Page 5 of Wild Rush Of Love
“Bake and Brew?”
“Yes, a lovely bakery-cafe down on Lake Front. The info on that is part of your package.” She indicated the hand basket on the small table between their chairs. “Carly, my niece, runs it and that child was gifted with the skills to make anything baked or brewed. They do—oh listen to me going on and on, you can find out for yourself when you read through the welcome packet.”
“Thank you.” Reena peered into the basket. “Are those bath bombs?”
“Yes, they’re handmade by one of our locals; you’ll find her wellness studio down on Lake Front too. Again, all her information is in there. You’ll find a little about all the businesses along the lake as well as activities the Lodge and various Winter Lake companies offer for the region.”
“All in there?”
Nodding, Alice said with a grin, “Yep. All in there.”
“There’s a lot in there.” She eyed the half bottle of wine. “Is that a local wine?”
“Oh, no, we don’t have a winery. Yet. We’ve got plenty of local beers and then there’s Melt, that shit will knock you on your ass so I’d steer clear of that if I were you. That’s a small bottle of one of my favorites out of Napa Valley. It’s for when you drop one of those bombs in the clawfoot in your room.”
Reena sat up straight. “There’s a clawfoot tub in my room?”
“One of the biggest we’ve got.” Alice smiled. “Want to see it?”
“Yes.” Reena pushed to her feet. “I might have to drop one of those bombs right now.”
“Well, if you do, you’ll be able to watch the sun set behind the mountain on the far side of the lake from the tub in an hour or so.”
“Sunset? From the tub?” She waved a hand. “Lead the way, Alice. Lead the way to this decadent luxury.”
Chapter Two
Legs aching,lungs heaving, and heart pounding, Reena pushed on.
She could see it now, the lookout, up ahead through the trees that had started to thin out.
A few more steps…
God, she really didn’t want to take them, except she couldn’t stop now. Not when she was so close.
She blamed the tub.
It wasn’t lack of fitness that had her legs heavy as lead, her lungs burning with each breath, and her heart hammering its way out of her chest. Being a waitress meant she was on her feet all the time, taking thousands of steps a day, while carrying trays loaded with food and drinks and dirty dishes. Plus she walked everywhere. She wasn’t a slouch in the exercise department.
It was definitely the tub’s fault.
She’d spent three hours in the thing yesterday. Topping up the water to keep it nice and hot every thirty minutes or so until the sun had dropped behind the mountains across the lake and the stars had flickered to life on a blanket of deep blue-black sky.
By the time she’d climbed out and called room service, she was a wrinkly prune and every part of her felt like melted wax, warm and squishy.
Then again maybe it had been the wine she had sipped all afternoon while she watched the day end and the night begin. She probably shouldn’t have ordered that second bottle with dinner either.
Yeah, the wine and the tub. They were to blame. They’d made her soft.
They were the reasons for her current struggle to walk up a damn hill.
Okay, fine, not so much of a hill, more like the side of a mountain, but it was a small mountain and it wasn’t as though she was going all the way to the top. Nope. She wasn’t even going halfway.
She glanced up. Barely twenty feet from the lookout now except from here it seemed like twenty thousand miles.
Everything in her wanted to stop, just stop. Which was why she kept going.
She wasn’t a wimp. She’d rest when she got there.
