Mom gave me a sage smile. “You will be.”
I grabbed a blueberry and threw it at them.
It missed.
Violet flicked it back at me and laughed when it bounced off my sweater.
“Also,” she added, “the cave thing is not remotely normal. You know that, right?”
I rolled my eyes. “It was an example.”
“A very telling one,” Violet said.
Mom hummed. “Very.”
I glared at both of them. “You know what? I am done with this conversation. Completely done. Ended. Finished. And for the record, if I were to fantasize about anyone in a cave, it would not be Carson Reed and his annoyingly perfect—”
A deep, gravelly throat clear sounded behind me.
My soul left my body.
It rose right up to the rafters, saluted the taxidermy owl, and ascended into the afterlife.
Slowly, with every molecule of dread in my being, I turned around.
Carson stood in the doorway of the kitchen.
Silent.
Tall.
Watching.
His expression was unreadable.
His jaw set.
His eyes were undeniably amused.
My heart thundered so loudly I was certain the pans on the wall heard it echo.
He lifted one dark eyebrow. Just one.
“Annoyingly perfect what?” he asked.
And that was the moment I became sure I would never recover.
Chapter Four
Carson
I had only meant to follow the smell of coffee and possibly check out the gear shed.
That was it. A simple, normal, uneventful task: walk outside and check in with the family, make sure I hadn’t already broken a rule on my first hour of the job, and perhaps grab a mug of something warm while I got a feel for the lodge kitchen.
What I did not plan for was stepping into the doorway and hearing the tail end of Sienna’s sentence in a voice that sounded halfway strangled with embarrassment.
“If I were to fantasize about anyone in a cave, it would not be Carson Reed and his annoyingly perfect—" She stopped.
