Chapter 2
SOLEIL
The mug said World's Okayest Gardener, there was a chip on the rim, and I'd never loved a piece of kitchenware more in my life.
I'd been in the cabin for nineteen hours. I'd unpacked three duffels, made the bed wrong twice, found a lone coffee mug in the back of a cabinet, and discovered that the meadow behind the cabin had at least four different wildflower species I'd only ever drawn from photographs.
I had also, in those nineteen hours, thought about Treyton Berg six times.
That was unacceptable. The book was the point. The flowers were the point. I had three months and twenty-four illustrations to finish and a deadline that didn’t care about my landlord's forearms.
I poured coffee into the okayest gardener mug and carried it out to the porch.
The morning was cold. Not Vermont cold, but thinner. The kind of cold that felt like the air had been filtered through a mountain on the way down. I sat on the top step, pulled my sweatshirt sleeves over my hands, and smiled at the sun coming up the side of the ridge.
Treyton’s ridge.
I knew it was his because Evelyn from the bookstore had told me twice, and because Treyton had told me once, and because if I'd somehow missed both of those, the dog who didn't belong to me had spent fifteen minutes yesterday lying on my bed like he was checking the mattress for a friend.
I liked the dog. So far, I liked the dog more than I liked the man, which was a healthy and wise response from a woman on a deadline.
I'd been sketching since five. I had the one of the glacier lily from yesterday on the kitchen table, plus three new thumbnails: a paintbrush, a columbine, and a tiny alpine forget-me-not I'd found by the porch step.
The forget-me-not was the one I kept coming back to.
It was so small I might have missed it. The kind of flower that didn't want to be a flower out loud.
I told her I was going to call her Piper. She didn't object.
By eight, my stomach started growling, so I drove into town.
The Switchback Café sat in the center of Hollow Peak, and my mouth started to water before I made it three steps inside. Cinnamon. Butter. Something yeasty that meant the cinnamon rolls were homemade, not the kind that came out of a freezer.
“Sit anywhere,” called a voice from behind the counter. “I'll be over.”
I claimed a two-top by the window and counted six other people in the café: three men at the counter who looked like they'd been there since the lights came on, a couple at a table by the door sharing a plate of pancakes, and a woman in a thick jacket reading the local paper. I loved this place already.
The woman behind the counter came over with a coffee pot and an apron streaked with flour. She was somewhere on the friendly side of sixty with her hair pulled back in a silver braid. She poured without asking.
“You're the artist in town for the summer.”
“That’s right. I’m an artist-in-residence.” I offered a smile that wasn’t reciprocated.
“And you’re staying up at Berg's place.”
“In one of the cabins.”
“Well, I’m Mae and this is my café. The rolls are the rolls. The Magic Latte is the Magic Latte. Order one of each and you'll be a regular by Friday.”
“What's in the Magic Latte?”
“I can’t tell you, it's magic.” One brow arched. “Order it or don't, sweetheart. I've got bread in the oven.”
“I’ll take one of each.”
“That’ll be right out.”
She was gone before I could ask anything else.
The three men at the counter were not, technically, watching me, but I'd grown up in a town small enough to be able to tell the difference between not watching and not wanting to be caught watching.
And they were being pretty obvious about not watching me.
The Magic Latte came first. It was the color of caramel, and it smelled like vanilla and something else I couldn't name. Cardamom? Maybe honey. I took a sip and made a sound out loud. The three men at the counter nodded in unison.
“Told you it was magic,” Mae called.
“You did.”
The cinnamon roll arrived a minute later. It filled an entire plate, and the icing was still warm. I wolfed down half of it, and then, because I was a professional and a working artist, I pulled out my sketchbook and started drawing the cinnamon roll.
Mae came back a few minutes later with the coffee pot. “You're drawing my food.”
“It's a beautiful roll.”
“It's just a roll.” She refilled my mug. “Evelyn called over from the bookstore and told me to be nice to you.”
My pencil paused on the page. “You've been very nice.”
“No, I haven't. I've been efficient. There's a difference.” She tilted her head toward the door. “How was the welcome wagon?”
“The welcome wagon?”
“Berg. Did he bring you some supplies, growl at you a little, then leave?”
“More or less.”
“Mm.” She set a hand on her hip and gave me a lopsided smile. “Don't take it personally. He's like that with everyone except his dog, and lately I'm not so sure about the dog.”
“The dog seemed friendly.”
“Did he?”
“I think Treyton was upset about it.”
“Of course he was.” She squinted out the window at nothing.
“We call him the grump of Hollow Peak. You should know that.
He's been the grump since he got here and he'll be the grump when he leaves and the only person who's ever made him not the grump for more than four minutes at a time is a foster brother of his who lives in Texas and shows up here twice a year on a motorcycle. Name’s Bison, and rumor has it he’s due for one of those visits sooner than later.”
I filed that bit of info away. Treyton had a foster brother. From Texas. Who rode a motorcycle.
“Treyton said he owns the cabins?” I was fishing for information, and Mae knew it. Places like the Switchback Café thrived on gossip.
