8. Sable
CHAPTER 8
sable
“ W hat?” I asked Ben as I went through the inventory. He was looking at me funny.
There were so many things to learn, and I was glad that Ben stayed to teach me. He was still doing some of the work and refused to accept payment for it. He wanted to set me up for success.
“I heard that you got a private skiing lesson from the General Manager of the Royal Ski Resort.”
I gasped. Fucking small towns!
“If you know, I’m assuming everyone knows.”
“Knows what? That you went on a date with the Alexa Vikar’s ex?” Casey, who worked as a server, asked as she passed by after filling salt and pepper shakers on the table.
I sighed. “Seriously?”
Casey wiggled her eyebrows. “Now, we all want to know…did you get him out of his clothes? Is that body as good as we think it is? ”
“No, I did not,” I lied. “I don’t know how to ski, and I thought it would be nice to learn. I’ve been improving myself since the divorce.”
That was a plausible lie, right?
“And the top boss of the resort decided to teach you?” Casey put a hand on her hip, her eyes all business.
She was in her mid-twenties and was going on fifty. She’d been working for Ben for four years. He’d given her a job when she stumbled in seven months pregnant with nowhere to go. He set her up in the apartment upstairs and gave her a lifeline. Now, Casey’s daughter, Mila, was nearly four, cute as a button, and treated the Wildflower like her own playground. Everyone loved that kid, and took care of her while Casey worked. This is what I loved about what Ben had created with the tavern. It was a home to people like Casey and me, who were desperate to find one. Our cook, Elijah Swiftwater, had a criminal record. He’d done time for grand theft auto, and Ben had taken him under his wing a decade ago after Elijah came out of prison. If someone told me the calm, grounded, and fiercely proud of his Southern Ute Tribe man used to be a troublemaker, I wouldn’t believe it.
“Elijah’s food doesn’t just taste good,” Ben had told me when we discussed personnel . “It feels like it has a story.”
He was right. Elijah often infused his cooking with flavors and techniques inspired by the traditional foods of his culture—corn, bison, and wild herbs—giving the Wildflower’s menu an occasional twist that kept locals and tourists alike coming back for more .
There were others who worked at the Wildflower who had their own stories of overcoming challenges.
“ We’re all on a journey, Sable. Wildflower is on yours. The spirits have told me ,” Ben said when we first talked about me buying the place.
Was Heath Falkner’s path on my journey, too? If he was or wasn’t, I didn’t want it advertised. Already, the town looked at me like the loser wife who’d lost her husband to sexy, pregnant Molly, and now I was going to be seen as a gold digger, chasing above her station.
“Are people talking?” I hated being the object of gossip.
Casey leaned over the bar and looked me in the eye. “Did you have a good time with Heath?”
I nodded sulkily. Good time? No, it was fucking amazing. One for the history books.
“Then fuck ‘em.”
I chuckled. “That easy, huh?”
“Yeah.” Ben gave a thumbs-up sign. “I agree with Casey. Fuck ‘em.”
I shook my head and then walked to the front door to turn on the OPEN sign. “People are going to gossip, and you know Alexa and Natasha Vikar are going to be at my throat.”
“This isn’t high school,” Ben reminded me kindly.
He knew some of what I had gone through growing up. In the past months, as we had spent time together, he’d become a confidante. I liked Ben. He didn’t judge at all , and he was kind, a surrogate father or uncle, who cared about me. That was Ben for you. He cared about a whole lot of people, giving them a chance at a life they didn’t think they deserved, me included.
“I know.” I took a deep breath. “Well, game face on, everyone.”
I needed the game face because, man, everyone and their mother knew about my private skiing lesson with Heath Falkner.
Gossip, they say, is louder in small towns than in big cities, and Aspen was no exception. I knew this firsthand growing up here and having gone through a scandalous divorce.
“It’s just been, what, six months since they started divorce proceedings, and she’s already moved on?”
“Are they even divorced? I thought it took months and months.”
I wanted to tell the two women who were chatting rather loudly and for my benefit that when your husband gets another woman pregnant, and you hate his guts, you don’t need any kind of mediation; you can get a quickie divorce in Colorado, which we did. The law was clear: if both parties agree on the terms of the divorce—division of assets, check ; debts, none and check; custody, not an issue—the minimum waiting period in Colorado was ninety-one days from the time the divorce petition was filed to when the court finalized it. We were done and dusted in no time.
Also, was everyone missing the elephant in the room, which was Molly, nine freaking months pregnant?
While the tourists were here to enjoy Elijah’s bison sliders and sip on Ben’s craft cocktails, the locals were at the Wildflower to check me out.
“Hey, Sable!” a woman’s voice called as I maneuvered behind the bar to grab a bottle of whiskey.
I glanced up to see one of the regulars at the bar, Diane, a retired teacher who came in twice a week with her husband. Her tone was chipper, her smile wide, but I could see it—the curiosity sparkling in her eyes.
“So” —Diane leaned across the bar conspiratorially— “will Heath be around tonight?”
The question landed like a slap. I froze for half a second, masking it quickly with a tight-lipped smile. “Got no idea, Diane.” I poured the drink I was working on without looking at her.
“Well,” Diane continued, undeterred, “he sure is handsome, isn’t he? I hear he’s quite the skier. Lucky you, getting private lessons.”
“How’s your drink, Carl? You need a refill?” I turned my attention to her husband. Carl, at least, I knew, was a no-fucking-nonsense man.
“Doing fine, Sable.” Carl, as predicted, glared at his wife, demanding she sit her ass down and not make either him or me uncomfortable.
Diane slumped back on the barstool, and I heard Carl mutter, “Is this why you wanted to sit at the bar and not get a table, Dee?”
