Chapter 3
Iwake up to eighteen notifications, a mountain view that still doesn't look real, and a voice memo from Emily that is just forty-five seconds of her laughing.
I delete the voice memo. I keep the mountain view.
The resort's morning preview schedule starts at ten, which gives me two hours to drink the in-room coffee, which is, inexplicably, excellent and write up my first impressions from yesterday, post two photos from the entrance archway, and have a long, serious conversation with myself about the fact that I've thought about Anthony Rossi approximately eleven times since waking up and it has been fourteen minutes.
Fourteen minutes. That's a problem.
Holly's itinerary for the day includes a media demonstration of the reindeer for the small group of travel writers and bloggers who are also here for the preview week. Anthony is leading it, because of course he is.
I put on the olive-green sweater that Madison would call a cute barn outfit and tell myself it's just warm.
MADISON: Good morning from someone who slept great because she's not hanging out with her potential Daddy…
MAYA: Good morning from someone who is not thinking about anyone.
EMILY: That's not a denial.
LILY: She woke up thinking about him, didn't she?
MAYA: The coffee here is exceptional. I'm focused on that.
HOLLY: Maya, he's already down at the reindeer enclosure. I saw him when I ran this morning.
HOLLY: He was wearing a flannel.
MAYA: Holly, I'm going to need you to stop.
CHLOE: Flannel. On a tall man. In the mountains. Who loves animals.
MAYA: I am going to a professional media preview event and I will report back with content.
EMILY: Content sure
MADISON: The flannel is content.
MAYA: GOODBYE
There are six of us in the preview group.
Me, two travel writers from publications I respect, a lifestyle photographer who is already making me feel underdressed with her fancy camera equipment, and two social media managers from boutique travel brands who keep talking to each other in a shorthand I can't quite decode.
Anthony is waiting at the reindeer enclosure when we arrive.
Holly was not wrong about the flannel. It looks incredible on him. It fits perfectly across his broad shoulders. He doesn’t look like a lumber jack exactly, more like a clothing model for middle aged men.
I am not thinking about the flannel or how good Anthony looks wearing it.
He gives the group a brief, authoritative overview of the animals; including basic reindeer biology delivered in the same matter-of-fact way he explained calf fractures on the side of a mountain road to me, and the lifestyle photographer is already shooting.
I have my phone out. It’s an expensive phone with a high-end camera, I tell myself.
The two brand managers are filming vertical video.
"Questions before we go in?" Anthony asks.
"Can we feed them?" one of the travel writers asks.
"Yes. We'll do that inside." His eyes find mine briefly, in a way that probably means nothing and that I am absolutely overthinking. "We'll go in two at a time. Slow movements, no sudden sounds, stay together."
"What are their names?" I ask.
Something in his expression shifts, almost imperceptibly. Like that was the right question and he wasn't sure anyone was going to ask it. "The big one in the back is Dasher — he's the eldest and he knows it. The female with the partial rack is Vixen. The younger ones are still earning their names."
"Still earning them," I say.
"You get a name when you've shown me who you are."
That is either the most charming thing I've ever heard a person say about livestock or I have a serious problem.
Both. It's both.
Everything goes smoothly for approximately twelve minutes.
The lifestyle photographer gets extraordinary shots.
The travel writers are scribbling. I'm getting footage of Vixen eating out of my palm.
Her nose is impossibly soft and she's giving me the same philosophical indifference as she did last night and I am completely enchanted with her, when one of the brand managers backs directly into the enclosure's secondary gate.
The latch clicks.
The gate swings.
And the youngest reindeer who has not yet earned his name takes one look at the open Colorado mountain air beyond it and decides that freedom is extremely interesting.
He moves fast. Faster than anything with antlers should be able to move, weaving between people with the particular joyful chaos of an animal who has just discovered what outside means.
"Gate," Anthony says, in exactly the same voice he uses for everything else, which somehow makes it more alarming. Someone, a member of his staff, moves in to make sure none of the other reindeer follow. The man doesn’t have to raise his voice or change his tone to show authority. He's already moving.
The brand manager who opened the gate is frozen. The travel writers are backing away. The lifestyle photographer has pivoted to capture all of this, which, honestly, same.
I step forward.
I don't know why I step forward. My body just decides.
"I can help," I say.
Anthony glances back at me, a quick evaluating look. Whatever he sees must pass some internal test, because he says, "Stay to his left. Don't chase him, just redirect. We're steering, not catching."
"Steering. Got it."
"And stay out of the mud on the east side."
I look toward the east side. There is a lot of mud on the east side.
Right. Noted.
The next twenty minutes are not my finest hour.
They are, however, extremely good content.
The unnamed reindeer has opinions about where he wants to go and those opinions change approximately every forty-five seconds.
He is not scared. No, not this guy. In fact, I swear he is absolutely delighted by the game he thinks we are playing.
He has the energy of a dog who has figured out how to open the back door and is now making the most of the situation.
Anthony circles wide and calm, doing that thing he does where the animal can feel his intention without being cornered by it.
I try to do the thing he's doing.
I mostly succeed, right up until I don't.
The reindeer pivots left. I pivot left. My boot finds the mud that Anthony specifically told me about, the physics of the situation become extremely clear, and then I am sitting in a snowbank at the edge of the east garden with mud on my jeans and my dignity in ruins.
The reindeer looks at me.
He seems unbothered.
Of course he does.
