making a dinner that would take all day and warm up the kitchen.
Anything to keep me busy.
And then I remembered I should call my father and let him know where I was and that I was okay.
I gathered a handful of ingredients to make a vegetable stock that I could turn into soup or a casserole later or tomorrow, depending how long I was destined to be landlocked on this ridge, and poured the base ingredients into a pot and turned the heat on the burner.
Fishing my phone out of my back pocket, I frowned when I realized I had no service. I couldn’t call if I wanted to from this ridge. I wondered if there was a fine line to all this privacy Maverick claimed to crave. At what point did the insulation become suffocating?
I had a feeling I was approaching my limit, especially when the man of the hour had run off down the mountain as fast and as far from me as his boots could take him.
* * *
Twelve hours and two tall mugs of hot cocoa later, I was too nervous to eat any of the chicken and dumplings I’d slow-simmered on the stove all day. My mind on one man, I curled up on the couch with the fuzzy blanket he’d used for sleeping last night, the silver moonlight stretching across the floor and slipping the cabin into deep shadow. Every angle felt like it hid new secrets and the sun set early on the ridge—half of the hours were spent shrouded in deep darkness.
