He winced. He was pale, his hair in messy tangles, and he was huddled in a thick fleece.
“Morning,” he muttered.
Hungover?Ouch. But he’d only had like three shots. He must be a lightweight.
I tried to talk in a lower, calmer voice. “How would you like your eggs today?”
He looked me up and down, frowning, like he didn’t understand what I was saying.
“Breakfast?” I clarified.
“Um. Sure.”
“So, the eggs?”
He patted his stomach, grimacing. “I’m a bit queasy. Scrambled but without butter. Dry toast. Black coffee.”
“No problem. Did you sleep well?”
At that, he scoffed. “No.”
“Anything wrong with the room?”
“Nah. The room’s fine. I never sleep well.”
That sounded awful. “I’m sorry.”
Laurel waved a dismissive hand in the air. “My therapist says it’s stress.”
“Well. Good thing you’re here in Beauville. The mountains heal all kinds of ailments, and we’re good at not stressing.” That would make more sense if I weren’t stressed out of my mind because of what we’d done last night.
He eyed me, smirking in that half-assed, tired way of his. Somehow, he still managed to look sexy as hell. “Sure.”
Pulling out his phone from his pocket, he sat down at a table with his back to me. It was a clear leave-me-alone signal, something he seemed to communicate often.
Keep your mouth shut, Montgomery.
Using the small single burner behind the bar, I cracked the eggs into a dry, non-stick pan and slipped the bread into the toaster. About fifteen different questions that I could ask occurred to me, but I bit back every single one.
After a while, it was Laurel who broke the silence.
“The guy from the town hall, the ginger omega, Oliver…”
“Klondike.”
“That’s the one. He said something about the hiking trails in Beauville.”
I stirred the eggs and lowered the heat. They were nearly done. “Oh yeah. Oliver is leading a project to update and maintain the trails around here. There’s a map on the town’s website.”
He scrolled for a while, drinking his coffee while I plated the eggs. The toast popped, so I forked the pieces onto the plate and brought it all over.
I set the plate in front of him. “Are you planning a hike?”
Laurel jerked as if I had woken him up. “Huh? Yeah. Kind of.”
“There might be some rain showers today, but otherwise, the weather is decent. Just don’t forget a waterproof jacket and leave a message about where you’re going and for how long.” I needed to tell him that, didn’t I? Even Jordy would approve.
Finally, Laurel looked up from his phone, the corners of his mouth turned down in annoyance. “Why?”
