Page 16 of Bountiful
“I can make it better.” His voice was a caress against my heated face. “Come here, gorgeous.” He patted the bar stool beside him. “Sit with me aminute.”
I hesitated for atleasthalf asecond.
“Zara,” he said, his voice as low and rich as I’d ever heard it. “It wasn’t an invitation. It was a firmrequest.”
Goosebumps leapt to the surface of my skin. And then I obeyed him, ducking under the bar gate and sliding my bottom onto the bar stool beside him. The room looked unfamiliar from this vantage point. “So this is how the other half lives,” Ijoked.
Dave took his shot and tossed it back. Then he placed mine in frontofme.
The lime wedges were in reach, so I grabbed one and squeezed it into my shot. Then I drank it up with as much confidence as I could muster. Dave did strange things to my ego. He made me want to be as sexy as he kept telling meIwas.
“Good girl,” he purred, taking the shot out of my hand. He gave my bar stool a tug, sliding it toward him with meintow.
Then he grasped my shoulders in firm hands and kissedme.Hard.
ChapterSix
One month later
Dave
On August first,I stepped out of my rental truck at The Mountain Goat for thelasttime.
But I didn’t go inside right away. Instead, I stood there for a couple of minutes, listening to the engine tick, my ass parked against the door. Faint music could be heard from inside the bar, but I turned in the other direction and looked up. The Milky Way arched overhead, a stripe of messy starlight. I knew now that in an hour the moon would outshine it, making it hardertosee.
I was thirty years old. But until six weeks ago, the Milky Way had been only a phrase in textbooks and the name of a candy bar. Where I grew up outside of Detroit, there was too much industrial light to see any stars. And where I lived in New York City, it was evenworse.
A couple of weeks into my Vermont stay I’d bought a terrific pair of binoculars—had them FedExed to the cabin. First I’d researched telescopes, but it turned out that a decent telescope is four feet tall and doesn’t like to be moved around. And since all Ididwas move around, I decided to settle for binoculars. I was just a stupid punk from the wrong side of Detroit, anyway. Not an astronomer. What did I know fromtelescopes?
The binoculars showed me more of the sky than I’d ever seen before. Especially the moon—when I focused my lenses, its landscape suddenly looked like a real place. I’d been astonished at how visible the craters were and how near-desolate surfaces came into view through the binoculars’lenses.
Much like the moon, Vermont had also been just a shape on the map for me until a couple of months ago. It had been my teammate’s idea to rent a cabin up here for two months, to do some hiking and fishing. He’d played hockey for the University of Vermont, and loved theplace.
Since I was a single guy—and the hockey team was my whole life—I’d agreed to comealong.
Getting in the car in Brooklyn, all I’d known of Vermont was nice cheese and beer, because both those things showed up on restaurant menus in New York. But I hadn’t known about thestars.
Now my vacation was over. Earlier tonight I’d packed up my little room in the rental cabin. After tonight, my new binoculars would collect dust on the windowsill of my apartment, where my teammates would probably pick ’em up and try to spot women changing their clothes through the windows ofBrooklyn.
We were just a bunch of overgrown kids, really. Couldn’t take usanywhere.
Standing in the parking lot, I took one more look at the Milky Way. I knew I wouldn’t see it again for a long time. A week from now I’d be back in the city, living in the weight room and out on the ice, fighting for another chance to make the playoffs. Then the travel would start up, and I’d live out of asuitcase.
I had a great life. I was halfway through the best NHL contract of my career, paid like a superstar. But I’d miss the stillness of the deep woods, so I stood still for one more moment to appreciate it. It was a warm night, but not sticky. I loved that about Vermont. The air smelled sweet, but it was silent. The end of summer had approached, and the frogs and crickets had gone quiet. I took one more deep breath of thenighttime.
Then I went insidethebar.
It was a Wednesday, and as I took a seat on a stool, I noticed the crowd was alittlethin.
As usual, Zara took her time coming over to greet me. “Evening,” she said eventually, placing a coaster onto the polished wood in front of me. “What can I get you?” The lack of familiarity in this greeting made me bite back a smile. Even though we’d spent a lot of time together these past few weeks, Zara always kept my ego incheck.
If this was how she wanted to play it, then so would I. “What do you have on tap?” I asked, as if I didn’t already know. I’d spent many summer nights sitting on this very stool, drinking my way through the Vermont craft-beerselection.
She jerked a thumb over her shoulder, indicating the signboard which made it painfully clear to anyone with eyes which beers wereontap.
“Right.”Point for Zara. “Pour me an Allagash,prettygirl.”
And that’s when I got my first smile of the evening. It was so quick another man would have missed it. But I have sharp eyes. Askanyone.
