Page 23 of The Mountain Man's Virgin
“Lawrence. Can you hear me now?”
“Lucy, I can’t hear you. You can fill me in when you get home.”
And the line went dead, but not before I heard a giggle.
I stared at the blank screen on my phone. Why was there a girl at the Ames Founder’s Retreat? And why didn’t Lawrence seem worried about me?
“Is everything ok?” Mick’s voice asked from behind me.
I turned, the wind whipping my hair furiously against my face and freezing the tears in my eyes.
“I don’t know,” I whispered, still staring at the black screen of my phone.
“You’d better put that away, the cold drains the battery like you wouldn’t believe,” Mick said, pointing at my phone. My hand was freezing cold and I zipped open my jacket and shoved the phone into the inside pocket where my body heat could keep it warm.
“He doesn’t know what happened,” I said, my teeth chattering. My body was shaking, but not from the cold.
“How is that possible?” Mick asked.
“His phone has been off. He’s at some boy’s club meeting. He claims he told me about it, but I know that he didn’t. He’s the one that suggested that I go away with his friends’ girlfriends for the weekend. He even paid for the spa treatments.”
“Is it possible that you just forgot?” Mick asked.
“Would you forget something like that? Your fiancée going away for the weekend?”
“No, I don’t think that I would,” Mick said. “But hey, I’ve never had a fiancée, so you never know,” he chuckled, trying to lighten the mood.
“How is that possible?” I asked.
“I’ve just never found the right, um, fit. I guess,” Mick said.
“You mean, you’ve never been able to find a woman who can just pick up and move to the woods with you?”
“Yeah. They’re pretty hard to come by,” Mick said and then turned.
“We need to get back to the cabin. This clear weather won’t last long, and we need to get you back to civilization.”
I started to follow him and then he turned. “What did you say the name of his club is?”
“The Ames Founder’s Club – the AFC”
Mick tilted his head to the side. “That sounds familiar,” he mused, stroking his beard with his gloved hand.
“I don’t think that you would know it. It’s an exclusive Seattle club.” I used my mitts to make quotation marks in the air when I said the word ‘exclusive’. “Only Lawrence’s rich friends are members. They have a secret password, change the locations for their meeting, refuse to talk about what it is they do, but I think it’s just an excuse for them to get together, play poker, and drink.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s a really old institution,” Mick said. “I think it goes back a few generations at least. I know that it was around when I was in college, but you’re right, nobody ever talked about the goings-on. There were rumors though. You know, crazy initiations, that kind of thing.”
“Do you remember anything else about it?” I asked, suddenly curious about this institution that I had heard next to nothing about.
“Not really. I can ask some of my colleagues about it. I think that I know some who were in it. I don’t know if they’ll tell me anything though. I think they’re like the Mason’s that way – tight-lipped.”
“Colleagues? Who the squirrels?” I laughed.
He laughed in return. “The squirrels are a lot more productive than most of my colleagues. I do actually have a job in the real world.”
We had been isolated together for two days and I realized that we hadn’t talked about ourselves at all. It had been so refreshing, but I felt like it was time to get to know Mick. Get to know who he really was underneath that rough and bearded exterior.
Chopper bounded ahead, taking advantage of the packed trail we had made.
