Page 3

But he clears his throat. “Yeah, sorry. I have some gear to dump at the center. Will you be there in an hour?”

I glance at the clock on the wall, an ugly old thing made of a slab of wood, one of Morris’ early woodworking creations, as Andy explained to me.

“We don’t close for another two hours,” I tell Bowen, proud that my voice doesn’t tremble. “I’ll be here.”

“Good. See you soon, Lainey.”

The line goes dead, and I stare at the phone, trying to figure out why my heart’s racing.

Bowen is a coworker. Older than me for sure. He might even be married, with a beautiful wife and four kids living in a picture-perfect house on the other side of Pearl Peaks.

But I can’t be sure because the man is invisible on the internet. Apart from his listing on the site that offers hiking tours, he doesn’t have a social media presence. I checked. There are no photos of him anywhere, and if I hadn’t talked to him on the phone, I’d think he was a ghost.

And now he’s coming here. In an hour.

To dump his gear, not talk to me. He only wanted to know if I’ll be here because I’m the one who closes down the center after the shift. He probably doesn’t have the keys to the storage space in the back where we stash gear like helmets and climbing ropes that the guides use for the more challenging hikes.

That doesn’t stop me from rushing to the bathroom to check if my light makeup survived the workday. It did, and I look cute in my gray linen pants and purple top that hugs my curves just right. But does Bowen like curvy girls who prefer gentle town walks to rough mountain hikes?

It’s moments like this that I miss my college girlfriends the most—when I need a confidence-boosting pep talk.

I pinch my cheeks to put some color in them, then lift my chin and level myself with a stern glare. “You’re a catch, Lainey Floriano.”

Not that it matters. I made Bowen up into some perfect man based on his occupation and voice alone, which is both silly of me and unfair to him, because he’s just a guy. And I would die of embarrassment if I somehow made our first live interaction awkward by flirting when all he’s done is be polite to me over the phone.

I might be a catch, yes, but I’ll also have to temper my expectations and remain professional because I need this job more than I need a boyfriend.

Chapter

Two

Bowen

I glance down at myself, cursing inwardly as I realize how rough I look. My t-shirt’s sweated through from the long hike, and my pants are dirty because I had to crawl under a log to fetch the water bottle that one of the women in today’s group dropped down a ravine. She thanked me by squeezing my biceps, then invited me to her hotel room for tonight, and I couldn’t have felt less enthusiastic if I tried.

I’m tired from a full summer of guiding tourists up the mountain trails and burnt out from all the small talk I’ve had to engage in.

I love my job, but by the time September rolls around, I’m always ready for a break.

This season has been especially brutal. I’ve barely had a day off in the last three months. I begged Morris to recruit another mountain guide to take over some of the easier hikes, but he’s been dragging his feet.

I don’t even care about the pay cut that will be the result of the canceled booking.

What I do mind is the fact that the people I was supposed to take up to the waterfalls were rude to Lainey, this year’s new hire.

Mom always taught my brothers and me that it costs nothing to be nice. For some reason, it bothers me that someone bothered Lainey—a stranger I’ve only talked to on the phone. I can’t explain it to myself, not as tired as I am.

I’ll check in on her to see if she’s okay, dump the gear, return home, and sleep for sixteen hours. Tomorrow, I’ll catch up on some paperwork, then see if Mom needs anything done around her B&B. With how busy I’ve been, Grady and Reed have taken up the slack, and I don’t like not pitching in.

I turn my truck into the parking lot and stop next to a beat-up Nissan. I haven’t seen it before, but it’s the last truck in the lot, so I assume it’s Lainey’s. The sight of it sits wrong with me, and it takes me a minute to figure out why.

It’s not a mountain car. With tires like that, even an inch of snow on the road could be dangerous.

Not my problem.

I try to remind myself of that. This young woman—because I know from her voice alone that she’s younger than me—is not my problem. Nor is the fact that people were rude to her, or that she drives a car better suited to the arid climate of Denver than the wetter conditions we get up here.

So why does the sight of that little silver Nissan annoy me like a nasty itch?