"Are you hurt?" Anthony's voice, from somewhere to my right, and then he's crouching down in front of me with a steady, assessing look of concern.
"I'm fine," I say. "I stayed out of the mud."
He looks at my mud-covered jeans.
"Mostly," I add.
He makes a sound. Low, brief. It takes me a second to identify it.
He just laughed. A stifled laugh. But a laugh. A small one, controlled, the kind that slipped out before he decided whether to let it but a laugh.
I want to make him do that again for approximately the rest of my life.
That is a completely normal thought to have about someone you met yesterday.
He straightens up, and before I've fully processed what's happening he reaches down and takes my hand and pulls me to standing in one smooth motion.
I come up fast enough that I'm closer to him than the geometry of the situation actually requires, and for a moment I'm very aware of the height differential and the warmth and the way he doesn't immediately step back.
He looks down at me.
I look up at him.
There's something in his expression that I don't have a name for yet. Something that's been there since the mountain road but that I haven't been brave enough to look at directly.
I'm looking at it now.
"Thank you," I say, because I need to say something and that's what comes out. I don’t want him to tip my chin up and kiss me. I don’t. I really don’t. At least, that’s what I tell myself.
"Don't thank me yet." His voice is lower than it needs to be for the distance between us. "You've still got mud on your jacket."
I look down. He's right.
"I can —" I start.
"Hold still."
I hold still.
He reaches over and brushes the mud off my jacket sleeve with two efficient, matter-of-fact sweeps of his hand, like it's the most natural thing, and I am absolutely not going to make this into something it isn't.
It might be something.
Across the garden, the lifestyle photographer has captured all of this. I can see her smiling from here.
The reindeer, meanwhile, has been gently redirected back toward the enclosure by Anthony's assistant, who appears to have this entire situation under significantly more control than the rest of us.
"Good instinct," Anthony says, still looking at me. "On staying left."
"I slipped."
"Before you slipped, your instinct was good."
He gives compliments readily. He’s great at praise and I like it. I like it a lot. Probably too much, because I suddenly desire to be complimented by this man over and over and…
MAYA: I fell in a snowbank.
EMILY: WHAT!
LILY: During the reindeer thing??
MAYA: There was a reindeer escape situation and I was helping and there was mud.
MADISON: Please tell me he was there.
MAYA: He pulled me up.
CHLOE: HE PULLED YOU UP.
MAYA: And then brushed mud off my jacket.
HOLLY: I'm sorry WHAT?
AMBER: She's not going to survive this week.
LILY: The jacket thing is very much a thing.
MAYA: It was just manners.
EMILY: Maya
MAYA: What?
EMILY: The way you just defended it…
MADISON: She knows it wasn't just manners.
MAYA: I have to go wash my jeans.
CHLOE: Sure
HOLLY: Maya, he watched you walk all the way back to the lodge.
HOLLY: I saw him.
MAYA: I hate this resort.
HOLLY: No you don't.
MAYA: No I don't.
The rest of the morning preview is blessedly uneventful, which gives me time to post the reindeer content on my blog and all my socials.
I have incredible footage, the reindeer escape included, because the lifestyle photographer sent me a clip that is genuinely the best thing I've captured in two years, and catch-up on the resort overview I'm supposed to be writing.
I sit in a window alcove in the main lodge with my laptop and my second coffee of the day and I write about the way the Evergreen feels different from every other luxury resort I've reviewed. Most of them are beautiful and correct with the right thread count, the right views, the right branded experience delivered with precision. This place has something else. It’s not right…
not like a checklist of expectations that a lodge has made sure to fulfill.
No, it’s more. It’s a story, a feeling. It's been built by people who actually love it, and you can feel that in the way the proportions are slightly more generous than they need to be, the way the fireplaces are real wood and not gas, the way even the petting zoo has been designed around the animals' comfort first.
I write three hundred words before I realize I'm also writing about a man who tells reindeer they get names when they've earned them.
I close the document.
I open the document.
I leave the sentence in.
He finds me there around noon.
I see him before he reaches me, crossing the atrium with the easy, unhurried stride that I'm already starting to recognize, and I have approximately four seconds to decide how to look like a person who has not been thinking about him.
I use those four seconds poorly.
"Laptop and cold coffee," he says, stopping in front of the alcove. "How's the piece?"
"How do you know I'm writing a piece?"
"You've been staring at the screen for twenty minutes with the same expression people get when something is almost right but not quite. Writer’s block?"
He was watching me for twenty minutes.
He was watching me for twenty minutes and I didn't notice because I was thinking about him.
I need to get my life together.
"No, it's good," I say. "Getting there. The morning gave me a lot to work with." I pause. "Including the escape footage. That's going to do very well."
"The photographer sent it to you."
"She did. It's excellent." I look up at him. "You're very calm in it."
"That's the job."
"I'm not calm in it."
"You're very entertaining in it." There it is again, the contained lifting at the corner of his mouth thing, that wants to be a smile but is keeping its composure. "Justin wants everyone for lunch. He's testing the bar menu and he's made it a group event whether we want it to be or not."
"That sounds exactly like Justin."
"It is exactly Justin." He looks at my laptop screen, at the document I haven't closed. "Bring the work. You can write after."
There's something about the way he says that. Not a suggestion. Not a request. Just a quiet rearrangement of my schedule, offered with complete confidence and a bit of dominance. He’s definitely a Daddy. He gives orders without them feeling like orders.
The unsettling thing is that it is completely fine and I like it.
I close the laptop and go.