Chapter 2
2
HAYDEN
W hat the hell was my plan?
I had no idea as I entered the Glacier Bar and Grill, located inside the ski lodge. I’d made it sound like I hung out here all the time, but the truth was, I was not the type to go sit at a bar by myself.
But here I was, walking into a bar to do just that. I was hoping it would lead me to the beautiful woman I’d met earlier today. A woman who was on vacation with three other women.
I frowned when I walked in and saw no sign of her. Not at the bar, not at the tables. The place wasn’t all that busy, and I could see the entire restaurant and bar from the hostess stand. I’d been told business was better than it had been a decade or so ago, when this place was mostly a ski lodge.
Not only were most of the tables and booths empty, but the barstools were almost all unoccupied too. Only two people were seated at the bar—a couple squeezed together on barstools at one end.
Now what?
I glanced at my phone screen. It was almost seven o’clock. She said they would be here at six. Maybe I’d misjudged. I assumed they were eating dinner and having drinks, so I wanted to wait until they at least got some of that out of the way before interrupting. But in doing so, I might have missed her altogether.
“Fuck,” I said under my breath.
She was somewhere in this hotel. But short of camping out in the lobby, I wasn’t sure how I would manage to track her down.
With a sigh, I headed to the bar and took a stool at the farthest end—as far away as possible from the lovey-dovey couple. The last thing I needed was a reminder of my pathetic love life.
I once had game. I’d been a bona fide player. What the heck happened?
“You a rappelling guide?” the bartender called over to me from his spot in front of the couple.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Some chick was looking for you,” the male part of the couple said, pointing to a spot between us. A drink and basket sat in front of a stool toward the center of the bar. “She said she was supposed to meet you here, and if you showed up, to tell you she’d be right back.”
“I think she had to see a man about a horse,” the bartender said with a laugh.
Sheesh, the bartender was obnoxious. But he was also my favorite person right now because he and his customer had just delivered the best news I’d gotten in a long time.
The beauty was here. And she was specifically looking for me.
By the time I saw her out of the corner of my eye, I’d already taken several generous swigs from the mug of beer the bartender had set in front of me. She picked up the basket and drink and came over, standing at the stool next to mine.
“Mind if I sit down?” she asked.
I gestured toward the spot. “It’s all yours.”
“Thanks.”
Silence settled between us as she climbed onto the stool. I finally caught her looking at me.
“Fried mushroom?” she suddenly asked.
The question threw me off. She was offering me what was in the basket. It took me a second or two to realize that.
“Thanks,” I said, reaching over and taking one.
“I’ve just been snacking my way through the evening,” she said. “No dinner. Just junk food. At some point, I’m going to switch to dessert.”
“What are you drinking?”
I nodded toward her glass. It looked like some sort of liquor mixed with soda.
“Sweet tea,” she said. “I was going to be the designated driver, but my friends left without me.”
“Your friends left you here? That’s kind of rude.”
She shrugged. “I kind of asked them to. They got bored with this place. They’re looking for a bar that’s packed with people. So they called for a rideshare. I offered to drive them, but they ignored me. A car picked them up, and the rest is history.”
“We have rideshare here?”
She laughed. “It surprised me too. I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s a tourist town.”
“Yeah, things have picked up a lot around here in recent years. My buddies on the crew were saying you couldn’t even get food delivered until recently. And that was true even during the busy season.”
She looked back over her shoulder at the mostly empty restaurant. “I guess this isn’t the busy season.”
“They say it gets busy in the fall, and in the spring, they do an Easter egg hunt. The slide thing is fun, but on its own, it doesn’t bring in a bunch of people.”
“That makes sense,” she said. “I thought we were going on a vacation where we would hike and rappel, maybe even do a helicopter tour. Instead, they just want to get trashed every night and dance on bars. We could have gone anywhere to do that.”
“What made you pick Seduction Summit?”
“My grandma was from here. We visited a few times when I was young, before she died. She loved this town. So I guess maybe my sales pitch on the outdoorsy stuff was a bit too hardcore. I should have noticed when Sammie kept asking about nightlife. They think Seduction Summit is boring and Adairsville’s only marginally better.”
“So, what do you think?” I asked.
She looked over at me, chomping on a fried mushroom. Once she swallowed, she asked, “Think about what?”
“Seduction Summit. Is it what you remembered?”
“Oh.” She looked off to the side thoughtfully for a while before finally answering. “It’s better. In fact, if my friends weren’t being so weird, this would be the best weekend of my life.”
I knew what she meant. I’d fallen in love with the place as soon as I set foot here. Even breathing the air just made me feel better. But her words reminded me she was only here temporarily.
“Where do you live?” I asked. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Northern California.”
Shit. That was far. Plus, it took over an hour to get to an airport that would take me to her. Or bring her to me. A long-distance relationship was definitely out of the question.
So, what was I doing? I should cut my losses. Walk out of here and forget that, for a moment in time, a woman came along who lit me up in ways no one had in years.
It occurred to me, as the bartender came over to refill her drink, that I hadn’t even considered a one-night stand with her. I couldn’t imagine sleeping with her and walking away. Nope. Was not going to happen.
“…fries?”
That word snapped me back to attention. Both the bartender and the woman seated next to me were staring at me.
