Page 59 of Almost Perfect
“Well, she had a baby not too long after Jamie left—not his, if you’re wondering.”
I laughed. “I wasn’t, but good to know. No secret baby tell-all up and coming. I’m sure his wife is glad about that.”
He offered a genuine smile then. “Yes, I’m positive Bel is. Anyway. Quinn’s great. She sings over at the resort’s bar on a lot of nights and weekends, gets a really good crowd. Occasionally has other gigs locally just because she loves it. But I don’t think she still has aspirations for more. It’s just in her blood.”
That statement clanged through me. It absolutely fit with what I’d seen during my encounter with Quinn. Was music in my blood?
Gut response? I wouldn’t say so, no. Music had simply been phase two of my professional life after modeling. A way to “level-up” as I got older, as Candy used to say.
I did love performing. I’d taken dance since I was little, and I loved the stage production of my tours. My beginner-level musical ability when I started out had kept me from truly loving the process, though. I’d felt like I was playing catch up with my own career. And in the last few years, it felt like I’d lost the thread again. Both of the music and myself.
Strumming my little guitar by myself in the barn had been a good release. I did feel connected to a part of myself that’d been lost, and some of the credit for feeling less like a messy ball of grief and anger was down to those quiet moments by myself, scribbling down songs I’d scratched out over days.
What wasin my blood, if music wasn’t? Hard work, yes. The desire to live life to its fullest had been, but much of that wind had been cut from under me.
“I admire that,” I said honestly.
“Quinn’s love of music?”
“I guess it’s that. I admire the idea that when someone loves something so much, they do it whether it makes sense to or not. And maybe it does work for her as an outlet or something. I can’t remember doing anything simply because I love it.”
Pathetic. The truth of that struck me, and I cleared my throat against the discomfort clogging it.
“You came here, right? Wasn’t that something you did? Maybe not because you love it here, I guess, but because you needed to?”
Pulling a piece of bread from the basket, I thought about that. I’d come here to hide, yes. But I’d also chosen this place because some part of my soul had known I’d needed these mountains. And it’d been right.
“Not the same thing, I know,” Wyatt added when I didn’t respond.
“I think you’re probably right. I’m at a crossroads in my career and life, and this was the only place I could imagine going.”
I slathered the slice with butter, wondering what else I might have in me. If the mountains had called me home, so to speak, then what else would call to me if I let it?
TWENTY-FOUR
Wyatt
We’d recovered from the stilted conversation in the truck and then my awkward silence after taking her coat, and we’d settled into something more familiar. Quiet conversation about all kinds of things flowed easily between us now, both thanks to our food arriving and generally just loosening up.
And me pushing the sight of her smooth bare back from my mind. Ignoring the physical response, the base, dire need to run a finger along her spine from the slope of her neck down to the daring, dangerously low bottom. Trace the dark wisps of tattoos that wrapped around her ribcage like fingers.
I’d had to shake off little fantasies of what the tattoos were, where they started, and what it’d be like to see them, all of them, up close.
And admittedly, it’d shocked me at first. I had never seen a woman wear a dress like that. Hadn’t dreamed it. Hadn’t been able to acknowledge it.
“That look right there. What’s that for?” She pointed with her fork, smiling.
So pretty.
I huffed out a laugh. “I was thinking how unlike my usual dates this is.”
Decent cover.
One brow raised. “How so?”
“We’ve established I don’t bring women here, or do dinner. I also rarely find myself so at ease, though we’ve had a lot of one-on-one time, so that probably primed us both for good conversation.”
Her head tipped to the side. “True. We’re getting to know each other fairly well.”
