“Drew Kepler,” I told Nell after I hung up. “Old friend. He built the app. He’s coming tomorrow, and we need to look like a couple.”
She closed her laptop. “A verification visit.”
“He calls it checking in. I call it a pain in my ass, but yeah.”
She nodded once, and I caught the shift behind her eyes—the same look she’d had when she opened my cabinets this morning.Problem identified. Solution in progress. “What does ‘in our element’ look like for you?”
“Outdoors. A hike, probably.”
Her gaze dropped to her slippers. Then back at me.
“I don’t suppose there’s a flat one.”
“Not on this mountain.”
“Of course not.”
Drew arrived the next afternoon in a rental car that was too clean for the road, wearing hiking boots that still had the tags on the inside and a jacket that had never seen dirt. He’d flown in that morning from Seattle—forty-five minutes by private jet to the nearest airstrip, then an hour’s drive he’d probably spent on the phone telling someone about engagement metrics.
“Cliff.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me into one of those back-slapping hugs that he’d started doing after he got married and discovered physical affection. “You look good. Domesticated. Is that a new shirt?”
“It’s the same shirt.”
“It looks different. Happier.” He was already looking past me. Nell had come out to the porch, and I watched his whole face brighten—she might as well have been a positive quarterly report. “Nell. Hi. It’s so great to meet you in person. The algorithm flagged you two as a ninety-one percent compatibility match, which is the highest Mountain Mates has produced since we launched the platform.”
“That’s flattering,” Nell said. “For both of us and your algorithm.”
He beamed. I could already tell this was going to be a long day.
The hike was my idea, which meant it was my fault.
I’d picked a moderate trail—nothing technical, good views, about four miles round trip. What I hadn’t accounted for was that Nell’s definition of hiking footwear was a pair of leather flatsshe’d swapped for the slippers, and her idea of trail-appropriate clothing was dark trousers and a cream-colored blouse that would’ve worked great at a restaurant with a waitlist.
She didn’t complain. That was the thing I kept coming back to. The trail was steep enough in places that she was grabbing tree roots to pull herself up, her flats slipping on loose rock, a branch catching her sleeve and leaving a smear of pine sap on the cream fabric, and she just kept going. Her commentary was the only concession she made to the difficulty.
She stopped where the trail pitched upward. “This seems vertical.”
“It levels out.”
“When?”
“Another half mile.”
“Wonderful.” She hauled herself over a root step and mud splashed across her ankle. “I want you to know I’m having a great time.”
Drew, walking behind us, laughed. I glanced back at Nell—flushed, breathing hard, pine sap on her shirt and mud on her shoes and her hair coming loose—and felt my mouth pull into a grin I couldn’t stop.
She caught it. “Don’t.”
“Didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking it.”
“I think a lot of things.”
“I doubt that.” But she was almost smiling, and she was still climbing, and he was watching us with the satisfaction of a man whose algorithm was proving him right.
We made the overlook. Nell sat on a rock, examined the blister forming on her left heel, and looked out at the view. The valley opened below us, river winding through it, the peaks going white against the sky. She didn’t say anything for a moment. Just looked.
