The smile that twitched Eve’s lips as she peered past her to the main entry wasn’t much, but Aspen was still heartened by the sight of it. Eve had spent the drive from town staring blankly out the windshield, so clearly lost in her own head that Aspen put aside the questions bouncing around her own just to give her a break.
“It’s stunning,” Eve murmured, her tone lush with appreciation. “I love the lines. Most houses that I’ve seen up here lean into the whole mountain aesthetic, with pitched roofs and sharp angles, but this…” Her voice trailed off and she shook her head slowly. “It doesn’t try to compete with the landscape. It flows with it, like water cascading over a boulder in a stream.”
Eve’s attention shifted from the house to Aspen, and Aspen’s breath caught as she was struck by the intelligence and the passion that glowed in Eve’s eyes.
How in the world could anyone ever treat this beautiful creature poorly?
“Yeah.” Aspen grimaced at the way her voice cracked like a pubescent boy, but couldn’t find it in herself to be too bothered when it drew a susurrus rumbling chuckle from Eve’s lips.Eve’s perfectly shaped, incredibly soft looking lips.Christ, I am so fucking fucked.“Michael never told me what you do,” she redirected the conversation away from her absolute failure to remain cool as she opened her car door. “Are you an artist?”
“Photographer,” Eve confirmed as she also climbed out of the car. She slammed the door shut, and her shoulders lifted and fell with a deep, cleansing breath as her gaze lingered on the swaying branches of one of the towering aspen trees beside the garage.
Aspen opened her mouth to ask what Eve thought of the way the bare, white wood branches danced amongst rustling boughs of the evergreens behind them, but was the unspoken question was answered when Eve turned to her with grin.
“Your house is surrounded by aspens,” Eve noted, laughter and a measure of warmth flickering in her eyes.
There you are, beautiful girl,Aspen thought even as she rolled her eyes in playfully feigned annoyance. “Well, the city was named after the prevailing local fauna, so it’d make sense for them to be around.”
Eve bobbed her head in a way that said Aspen had made a fair point as she joined her on the shoveled walkway that led to the front door. “So,Aspen,” she drawled, her voice tinged with poorly concealed laughter, “how was it that you ended up in Aspen? I thought your family all hailed from the East Coast.”
“They do,” Aspen confirmed as she pulled her keys from the front pocket of her jeans. “Or, well, they do now. My great-great-grandmother was from this area, originally, before she headed east. But I fell in love with the mountains when I came to school out here and couldn’t see myself settling down anywhere else.”
“Which school?”
“Air Force.” Aspen pushed the front door open and gestured for Eve to go ahead so she’d get the full effect of the windows out the back of the house.
“Really? What made you decide on the Academy?”
“It was a challenge,” Aspen gave her default, though truthful answer to the question. Her decision had been multi-layered, of course, as most life-defining ones tended to be. A lot of it had to do with her desire to avoid following in her father’s footsteps with the family business. And she’d come to understand herself well enough by then to know that she thrived in a structured environment. But the clearest defining factor in her choosing the Academy was— “And I wanted to fly.”
“So, is that where you learned to fly helicopters?”
“Nah, we just did gliders and stuff at the Academy. Actual flight school was after I graduated. When I was in high school at Stonebridge, I took an aviation class that I really loved, but I’d always liked helicopters more than planes, so for my eighteenth birthday my parents hooked me up with flight lessons where I learned how to fly a little Bell 47.”
“Hueys for a bit at the beginning, but then I switched to Pave Hawks.” Aspen hadn’t missed the way Eve inclined her head in a way that said she knew what a Huey was, but her brow pinched at the second, so she explained, “Pave Hawks are support aircraft. We’d fly troops into hot zones, or swoop in when things went sideways to pull them out.”
“Why’d you switch?” Eve asked as she wandered deeper into the long sitting room area with its wall of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the back patio and the bubbling river beyond. Though there was a good six feet of snow on the ground and the boulders that dotted the river were blanketed in the white stuff, the water moved fast enough that it had, so far, avoided freezing.
Aspen gritted her teeth as she tried to banish the memories of burning debris and mountains of rubble that flashed across her mind. And the shoe. The small, red shoe she shouldn’t have even been able to see, but which still haunted her dreams. “I realized I was a better fit for a support role.”
Aspen was relieved that Eve picked up on the tension in her voice and changed the subject. “Aspen, this view is absolutely breathtaking.”
“Thank you.” Aspen smiled at Eve’s back, pleased that Eve approved, though she purposefully chose to not think about why that was. “This main level is just the foyer, sitting room, and a mud-slash-laundry room-slash-garage entryway. There are two guest rooms downstairs in the basement, and on the half-level up to your right is the kitchen, dining, and family room.”
Eve hummed and barely glanced at the rest of the central level as she wandered deeper into the sitting room to gaze at the landscape. The normally unobstructed view was partially blocked by the small, five-foot Balsam Fir strung with multi-colored lights that she’d set up in the far corner. It was silly, really, but after a long day in the air, she loved nothing more than coming home, starting a fire, curling up in the corner of the oversized, charcoal gray upholstered sofa that faced the windows and just looking at the tree. It calmed her in a way not much else did, and she usually ended up leaving the tree up until well past New Years, when even her best attempts at botanical life support began to fail and the needles began to fall from their branches.
“God, I could just sit here for hours staring at this view,” Eve murmured as she half-turned from the view to look at Aspen. “It’s so peaceful.”
“I often do,” Aspen shared with a smile. And then, figuring she may as well finish her verbal walk-through of her home’s layout, shared, “My office and bedroom are on the upper level.”
Eve nodded. “Would you like me to stay here while you pack?”
“I mean, you certainly can,” Aspen allowed. “But I was thinking that, you know, since we’re supposed to be dating and stuff, that maybe it’d be good for us to use the time I’m throwingsome stuff into a bag to come up with a cover story to back that up?”
“Yeah.” Eve raked her lower lip through her teeth and turned her back to the windows. “You’re right. We shouldn’t waste a minute since we’re supposed to meet my parents for dinner in…” She pulled her phone from her back pocket and made a face. “Like an hour.”
“Or we can blow them off?” Aspen offered, only half joking. “Hell, you are more than welcome to stay here, too, if it’d make your life easier.”
“God, I wish,” Eve muttered. “But I can’t. They’re expecting me to play the dutiful daughter, and—”