“Eve here was asking about our fries,” the bartender said, probably noticing my dazed expression. “I was telling her we now have chili cheese fries and nacho fries.”
“They also have chili cheese tots,” the beauty, who was apparently named Eve, said. “We could share some appetizers. Unless you’re going to order a meal. Maybe you’re going to order a meal.”
Once again, they were both looking at me, waiting for me to speak. My silence was probably getting weird.
“I’m cool with all of that, but I’d love a double deluxe burger if you could scrounge one up,” I said.
“And I’ll take another drink,” Eve said. “Maybe something a little stronger. The sweetest thing you can make.”
The bartender headed off to put in our order and make Eve’s drink while I continued grappling with the knowledge that she lived on the other side of the country. I didn’t know what I was going to do about that, but I couldn’t walk away from her, even if I knew it wouldn’t end well.
“So your name is Eve,” I said. “I guess we didn’t introduce ourselves.”
“You’re Hayden. You introduced yourself to all of us.”
And they’d given me their names. Hers hadn’t stuck. That wasn’t like me, either. I usually made an effort to remember people’s names, at least for the short time I worked with them as a guide. In Eve’s case, I’d been too busy trying not to stare at the way her chest filled out the cropped T-shirt she was wearing and how her hips jutted out beneath it, filling those shorts in a way that made my hands itch to touch.
I reached out my hand. She slid hers into it and gave a shake. Ridiculous, considering we were hardly just meeting. But if I were honest, I’d have to say I just wanted an excuse to touch her. Any excuse.
“So, have you always lived in California?” I asked.
“Yep. I grew up in San Francisco, and that’s where I went to college. I met my roommates there. The four of us share a condo in a suburban area between there and Silicon Valley.”
“You’re all in one condo?”
“Two per bedroom. It’s the only way we can afford it.”
I cringed. I didn’t even hide it. Having been in the military, I’d had my fair share of cramming into places with other people. But I wouldn’t want to do it now.
“I’m hoping to land a job in San Francisco,” she said. “The pay is really good. It has to be to cover the cost of living.”
I wanted to point out that houses here were a fraction of the cost she would pay there. Would that be too obvious? I wasn’t sure, so I kept my mouth shut.
“My friends are all into the Silicon Valley vibe,” she said. “Not me. I’d be happy working from home. It’s just a matter of finding someone who would let me do that.”
“And you could do that from anywhere.”
Damn. I was not supposed to be talking her into this.
“Like Seduction Summit?” she asked, looking over at me.
A smile lifted the corners of her mouth. Maybe she was checking to see if I was serious. I was dead serious.
“Like Seduction Summit,” I said. “No better place to live, as far as I’m concerned. It’s the perfect town for raising a family.”
“Is that what you plan to do? Raise a family here?”
“Absolutely.”
The word slipped out of my mouth before I even knew I was going to say it. I’d imagined myself as a dad and husband someday, but I’d never pictured living in a mountain town. My years in the military had taken my mind far away from any childhood visions I had of having kids and a family, though. By the time I settled here, my goal had simply been to work, make money, and keep my cabin in good shape.
“Why not?” I asked. “The schools are good. There’s pretty much everything you could ever need, and what you can’t find here, you can get in Adairsville. Tons of family activities in these mountains. Rappelling, hiking, camping. That’s the kind of family I want to have.”
We paused while the bartender set a basket of chili cheese fries in front of Eve and took off. I waited for her to realize I was not her kind of guy. Sure, she’d rappel, but that didn’t mean she was up for a lifetime of hiking and camping.
I could certainly compromise on that if it meant being with my dream woman. I’d just always hoped to find someone who was as into the outdoors as I was.
“That is what I always pictured,” she said. “But I need a survivalist kind of guy.”
I frowned and watched her slide the basket over so we both could reach it. She dug a fry out from under the pile of chili.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Survivalist?”
I was not one of those. All I could think about was that TV show where they shipped a bunch of people off to an island and made them play games to avoid being kicked off. I had no desire to live off the land for weeks at a time.
“Someone who knows how to make a fire and keep the bears away,” she said. “I would be up for glamping. It’s all really well organized.”
I nearly choked on the bite of french fry I’d just taken. “Glamping?” I asked when I finally composed myself.
“Glamorous camping. They give you an air-conditioned tent with a bathroom. You pick out your food, and they even provide instructions on how to cook it—if you can get the fire going, that is. But there are bears and stuff like that. I learned about it from a reality show.”
I didn’t watch reality TV, even the survivalist show I’d thought about earlier. Although it was tough to be alive in this day and age and not know about all of it.
“Is glamping something women do?”
She shrugged. “Anybody can do it. There are also options where you tent camp but there’s a restaurant nearby. And they serve all your food. I could go for that too. I just like being outside. That’s my idea of a fun vacation. Not getting drunk and dancing on bars.”
I laughed. “I’m with you on that. I have a tent. We could camp out tonight if you wanted.”
Was I coming on to her? I shouldn’t be doing that. I’d already established there was no way forward for the two of us. But maybe I was wrong.
She’d mentioned she loved to work from home. And I’d pointed out that it could be done from anywhere. Maybe, if I worked at it hard enough, I could convince her to give up Silicon Valley for Seduction Summit.