Chapter 6
Chapter Six
With the cloud of dust settled and the roar of the Jeep’s engine long gone, I realized with growing horror that Noah wasn’t coming back.
I was stranded in the middle of nowhere.
With no cell service. No transportation.
And a Louis Vuitton suitcase that suddenly seemed about as useful as a giant paperweight.
Staring off into the empty distance, I wondered if travel insurance covered being left to die in the wilderness.
“Well, this is it,” I said to the curious bird watching me from a lamppost. “This is the moment Dad will reference for the rest of my life. Remember when you were abandoned at that airport in Colorado? Send me the receipt for the return flight to California.”
I could already hear Mom on the phone with her friends, voice heavy with loving disappointment. Our daughter, the social media failure? Oh, she’ll be fine. Just learning some hard lessons about following dreams instead of listening to her parents.
The bird looked at me with what I assumed was avian empathy. Or it was deciding which eyeball to peck out after the mountain lions were done with me.
The worst part was, my parents wouldn’t even be wrong. I’d flown all the way out here to represent a luxury brand, and I couldn’t even handle basic transportation logistics. So much for proving I was more than just pretty pictures and cute captions.
But even as I spiraled into self-pity, part of my brain kept replaying those last few moments in the Jeep. The way Noah’s hands had hesitated on the wheel. The way he’d avoided eye contact. The way he’d checked that rearview mirror …
I’d grown up reading people’s micro-expressions in my parents’ restaurant. Figuring out which customers were going to be difficult, which ones hid disappointment, which ones were putting on a show for their companions. And Noah Barrett’s micro-expressions suggested … I had no idea.
Other than the fact that he hated me. Obviously. Too bad I’d never see him again to find out more.
Looking across the empty parking lot, I realized I had two options at that point. Option one, I could take the next flight home to Los Angeles, admit to Mom and Dad my influencing career was a failure, and then submit myself to a life of dumpling folding.
Or, option two, I could wait outside and let the Colorado mountain lions eat me.
Pretty much a coin flip, really.
Dragging my Louis Vuitton with one hand and my collapsing mental stability with the other, I trudged back into the terminal. The stuffed moose head mounted over the information desk seemed to look down at me with smug satisfaction, as if to say, “I knew you’d be back.”
I briefly considered going back to Gate 3 so I could take Brie up on her offer to pour me a moonshine. Then I saw the sign that said, “Transportation.”
“You like pancakes?” asked Al, his eyes never leaving the road. Al was the driver of the faded yellow taxi I’d found parked at the curb. He’d been asking me random questions for the past twenty minutes, ever since we left the airport.
“Yes,” I answered. “I do like pancakes.”
“Hmm.” Al nodded sagely, as if I’d confirmed an important philosophical point.
I stared out the window, looking at nothing but dense forest and an empty road. The air streaming through the partially open window carried the scent of pine trees. We must have been miles from civilization, because for a long stretch, we were the only car on the road.
“Whadda bout waffles? You like them too?”
“Yes.” I wondered if I’d somehow stumbled into an episode of Twin Peaks. “I like waffles too.”
Another five minutes passed. Maybe ten minutes. Maybe ten thousand.
“How do you feel about French toast?”
“French toast is good too.”
“Hmm.” Al made another noise that might have been approval. Or disapproval. Or something in the middle.
“I’m more of a flapjack man myself.”
Eventually, the taxi climbed a winding road that snaked up the mountainside, switchbacks twisting like a roller coaster. My stomach felt like I’d been trapped on the spinning teacup ride at Disneyland for three weeks straight.
“Now, your store-bought syrup is mostly corn syrup with flavoring,” said Al, navigating a hairpin turn.
“Real maple syrup comes in grades. I prefer the dark robust. More mineral notes.” He whipped around sharp corners as if they were lined with feather pillows instead of a treacherous plunge off a cliff.
It’s a good thing I didn’t get in that Jeep with Noah, I thought to myself.
Since the Jeep didn’t have doors, I would have been thrown out the side and bounced into a gorge.
Plus, we would have been stuck together for the entire ride with him glaring at me and rolling his eyes the whole time.
Literally next to each other. With nothing but a wolf dog between us.
