Any Trope But You

Chapter 3 Forrest

3 FORREST

How does one human being fill this much goddamn luggage?

As I adjust the slippery hard-shell bag on my lap that wouldn’t fit with the rest in my snow machine’s largest trailer, I have to wonder if anyone, ever, has been as epically lost as Margot Bradley. Amelia Earhart? Magellan? Tom Hanks and Wilson? Nothing about this situation makes any sense. Without deviation, all the guests who stay at North Star Lodge are experienced outdoors enthusiasts. They’re the sort of people who know how to convert their own piss into drinking water and typically bring only what they can carry on their backs. Until today, of course. Something tells me our new guest’s idea of the “great outdoors” is a stroll down Santa Monica Pier.

I stretch the tension from my neck as I drive toward her cabin, still feeling whiplash from her literal crash collision into my life. I can admit that, at first, I’d thought the last six months of near isolation in the Alaskan bush had finally gotten to me. That I was having a multisensory hallucination of the most attractive woman my prefrontal cortex could dream up. But as it became clear she was a real person with approximately the same degree of humble self-awareness as Malibu Barbie, my mind latched on to a single question: Why the hell is she here?

It’s a puzzle, and unfortunately for me, I can never resist one of those.

I pull up to her cabin, cut the engine, and begin unloading her endless suitcases, all of which are a completely impractical and therefore irritating cream color. Did she pack an outfit for every hour of her stay? I shake my head in disbelief. Maybe the high price tag of staying at North Star convinced her she was signing up for a glamping experience. She’s in for a hell of a surprise when she meets the other guests, whose clothing looks (and smells) like it’s been worn straight out of a sweaty stuff sack for days on end. Because it has been.

A small part of me that’s been starved for amusement during the last extraordinarily difficult few months can’t wait to see how she interacts with them. Or how she’ll respond to the news that there are no spa services at North Star Lodge. But a wiser, more cautious part of me just wishes she hadn’t come at all. From her long mane of wavy golden hair that looks like it’s managed by a team of professionals, to the bright white tennis shoes she slipped through the snow in, everything about her screams Southern California. Which is exactly the place I’m trying my damnedest to forget.

I finally finish unloading the trailer and straighten to my full height before knocking on her door. After almost a minute of silence, I knock again. Still nothing. I release the inside of my cheek when I realize I’m chewing it. Chances are, she face-planted and fell asleep after a long day of travel. Then again, it’s only been a few minutes since I left her. Annoyed concern grows like a thorny weed in the pit of my stomach. Did she perish from lack of Wi-Fi? See a squirrel and faint? Start a fire and forget to open the goddamn flue like I told her to?

This last hypothesis sends a flare of very real worry up my spine. Guest safety is my responsibility now that my dad’s been forced into early retirement. Moreover, while I’m not technically a practicing physician (at least in the traditional sense), I did go to med school. I have a license and recited the Hippocratic Oath, which technically requires me to help those in need. Even those who can’t tell a moose from a bear. Maybe especially those.

I knock one last time, loudly, and after more silence, I open the door. “Hello?” I call out, scanning the room. I see with relief that there’s no fire, but I’m still prepared to dress a head wound with one of the eight thousand articles of clothing she packed. And then I register the sound of running water.

“Hey! I’m in the shower!” she calls back. “Can you bring everything to the bedroom, please?”

I take a slow breath, willing my heart to climb down out of my throat. Ever since my dad’s accident, it’s been hard not to expect the worst. But she’s fine. Just showering.

After a moment of letting that sink in, I quickly find myself wishing I had the inability to form mental images. The simple fact that she’s beautiful is just another alarm bell clanging between my ears, warning me to keep my distance. Reminding me that the last time I was lured in by a pretty face and a cold night, the aftermath nearly cost North Star Lodge a whole season’s worth of business. Not that Margot is trying to do any luring. After the initial shock of our meeting, she’s made it clear she couldn’t be less interested, which suits me just fine. I have an ironclad rule about not getting too close with guests—even if this one already has my mind running laps.

