Chapter 2
2
DARBY
E very guy at the bar looked like Lucas Bennett from behind. It was seriously messing with my head.
As the hostess at theGlacier Bar and Grill inside the Seduction Summit Lodge, my job was to seat customers, then return to the hostess stand to wait for the next guest. With every return, my gaze landed on the bar area and the series of stools, half of which held a bulky, dark-haired dude. Any one of them could be the guy who’d dropped me off after my car pushed him off the road.
None of them was, of course. I’d greeted every single one of those seven guys as they entered. Most had acknowledged me with a nod. One didn’t even look at me. I was used to that from the bearded, muscle-bound types who showed up for a beer and a burger at the only place in town that served alcoholic beverages.
“Excuse me, miss?”
A voice behind me dragged my stare away from the hallway that dumped into this restaurant. I kept looking in that direction like I could somehow wish Lucas into appearing.
I wasn’t even concerned about my vehicle. During my lunch break, I’d caught the message the mechanic guy had left for me. My vehicle was safe and sound at his garage, which was near downtown.
“It’s kind of chilly over by the window,” a woman I’d seated only a few minutes ago said. “I was wondering if we could move somewhere a little warmer.”
The windows were fairly well insulated, but I noticed several of the diners still wore their coats. I moved the couple and made a side trip to adjust the thermostat before starting back toward the hostess stand.
Don’t look in the direction of the bar.
I recited that order to myself at least four times as I walked. But my eyes missed the message. My gaze drifted toward the bar and scanned the row of guys on stools there. One, two, three… Wait. Eight guys now occupied those stools, and the new guy, seated all the way at the end, looked just like the one who’d driven me to work, introducing himself as Lucas before I exited his truck. He’d said little else. In fact, he’d seemed like he was in a bad mood—no surprise, considering I’d crashed my car into his truck. But at least his vehicle was drivable.
Laughing at my own silliness, I tore my gaze away and beelined for the hostess stand. Of course, it wasn’t Lucas. He probably hadn’t even given me a second thought. I knew nothing about him, aside from his name, but he clearly wasn’t staying here at the ski lodge, which meant he likely lived in one of the log cabins scattered throughout these mountains. He could also be one of the workers coming to town to help with all the new construction, which would be good news. It meant I might be able to find a way to run into him again.
“Welcome to Glacier Bar and Grill,” I said, flashing a giant smile at the group of guests standing at the podium.
They were covered in snow, which wasn’t all that unusual at lunchtime, but guests typically went back to their rooms andchanged before heading down here for dinner. Sometimes they’d rush in wearing ski suits and such during Happy Hour, not wanting to miss their free drinks, but Happy Hour ended a good twenty minutes ago.
“Four for dinner?” I asked.
“A table for four,” the man I assumed was the father of the two teenage girls with him said. “And maybe four cots so we’ll have somewhere to sleep.”
The woman must’ve noticed the puzzled expression on my face because she said, “It’s really coming down out there. And the front desk said all the rooms are sold.”
“No room at the inn,” the man joked. “Nobody’s getting down that mountain anytime soon, though, so I guess we’ll find a place to sleep in the lobby.”
“We just came to ski for the day,” the woman said. “I thought the snow would be a good thing.”
“We didn’t account for the roads getting here.”
I led the foursome to the same table near the window where the cold couple had been sitting a few minutes ago. If they noticed the temperature, they didn’t complain. But I was already planning to head over to the bar to ask the bartender if she knew what was going on out there. I nearly tripped over my own feet when I got a better look at the guy seated on the stool on the far right.
Yes, that was definitely Lucas.
I froze, my footsteps abruptly halting just feet from the hostess stand. He’d turned his face to the left slightly to look at the TV that hung above the bar, silent but with captions turned on, and I could clearly make out his profile. He’d slipped past the hostess stand while I was moving the cold family.
My stomach fluttered as my heart skipped into double time. Just the sight of him had me all flustered. Yes, I definitely had it bad. I hadn’t been like this over a guy since sophomore year, when I crushed on a senior who had no idea I even existed.
I glanced at the hostess stand. Deserted. No one visible as far as the eye could see. So I took a deep breath to summon courage and forced my feet in the direction of the guy at the bar. The guy who’d gotten me excited about something for the first time in years.