Cleo's Mountain Man (Mountain Men of Harrow Peak #2)

Cleo’s Mountain Man

CLEO

The recorder is charged. The notebook is new. The deadline is Thursday, and I have never missed a deadline in four years of writing about other people's food in other people's towns. I don't intend to start now. One night, two interviews, out by morning.

My editor pitched it as local color. A profile of the last old-school dive bar in the Rockies. Human interest. I said yes before he finished the sentence because I already had three pages of notes and a confirmed reservation.

I do my research. I always do my research. Every editor I've worked for has looked at me and seen the curvy girl with the nice smile — right up until I showed up more prepared than anyone in the room and let them catch up.

Ridge Road is seventeen miles of switchbacks, and my rental handles them fine. The town opens up below the tree line like something held in a fist — small, tight, backed against the mountain. I pull into the gravel lot outside the Summit and cut the engine.

The sky is wrong.

Not dangerous-wrong. Not yet. But the clouds are stacking from the north in a way I noticed forty minutes ago and have been not-worrying about since.

I check my phone. No signal. I knew that from my research — no mobile coverage on the mountain — but knowing it and feeling the dead screen in my hand are different animals.

The cold doesn't creep. It hits — under the hem of my coat, up my spine, into my lungs on the first breath.

The wind catches my hair and whips it across my face, stinging.

My suede ankle boots — the camel-colored ones I bought because they make my legs look incredible — are soaking through at the seams.

I tip my chin up at the peak. It fills the sky. Granite and snow and a silence that doesn't care whether you're listening.

I need to be inside. I need heat — a fire, a drink, four walls between me and whatever this mountain thinks it's doing. My fingers are already stiff.

I grab my bag and go find Dottie.

MACE

The system moving in from the north is twelve hours ahead of yesterday's models, and I am dealing with this the way I deal with everything — loudly and with my hands.

I drop an armful of ice axes onto the gear table hard enough that the sound cracks through the base like a gunshot.

Callum doesn't flinch. He never flinches.

I rack the axes, haul the rope bags out of the locker, check the carabiners by feel — gate, gate, gate, good — and slam the locker shut.

I pull the forecast up on the ops monitor between gear rotations because I cannot stand still long enough to just look at a screen.

The numbers are wrong. They are not wrong. The front is accelerating. Windchill is going to drop the effective temperature to negative twenty by midnight, and Ridge Road is going to be impassable by ten tonight. Maybe earlier.

I make a note to call Walt about the salt spreader and go back to the gear inventory for the third time.

Through the window, a car I don't recognize pulls into the gravel lot. City plates. A woman gets out — dark hair whipped across her face, coat cinched tight, curves and confidence and the wrong damn boots.

My hand stops on the blinds.

She has a bag over one shoulder and she tips her chin up at the peak like she's measuring it, and my heart kicks hard against my ribs. Once. Like the engine between one heartbeat and the next just — quit.

I haven't stood still in three years. I haven't stood still since I drove up this mountain and started filling every hour with gear checks and weather reports and callouts that keep my hands busy and my head empty.

This woman I have never spoken to just put a hitch in all of it from a parking lot.

My hand tightens on the blinds hard enough that the slat bends. I should look away. I don't.

I watch her cross the lot toward the Summit.

She walks like someone who is used to walking into places she hasn't been invited and staying until she's finished.

The wind presses her coat flat against her body and every curve she has is right there, outlined, and my hands close into fists at my sides and I don't ask why.

I have six places to be. I'm standing at this window.

I let the blind fall.

The food writer. Thane mentioned her. Dottie confirmed it. I don't have an opinion about this. I am going to keep telling myself that until it sticks.

I go back to the forecast. The numbers haven't changed. The road is going to close tonight. She needs to know that. This is a safety issue. A civilian in the wrong footwear on a mountain about to lock down — that's a hazard, and hazards are my job.

That's all this is.

I pull my jacket off the hook and I'm out the door before I've finished putting it on.