I clear my throat. “No problem,” I say over the water, grabbing the handles of the first two bags. I’m about to roll them into the bedroom but stop on the threshold. The in-suite bathroom door is cracked open, presumably so she’d hear me when I came in. But leading to it in a messy trail are the clothes I saw her in earlier. My eyes drag helplessly to her yoga pants, where a small piece of light blue lace peeks out of the black Lycra. Farther on past her sweater is a strappy bra in the same color. Jesus H. Christ. If it could, my dry spell would send a tumbleweed rolling through the room. I need to get a grip . She just wants help with her luggage, and here I am staring like I’ve never seen a woman’s underwear before.

“Thanks,” she calls offhandedly.

Averting my eyes, I roll the bags in before turning on my heel to grab the others. The many others. When I come back, her tuneless humming drifts from the open door on languorous curls of steam, and I’m hit by the distinct scent of gardenias. It stops me mid-step. Reflexively, I inhale deeply, and in an instant, I’m back on my old balcony. My eyes close, and I can practically feel the California sun warming my face and hear the bumblebees droning past me. I can taste my favorite coffee after my morning workout and feel the soil between my fingers as I check my plants for water.

But then Margot hits a particularly flat note, and my eyes snap open, bringing me rudely back to reality, where all of that’s gone. My gardenias, the bees, my coffee, my home, and most painful of all, the career that made them possible. Instead of making strides in what I’d believed was my life’s work, I’m right back in the place I thought I’d escaped for good. I run a hand through my hair and exhale quietly, refusing to regret my choices. I need to get the hell out of here. Stop daydreaming in a stranger’s cabin while she showers not ten paces away from me, and go check on my father—the only reason I’m here in the first place.

After all her bags are finally in the room and I’m done organizing them according to size because I can’t help myself, I look toward the bathroom door. “Okay, that’s everything,” I call out over what I can only guess is the world’s worst rendition of “Uptown Girl.” Or “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Impossible to tell. “Dinner’s at six in the lodge,” I tack on, hoping I don’t sound eager to see her again. Because I’m not.

“Great, thanks,” Margot calls back. “I left something on the bureau for you.”

I’m ashamed by how quickly my head snaps around. I’m not sure what I hoped for—a clue to explain her presence here? Another hastily discarded undergarment? But all I see is a giant Stanley thermos.

“I’d love some ice water, if you don’t mind,” she calls out, and humiliation dive-bombs through my entire body. So this is why she feels comfortable with me wandering around her bedroom while she showers. I’m the hired help. She probably expects me to pick up her towels and leave goddamn mints on her pillow too.

It shouldn’t be a surprise after the way she spoke to me earlier, but like it was snagged on a hangnail, my mind catches on the memory of her jumping into my arms. How, for just a minute, she stared into my eyes like I was the only person in the world who existed for her. How, in the space of that suspended moment, explanations for her presence here didn’t matter because I was holding all the warmth, light, and beauty of Los Angeles that I’ve been aching for. Guess we were both hallucinating.

I leave the bedroom but not before snatching the Stanley mug off the dresser at the last second. If she sees me as a bellhop, that just makes things easier. I’ve got a job to do, and it doesn’t involve getting hung up on guests who are going to be gone in a blink anyway.

“Hand me one of those onions, would ya?”

An hour from dinner being served to the guests, I’m moving at a fast clip in the lodge’s kitchen. At my dad’s request, I toss an onion his way without thinking. The moment it leaves my hand, I realize my mistake. “ Shit .”

The onion flies through the air in a slow, graceful arc, but my dad’s newly impaired left hand isn’t fast enough. The onion hits him square in the chest with a soft thud, rolls down to his lap, off his wheelchair, and beneath a table. Scout, the big black-and-white malamute who isn’t a service dog but rarely leaves his side, lifts his wolfish head off the floor and gives me a disapproving stare. I swallow down another curse. For a millisecond, a lifetime of memories watching my dad deftly toss and catch whatever object happened to be in his grasp overrode the new reality we’re both adjusting to.

