Chapter 3

3

SKYE

F ive minutes until closing. I’d turn the sign around, lock up the shop, and head back to my tiny brick house, where I’d throw together a grilled chicken salad and eat it in front of the TV.

I sighed as I stared out the window in the door that overlooked this corner of the lobby. Normally, I cherished my evenings of mindless reality TV while eating a good-for-me meal after a long day of work. Heck, just popping the recliner and kicking my feet up was heaven. But now, everything seemed so empty.

“Maybe I should get a dog,” I said to myself, lifting my cell phone and unlocking it.

I immediately darkened the screen again and turned it over, face down. What was I doing? Having lunch with a hot guy who seemed marginally interested in me did not mean I needed a dog. I just needed to get the heck out of here. Boone wasn’t coming back tonight. Maybe not ever.

Oh well. Time to lock up and get out of here. I grabbed my phone and started around the register, but as I approached the door, something stopped me in my tracks. That burly build. The dark jeans that I thought were black that morning. The black leather jacket with a white sweatshirt under it. Most importantly, that distinctive dark beard and super-sexy jawline.

I’d know that sight anywhere. My lumberjack had come back, and he was heading straight for my gift shop.

He kept walking, even though I’d frozen. As he got closer, he’d see I was just standing here like a lump on a log.

That realization was all it took to get my butt in gear. I walked briskly toward the door and reached for the handle, only for it to hit me that the door was unlocked. I didn’t have to come all the way over here to let him in. In fact, I was coming over here to lock the door in the first place.

So I did what any nincompoop would do in that situation. I flipped the sign to closed, then pulled the door open. His footsteps faltered, but he kept coming. He was only several feet away at that point.

“Are you closed?” he asked.

“Well, technically, the shop doesn’t close until six,” I said. “But it’s kind of dead right now—it’s been dead all day—so I thought I’d close a few minutes early. Come on in.”

I winced at how mixed those messages were. If I was closed, why was I inviting him in? Maybe I should have stepped out and locked the door behind me, but my purse was still inside, and I needed to shut off the lights. Yeah, this guy made me kind of a mess.

If Boone thought it was odd, though, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he just followed me into the store while I headed behind the cash register to grab my purse from under the counter.

“Feel free to look around,” I called out while crouched down where he couldn’t see me.

It took a second to unlock the safe and get my purse, so when I stood, I expected to find him looking at the T-shirts and weird assortment of bear carvings that filled the store these days. Instead, he was standing next to one of the T-shirt displays, hands in jacket pockets, looking awkward as he stared in my direction.

“Are you in charge of stocking this place?” he asked.

I stared at him a long moment before answering. What was really throwing me off was how shy he suddenly seemed. The guy had been all confidence when he walked into the lodge this morning, but now he looked like a guy who wanted to ask a woman to the prom. Or, in this case, on a date.

Yeah, I was probably dreaming where that was concerned. But it did get my heart going a little faster.

“Yes and no,” I said, looking around. “Those bear carvings are left over from before. The rest, my boss picked out. Occasionally, I make suggestions, but mostly my job is just to keep these products in stock. When something runs out, I order more.”

“Before what?” he asked.

I tucked my phone into the pocket of my purse and retraced my earlier words. What had I been saying? Oh right.

“Before Brandon came to town,” I said, remembering I’d mentioned the bear carvings being left over from before. “Brandon is a friend of Alex’s. The owner.” I added that in case he’d forgotten. “He came back to town after being away for a while. Long story. He ran a lodge over in Passion Point. Anyway, I guess he somehow managed to convince my boss to work hard to make this a year-round place. Well, him and his employee, who is now Alex’s girlfriend.”

Boone’s eyebrows shot up, and I realized I’d gotten way too far into the drama of it all. He probably didn’t care about any of that.

“Beefing up our gift shop offerings is part of it,” I rushed to add. I gestured to indicate our surroundings. “The whole town seems to be stepping up its game, actually.”

He nodded. “There’s a shopping center going in near the square.”

“Yeah, that’s Brandon’s project.”

“Does Brandon need lumber?”

Now I was the one whose eyebrows shot up. This guy wasn’t giving up simply because my boss had given the job to someone else. He’d consider sticking around to compete if he thought it was worth his while.

Keeping him around a while was exactly what I wanted. And that meant I had to figure out a way to help him.

“I probably shouldn’t tell you this.” I glanced toward the door, but the area of the lobby I could see was still deserted. “Local gossip says that there’s a big developer looking to build cabins all the way to the top of this road. It’s a straight shot with no side roads, which means they’re going to have to cut through some forest.”

“Which means they’re going to need logging crews,” he said.

“You’re not just some fly-by-night operation.”

“Those big trucks that the bigger cities use?” he asked. “Yeah, I don’t have one of those.”

“So get one. You’ve been doing this a while. You probably have enough connections to bridge the gap.”

I didn’t know what I meant by “bridge the gap,” but I sucked in a deep breath when I realized what I just revealed. I’d looked him up online—his company, his history…anything I could find. There wasn’t much about him directly, but his family had been in the business for at least forty years. He was carrying on the family tradition.

“You looked me up?” he asked.

Crap. I was hoping he’d let that one slide on by. No such luck.

“Yeah,” I said. “After lunch, things were slow here, so I spent a little time browsing. I’m not a stalker or anything weird.”

I saw a hint of a smile. This guy didn’t seem to be the smiling type, so I took that as a good sign.

“I think you might like me,” he said.

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. Like him?

“Maybe,” I finally said with a shrug. “You’re not bad.”

“Not bad? Well, as long as I’ve made a good impression, I’ll take it. You’re not bad yourself. So you wouldn’t object if I asked you on a date?”

He took a couple of steps toward me, pulling his hands out of his pockets. But he seemed to not know what to do with them. He held them at his sides, crossed them over his arms, then dropped them to his sides again.

“What kind of date?” I asked. “There aren’t any fancy restaurants in town.”

“So I’ll take you over to my neck of the woods.” He took another step closer. “But there’s not much in the way of fine dining. I know a place where you can get the best ribeye. You’ve never put anything like it in your mouth.”

Something about that immediately sent my mind to the gutter. “I don’t exactly have experience putting things in my mouth.”

I blurted that out without really thinking it through. In the seconds that followed, though, regret settled in. His expression didn’t change at first. He just stared at me like he wasn’t sure what to make of my words.

Was I flirting? No. I didn’t know why I blurted that out, except when I got nervous, I tended to lose whatever filter kept me from saying crazy things the rest of the time.

“No experience whatsoever?” he asked. “Are we talking about steaks…or something else?”

My grimace probably gave away my answer. “I’ve tried almost every steak imaginable. I’m not talking about steaks.”

“So you’ve never…” He hesitated before continuing, “Gone down on a guy?”

“I’ve never done any of it. Everyone says I don’t know what I’m missing, but I don’t know. It all seems overrated to me.”

His mouth fell open. He didn’t speak for the longest time. His pause told me I’d shocked him speechless. Problem was, I was speechless too as I tried to figure out a graceful way out of this conversation.

“Maybe someone should show you what you’re missing,” he said.

Talk about being speechless. I’d lost the ability to breathe. I just stared at him as seconds ticked by, but finally, some part of me I hadn’t even known existed before now said, “Are you offering to show me?”

He glanced over at the window in the door. While no one was outside, anybody who drifted over to this tucked-away corner of the lobby could see in.

Finally, he said, “Why don’t you show me your back room?”

I thought about jokingly asking him if that was a euphemism, but this was no time for humor. This was very, very serious. I was seconds away from the most exciting thing that had ever happened in my life, and I’d be darned if I was going to blow it.