“He owns the cabins and owns the ridge. Builds furniture nobody around here can afford. Mostly ships it off to rich folks in Aspen and Vail. He’s quiet and doesn’t go looking for trouble.
The Army gave him discipline and life made him quiet.
He fixed my back step last fall even though I never asked him to, then didn’t let me pay for it.
He’s a pain in the ass.” She squinted at me. “You're here for the whole summer.”
“I am.”
“Hmm.” She nodded once like I'd confirmed something she'd already decided. “Don't let him hide. He's better when he's not.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but she didn't wait for me to figure it out. She picked up my empty plate and went back to the counter, where one of the men was holding up his mug for more coffee.
With the sketch of the cinnamon roll finished, I turned the page and started a thumbnail of Mae. When I’d finished my coffee, I paid in cash and left a tip that came to more than my breakfast. Mae had been right about the Magic Latte. Hopped up on caffeine, I walked out into the sun.
I'd come to Hollow Peak to draw flowers, not to think about a man who built furniture he couldn't sell to his neighbors and rented out cabins to women he clearly wished hadn't shown up. I knew that type of man. He'd already decided what I was, but he was wrong about me.
I drove back up to the cabin with cinnamon on my fingers and the Magic Latte going to work in my chest, and I decided I was going to find the stand of glacier lilies he'd mentioned yesterday.
Up the south trail. About a quarter mile. Better light. He had told me himself.
The trail started behind the cabin and climbed.
I went slow because I wanted to enjoy the journey.
The wildflowers up here weren't shy. They were everywhere…
tucked into rock crevices, leaning out of moss, clustered around the bases of trees in colors that didn't seem like they should exist in nature.
I stopped twice in the first ten minutes to try to capture their joy on paper.
I passed the first wooden post about four minutes in. It had a green top, just like he'd said. I noted it and kept going.
The second post was harder to spot. The trail had narrowed, and I was keeping an eye on my feet to make sure I didn’t trip over anything. When I looked up, Treyton Berg stood about ten feet away. His big frame took up the whole trail, and his expression said he’d been waiting for me.
“Soleil.”
“Treyton.”
“You're past the second marker.”
I looked back. The post was, in fact, behind me. But only about fifteen feet. I’d been so focused on the columbine I'd been sketching that I'd walked straight past it. “I didn't see it.”
“I noticed.” He didn’t yell. Didn’t even raise his voice. He just stood in the middle of the trail with his arms crossed and his work boots planted, looking at me like I was a problem he'd been planning to address all morning.
I should have apologized, maybe even turned around. Instead, I held my ground. “The flowers don't know about the markers.”
His jaw moved back and forth. “The markers are for you, not the flowers.”
“I'm aware.”
“Are you?”
The dog wasn't with him. Treyton must have left him at home.
Which meant he'd come up the trail on purpose.
Looking for me. He'd probably left the dog at home because he didn't seem to like the fact that Biscuit liked me.
That was, somehow, the most flattering thing that had happened to me in years.
“The runoff is bad this year,” Treyton said.
“There's a creek a hundred yards above us that wasn't there last week.
You would have walked into it before you saw it.
The current's fast enough this time of year to take you down two switchbacks before you have a chance at getting your hands on anything.
Do you understand what I'm telling you?”
I did. I understood completely. I also understood that he was angrier than the situation called for, and the reason he was angrier than the situation called for had something to do with me being on his ridge in the first place, and possibly something to do with the dog, and possibly — I wouldn't let myself look at this directly — something to do with the way he was not looking at the smear of dirt on my hands from kneeling in the trail.
“I'll go back,” I said.
“I'll walk you.”
“You don't have to.”
“I know.”
He turned around without waiting for me to agree. Just stepped past me on the narrow part of the trail, closer than the trail required, and started down. He didn't look back to see if I was following.
I followed.
The trail was narrow enough that the only thing I could see the whole way down was his broad back and the way his thermal henley stretched tight across his shoulders.
He took up more of the path than seemed fair, and I had to keep adjusting my pace because every other step meant a sideways step around a rock that he'd cleared without seeming to plan for it.
He moved like he'd built the trail himself. Maybe he had.
He didn't say a word for the entire walk down.
I filled the silence because I couldn't help it. I told him about Piper the forget-me-not. I told him about the cinnamon roll. I told him Mae had called him a decent pain in the ass. He made a sound at that one, not quite a laugh but close enough to count.
When we got to the cabin, he stopped at the porch step and turned around.
The sun had gone over the ridge. The light was that thin gold that didn't last in the mountains. He was a head taller than me, and he was standing on the lower step, so we were almost at eye level. Close. Almost too close.
“Thanks, Treyton.”
“Stay on your side of the markers.”
“I'll do my best.”
His jaw did the thing again.
He turned around and walked back up the trail. Dusk was coming on fast. He didn't look back. I watched him until he was just a shape moving up the ridge and then a shape that was harder to see and then nothing.
I went inside, picked up my sketchbook, and turned to a fresh page. At the top, I wrote the stubborn flower. Then I drew him scowling.