“Well, you can’t blame a girl for being curious, can you?”
“Lord, love a duck, Dee, grow the fuck up,” Carl scoffed.
Listening to their exchange with half an ear, I handed the whiskey off to Casey, who raised an eyebrow that asked, “ You okay ?”
I shrugged, silently responding, “ Yeah, but shoot me anytime now .”
As Diane shut the hell up, I could hear snippets of conversations as I moved around the tavern.
“...well, she’s certainly moved on fast.”
“You know, from Jack to him? That’s quite the upgrade.”
“Did you hear Alexa’s already furious about it?”
“Oh, you know he’s not going to stay with Sable; between her and Alexa, who do you think a man like him will pick?”
“He’s just getting a little strange.”
“She grew up in Woody Creek. They say she was the town bike.”
From there, it went downhill. All the old nicknames began to pop up. The old and the young who didn’t know what happened to me in high school were finding out from those my age.
I’d just managed to quell the whole Jack leaving me for Molly nonsense when I’d been pitied as the doormat wife who couldn’t hold onto her man. We were still going through the, she’s sleeping with Ben Greyfeather, and that’s why he gave her the Wildflower . And now, I was the town slut, reaching above my station and chasing a man who had no business looking at me twice.
I could guarantee that Heath didn’t have to hear any of this. No one was telling him to keep his pecker zipped up, now, were they? Oh, no, they’d tell him, “ Don’t get too serious, okay ?” and he would rejoin with, “ Of course not; it’s just casual .”
The words stung, no matter how hard I tried to brush them off.
“Hey, you okay?” Casey sidled up to me, her tray of empty glasses balanced on one hand.
I nodded quickly. “I’m fine.”
“Bullshit,” she challenged me, her voice low enough that no one else could hear.
“Whatever.” I sounded like a churlish teenager. “Business is good, isn’t it? Everyone is here to look at me and wonder or not wonder why Heath Falkner is interested in me.”
She gave me a long, knowing look. “He’s interested in you because you’re fantastic.”
I sighed. Casey barely knew me and was already on my side. We, from the wrong side of the tracks, often stuck together.
“You’d think I’d be used to it.” I looked at the drinks order from Table 10 and began to look for the ingredients to put together an Old Fashioned and a Mai Tai. “I’ve been gossiped about my whole life.” It was exhausting!
Casey’s expression softened. “Listen. People are always going to talk. They’re going to spin stories about you no matter what you do. Might as well give them something to talk about.”
I almost smiled at that. “Don’t you think I’ve had enough going on already? Between Jack and Molly, buying the Wildflower, and those private skiing lessons, it’s all shaping up to be the scandal of the century.”
“I’m saying you’re allowed to be happy,” she chimed. “If Heath makes you happy, then screw the rest of them.”
“I barely know the man, Casey.” This was at least true.
Before she could continue the conversation, thankfully, a man at the far end of the bar waved for a refill, and Casey took off.
The night got busier as it went on, and business was good—better than good. Every table was packed, and even the tourists were starting to notice the energy in the room.
I was happy to close the place down after the last call. Casey usually left around seven so she could put Mila to bed and relieve her babysitter, so it was just me…and Ben. Ben found me going through my computer and invoices for the day.
“Long night?” Ben sat on a barstool next to me, angled to the side to face me.
“Yeah.”
“You know, haters gonna hate, Sable.”
I turned to face him. “Ben Greyfeather, did you just quote Taylor Swift?”
He chuckled. “I got a granddaughter who loves her, so, yeah, I’m pretty well-versed. Besides, Taylor’s got some wisdom, doesn’t she? Like she says, you just gotta ‘shake it off.’”
I let out a surprised laugh and then sighed. “Why is this so hard for me?”
Ben leaned forward, resting his elbows on the bar. “Hard for anyone. People are gonna talk, Sable. They always have, and they always will, don’t make it pleasant.”
“True.”
“And Taylor” —he added with a wink— “seems to know a thing or two about rising above the noise. So maybe it’s worth listening.”
“Of all the people I’d hear you quote, Ben, it was never Taylor Swift.”
“Hey, I’m also good with Queen Bey.”
“Hit me.”
“You’ve been through a lot, and you rose above it. You are confident…hell, Sable, as she says, you’re lethal .”
“So, this is a reminder?” I asked cheekily.
“You know your Queen Bey.”
“I kneel at her altar like everyone else.”
“You know,” he rejoined somberly, “when I bought this place all those years ago, people talked about me, too. Said I was crazy to think I could make it work. Then I hired Elijah, and they said no one would want to eat food cooked by a man who’d been in prison.”
I glanced at him, surprised. Ben rarely talked about his challenges.
“But you know what I learned?” he continued, “the people who matter don’t talk. They show up. They support you. The rest? They’re just noise.”
“That’s a life lesson if I’ve ever heard one.”
“Right now, it feels like everyone is looking at you.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “But like Casey said, ‘fuck ‘em.’ You do you.”
I drove home that night, feeling restive. I had spent one night with Heath, and a whole can of whoop ass had been sent my way. He was Alexa’s ex. She was Aspen royalty, the freaking former mayor’s daughter, who was wealthy as fuck.
What would happen if I spent another night with him? Maybe we went out in public?
I liked being with Heath because he made me feel like I was worth it. For someone who was nursing all kinds of wounds and insecurities, that was my drug of choice.
But if Jack had taught me one thing, it was that I couldn’t rely on someone else for my self-esteem; that had to come from within. I just felt I had few reserves left, and it was getting harder and harder to keep my head screwed on straight.
Well, I needed to fix it quickly because, as Taylor would say, I had to come back stronger than a 90s trend .