“Sorry, I—”

Dad cuts me off with a forced laugh. “Who the hell do you think I am, Joe DiMaggio? Go on and grab it. It rolled under there.”

Relieved to have a mission, I crouch down and hunt for the errant onion. As I search, pausing to give Scout’s thick, soft ear a placating scratch, I hear the kitchen door swing open with a squeak that needs fixing.

“Hey there, boys. Did you start without me?”

I surface with the onion to see Jo walk in, carrying a large crate of vegetables from the greenhouse. Tall, strong, with striking black and silver hair that reaches her waist in a perpetual braid, she’s the lodge’s manager, chef, and full-time resident, and the closest thing to a mother I’ve had since I lost my own eight years ago.

“Woulda, but Forrest was hell-bent on playing catch with me,” my dad says, smiling.

I walk over and place the onion on the low work surface I built for him during the long back-and-forth months of attending his physical and occupational therapy in Anchorage and retrofitting the lodge for accessibility. “Someday,” I promise quietly, grabbing his shoulder with an encouraging squeeze.

Dad nods, pursing his lips beneath his thick Burt Reynolds mustache while I cram down my regularly scheduled sense of failure. I know, logically, that it isn’t my fault his hemiparesis hasn’t improved since the accident. I also know my dad doesn’t expect me to perform a miracle during the daily PT exercises I insist on. Despite having nearly two decade’s worth of medical education and experience, there isn’t much I can offer him beyond basic PT assistance, pain management, and emotional support. But it’s so goddamn hard to reconcile the self-sufficient, adventure-obsessed father I was raised by with this shell of a man sitting before me. It’s why I’m here. Why I can’t go back to California for the foreseeable future. My dad isn’t well, and the last time I left home when one of my parents wasn’t well, I only had one to come back to.

“Well, it’s time to stop horsing around,” Jo says, rolling flannel shirtsleeves up her forearms with crisp efficiency. “I think we should make something special for our new guest tonight. Seems like a very nice young lady.”

If my ears could prick up like Scout’s, they would. “You met her?” I ask, despite my efforts to squash all curiosity about her. I know asking questions and thinking about her more than absolutely necessary will lead to the one thing I don’t need: distraction from my father’s care.

Jo nods, peeling the onion my dad cut the ends from. “Sure did,” she says, setting it down between the stabilizing pegs of the one-handed cutting board I got him. “Dropped by to introduce myself.”

“Glad someone’s being friendly to her,” Dad says with a chuckle, methodically chopping the onion with his functional hand while I finish washing my own. “Forrest seems to think she won’t last a week here. What did you think of her, Josephine?”

“Well, she’s stunning, for one,” Jo says, tying on her apron. “I have a feeling those two young men staying with us are going to be drawing straws over who gets to sit next to her tonight.” Her dark eyes catch mine with a mischievous gleam I don’t like one bit. “That is, unless someone else gets to her first.”

Dad’s eyebrows rise nearly to his shock of silver hair. “That true, son? You holding out on your old man?”

The real question is why I even mentioned Margot to him in the first place. I focus on the garlic I start to slice like it can explain every mystery of the universe, including why the hell my dad and Jo feel the need to set me up with every unattached woman who passes under the roof of this lodge. After I nearly sank a multigenerational family business with one deeply regrettable fling with a guest and the soul-eviscerating Yelp review that followed, one would think they’d have stopped pushing me to pursue visitors. But apparently, their biological urge to embarrass me is stronger than logic.

“Didn’t realize I was supposed to report guest attractiveness to management,” I grumble.

“So you admit she’s a looker,” Dad goads, grinning from ear to ear. “Lemme guess: blond .” He looks at Jo and says matter-of-factly, “He’s always had a thing for blondes.”

