Page 36 of Snowed In with her Mountain Men
I couldn’t help but notice Oakley’s pause in talking about his mentor’s passing, and how his fingers gripped the steering wheel a little more tightly. I wanted to know what happened to Sarge, of course. But since he’d done me the same courtesy, I couldn’t ask.
Eventually the narrow mountain road ended at a blinking yellow light, signaling the beginning of civilization. We passed a few shops here and there, with storefronts gradually increasing in size and frequency as we got closer to the town’s center. Crescent Springs was exactly that: a city sprawled in a crescent shape along a pristine lake, fed by three surrounding mountains. It wasn’t small by Montana standards, but it wasn’t huge either.
Somewhere along main street, Oakley located the garage Jaxon had indicated. The lot was littered with cars and trucks, all of them jutting from between irregular piles of snow. One of them I recognized as mine.
“Damn those tires suck,” Oakley grumbled.
A man stood hunched over a dirty white Mercedes, spanner wrench in hand. He looked exactly like someone named Sampson might look. He looked up and waved, and Oakley waved back.
“Alright, you should be good from here,” he said, pointing. “You know the way home, right?”
“Head up the mountain we came down from, until I hit a big fucking log cabin?”
“Or until you slide backward into a ditch,” Oakley quipped. “Either way, call me. I don’t like the look of those tires, but they’re still better than the ones you had.”
“Will do,” I promised. “I need to stop at the diner first. I think I’m on the schedule a few nights this week. I also want to pick up a local paper. See if I can figure out a rental I can afford.”
He looked a little taken aback by my last statement. Maybe even hurt.
“Didn’t you just get settled in?” he asked. “You’re already looking to make a fast getaway?”
“No, no, of course not,” I countered. “But I can’t impose on you boys forever. The sooner I look, the sooner I’ll be out of your hair.”
“And what if welikeyou in our hair?”
He uttered the words, but then looked away quickly. As if maybe he’d said too much.
“Never mind,” he finished. “If you find one this late into the season it’ll be a miracle, anyway.”
“Probably. But it can’t hurt to try.”
I popped the door and set one foot on the step bar. Before I could leave however, I felt a hand close over mine.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Oakley asked gently. “You know… with last night?”
My smile returned. Shifting inside again, I leaned into his seat and gave him a passionate, fiery kiss.
“I’m a little better than alright with it,” I said, adding a flirtatious wink. “And you’d better be, too.”
~ 19 ~
CAMRYN
“Seriously?” the woman with the beehive hairdo chastised me, as I followed her through her rounds. “I thought you quit.”
Millie danced through the diner’s narrow corridors, refilling coffee and asking customers if everything was okay. Her smile was plastic — almost as plastic as the shiny black and red seat coverings that adorned every ancient booth. Those seat covers were old and tired, worn with decades of use. But they were all hers, and Millie prided herself in keeping them spotless.
“If you’re looking for your job back—”
“But I never quit,” I cut her off. “I just had a bad week. The mother of all bad weeks, really.”
“Tell me about it,” Millie rolled her eyes.
She blew a bubble, popped it in my face, then headed for the kitchen. I followed her in, trying desperately to avoid the toxic trail of perfume that wafted behind her. The back area looked busier than normal. I waved to a smiling Milo and Joshua, as I passed the food prep and fry stations.
Millie’s office wasn’t just a mess, it was an inherited conglomerate of messes spread out over more than half a century. It looked like someone rolled a grenade into a furniture factory, then covered it all by gleefully pulling the lever on a ticker tape parade.
“Alright then,” she spun around, slamming the door behind us. “Let’s hear it.”