My traitorous mind drifted back to Noah’s impossibly blue eyes and the way his flannel shirt had stretched across his shoulders. Even soaked in moonshine and coffee, he’d been gorgeous. Which made it all the more infuriating that he’d just tossed me aside.
Noah.
The guy who looked like a model on a protein powder canister and ate elk burgers. Like he didn’t have enough testosterone already.
Noah.
The guy who drove a doorless death trap and kept a wolf as a pet. Sure, I’d spit coffee and moonshine all over the guy, but that hardly warranted stranding someone in the middle of nowhere.
Noah.
The guy who accused me of being a LuxeLife lackey. What did that even mean? They were paying me to do a job. A job I intended to do. Because they were paying me. Which, okay, fine, technically made me a lackey if you were following the strict definition of the word.
But the way he said it. Such … disdain. Like I was just another cog in the corporate machine. A machine he clearly despised for some reason.
I gave my head a small shake. Altitude sickness. That’s all this was. Lack of oxygen to the brain, creating self-doubts and making me think absurd thoughts about flannel-wearing, beast-befriending jerks with perfect jawlines.
Noah and I weren’t just opposites; we were opposing species.
I was homo sapiens influencerus, and he was whatever scientific classification covers “grumpy wilderness dweller who abandons women at airports.” Hopefully, I would never have to see him again, and clearly, the feeling was mutual. Good riddance.
I gripped the door handle as Al took another turn, my stomach jumping up into my throat.
“…and that’s why birch syrup has more complexity,” finished Al, completely unaware of my mental detour.
“Takes about a hundred gallons of birch sap to make one gallon of syrup, compared to forty for maple. More labor-intensive, but the flavor profile makes it all worth it. Notes of balsamic, with a minerality that maple just can’t achieve on its own. ”
I nodded, having given up on contributing to the conversation long ago. The adrenaline from our white-knuckle ride had worn off, leaving me with nothing but exhaustion and an encyclopedic knowledge of batter-based breakfast foods.
“Course, there’s black walnut syrup, too. More of an acquired taste. But nothing beats a good birch syrup on a sourdough flapjack.”
By the time we finally turned onto a narrow, unmarked road, the sun had started to settle over the mountains.
Crawling down the road through the trees, the taxi’s headlights swept across a wooden sign planted in a clump of brush, so weathered I could barely make out the carved letters: “Pine Ridge Lodge.”
Someone had nailed a smaller, much newer sign beneath it that read “Now Aster Park Mountain Resort & Spa” in elegant script, complete with a gold logo that looked out of place against the rustic wood.
Al drove the taxi toward a large log building nestled among towering pines.
Warm light spilled from the windows onto a wide porch, which wrapped around the entire building.
It wasn’t the modern luxury hotel I’d expected.
It looked like … a giant log cabin. Something you might see on the label of birch syrup.
“Here we are,” Al announced, bringing the taxi to a stop in a small gravel parking area. I checked the map on my phone. My blue dot was in the middle of a green blob.
“You sure this is it?”
“This is the address you gave me.” I double-checked against the address from Marcus’s email. It checked out.
I paid Al and climbed out of the car, where the fresh mountain air smacked me in the nose again. Crisp. Clean. Pine scented.
I grabbed my Louis Vuitton from the back seat and stood staring at what was supposed to be my luxury mountain getaway. It looked more like the set of The Colorado Chainsaw Massacre.
“You know,” Al said through the open window, “if you go into town, you should try the flapjacks at Mabel’s Diner. You won’t regret it.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
The taxi retreated down the gravel drive, its taillights disappearing into the trees.
Left alone in the diminishing light, I had a growing sense that I had made a terrible, terrible mistake.
Maybe spending the rest of my life cleaning wok grease out of my hair and listening to Mom’s lectures wasn’t such a bad life after all.
“Hello?”
No one answered. And on a positive note, nothing growled.
The silence of the forest was profound, broken only by the gentle rustle of wind through the trees and the distant call of a bird. Hopefully, the non-flesh eating kind. No traffic. No sirens. Just nature.
Creepy.
“Welcome to Colorado,” I whispered to the trees. I couldn’t make it out exactly, but I think they whispered back.