“She is!” Jo confirms, beaming. “And when I asked if she’d already met Forrest, I swear her cheeks went pink as a sunset.”

“Well, just look at the boy. Spitting image of his father,” my dad says, laughing.

“Are you done yet?” I ask calmly, unwilling to show irritation. It would be like spraying kerosene on open flames, and I’m already sweating.

“We haven’t discussed my grandkids yet. Trapper Junior has a nice ring to it.”

Jo hoots with laughter, and my molars could leave impressions on a piece of steel.

“Okay,” I say. “Have your fun. But don’t be surprised when she packs her bags even faster than I predicted if you two keep sticking your noses where they don’t belong. She made it very clear she isn’t interested, and neither am I.”

Like a prosecutor, my mind unveils a high-definition mental image of her abandoned bra as evidence to the contrary. It’s one small step from remembering the baby-blue lace on the floor to imagining it against her golden skin and— Shit . Generally, I pride myself on not being the type of man who has inappropriate thoughts about women I’ve only just met. But I’m also not the type of man to lie to myself. My isolation plus her dimples to the power of six lonely months is an equation with one conclusion for my poor biology. But just because looking at her feels like being punched in the trachea and robbed of all oxygen doesn’t mean the situation has to be complicated. In fact, it’s the least complicated situation in the world, because she made it abundantly clear she’s not interested. Moreover, she’s a guest, and—

“You know, Trap, I think tonight might be the perfect night for that Beaujolais we’ve been saving,” Jo muses, intoning the word “Beaujolais” so suggestively that I may never recover.

“The Beaujolais is a fine idea,” my dad says thoughtfully. “Maybe with some of that rabbit.”

“And candlelight.” Jo sighs. “She’s a romance author, after all.”

My eyes have reached the apex of their roll when they freeze, and I cut them toward Jo. “Romance author?”

Her smirk makes me instantly regret showing even passing interest. “Oh, sure. She’s very well known. Surprised you haven’t heard of her, what with all you read.”

No, I haven’t heard of her. Because romance ? It makes me think of those old paperbacks with busty women desperately clutching shirtless men on windswept cliffs. Somehow it doesn’t strike me as the genre she’d write in. Then again, I’ve known her for less than twelve hours and romance isn’t really something I’m familiar with—in books or in my own life. The word alone implies the sort of commitment I used to watch my colleagues get distracted by time and time again, to the detriment of their careers. I was never convinced the rewards were worth the risks. After all, I’d seen what had happened to my parents.

“So that’s why she’s here?” my dad guesses. “Writing a new manuscript?”

“That’s right,” Jo says, pulling the rabbit out of the fridge. “When her sister booked the trip, she mentioned that the story is set in remote Alaska. Guess she thought Margot needed some real-life inspiration.”

At this, my shoulders drop at least two inches as I finally understand why she’s here. Obviously, her sister thought Margot could handle staying at North Star. Well, I’m headed to Talkeetna tomorrow to pick up parts for the sauna I’ve been repairing. I’ll just make sure to grab a brochure for the closest luxury resort while I’m in town and slip it under her cabin door when I get back. Margot Bradley will be out of my hair so fast, I’ll feel a breeze over my ears.

With something like a plan forming to find a place that suits her better (and, more selfishly, to rid myself of an all too intriguing distraction), the unsettled feeling in my chest eases slightly.

“You said her sister booked the trip?” I ask, methodically tearing off and stacking sage leaves to chiffonade. I’ll need to refund the sister for the stay once Margot is gone.

Jo nods, already at work breaking down the rabbit carcasses. “She did. Very particular about a package that’s coming in tomorrow. Wants us to take extra good care of it.”

Huh . I suppose once I deliver that package, it won’t be a problem for Margot to pack up and leave North Star. I’ll dust off my hands, and that’ll be that. She’ll be gone, and I’ll be able to return my focus to what matters—helping my dad.

For the first time all night, I look up and smile. “Don’t worry. I’m happy to take care of it.”