On the Edge (Blue Spruce Lodge Book 1)

by Dani Collins

  “Are you doing this on purpose?” Glory accused Trigg.

  “No. But it doesn’t mean I’m not enjoying it.”

  So was he, Rolf thought with a small, internal wince. In a second, she was going to notice—

  Glory’s head shot around and she glared at him.

  What? Did she think every man didn’t wish he could control when Jack decided to pop? Her breasts were rubbing his arm and her hair was in his face smelling like dewy strawberries, spring rain, and forest. If they were naked and fucking, they wouldn’t be rubbing and grinding more thoroughly.

  Damn. Now he was thinking about being naked with her, fucking her. He was going to come in his pants if this ride didn’t end soon.

  They arrived at the base with a final smear of tires through mud. Nate’s truck with the king cab was gone, likely taken by the backhoe operator and the other men who’d been working down here before the storm hit.

  “If you tear up my new road, I’m going to use you to fill the holes,” Rolf warned as Trigg started down the track to the lodge, making Glory bounce against the straining wood in his shorts.

  “Dude, you tempt me like that, what do you think I’m gonna do?” He kept his speed down, though. The gravel was covered in melted hail and washing out in a few small sections, but Trigg didn’t do any deliberate damage.

  Glory relaxed marginally, but stayed pointedly facing forward, cheeks bright red. The moment Trigg pulled up at the lodge, she leapt out of the truck and raced out of the rain and in the front doors. Murphy scrambled after her, the suck.

  Rolf moved with more care, hearing, “Dude,” as his feet hit the ground.

  He never revealed how much that word grated. Trigg would use it even more than he already did. He glanced back to see Trigg had his arm hooked over the steering wheel. He was sending him his most competitive stare.

  “What was that?”

  Rolf didn’t play dumb. “I couldn’t let her go alone. Safety first,” he said with an ironic tap of his radio.

  Nate was pretending he didn’t exist, staring at the windshield wipers, cheeks hollow.

  “Game on, then.”

  The rain had lightened up, but was still soaking through Rolf’s shirt. He reached for the hard hat he had discarded on the floor and set it on his head, then met his brother’s stare again.

  “I’m not playing.” Trigg could take that however the hell he wanted. Rolf left the door open for Nate and headed into the lodge.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Which one do you like better?”

  Glory glanced up from her computer a few days after her hike with Rolf to find Trigg in her doorway, a jacket in each hand. One was mulberry, the other apricot.

  “For what?”

  “For wearing.” He came across and held each against her shoulder. “I would have picked this, but the purple is better. Try it on.”

  “I’m working.”

  “So am I. This is the sort of high-stakes decision my brother gives me. Picking next year’s colors.” He gave her a fake smile of joy, then with genuine enthusiasm said, “Try them on. This one has an inside pocket; that one has a hood.”

  “What I’m hearing is, you’re not capable of making the decision your brother has delegated to you and you want me to do your work for you. Why is he so hard on you again?”

  “I threaten him. Now, come on. You get to keep the one you like best.”

  “Are you serious?” She pretty much leapt out of her chair at that and grabbed the apricot jacket.

  It fit like a glove and, like the teal one she had passed over so stupidly last year, had the same flattering silhouette. She walked out into the dining room to check herself in the mirror over the bar.

  “Now this.”

  The mulberry was even better. He was right about it being a better foil for her skin.

  “I love this feature,” she said of the liner that pulled down from the sleeves to make a fingerless glove, or folded over to form a mitten.

  “Done. Thanks.” He tapped his thigh to call Murphy to heel.

  She played with the zipper tab. “Are you being serious about me keeping it?”

  “Keep both. Call it your consulting fee.”

  Glory was thrilled and was wearing the mulberry the next afternoon when she arrived back from Haven. She bumped into Rolf going into the kitchen from the back parking lot.

  “Where did you get that?” he demanded.

  “Trigg. Why? Was that bad?” Her heart sank. She was in love with it.

  “It’s fine.” He gave her a critical study, which didn’t really feel like he was looking at the jacket.

  They hadn’t been alone or spoken much since the day at the hut. She was kind of avoiding him again, not sure what to make of the fact he’d gotten hard in the truck. Pure biology, she was sure, but it was still awkward. For her, anyway. They both knew. She’d been so startled by what she had realized was poking against her cheek, she’d given him a WTF face. She should have ignored it.

  On his part, rather than be apologetic or dismissive, he’d looked her right in the eye. With heat.

  Or not. She was writing her first original romance, start to finish, all her own words, starring people she had created. She was probably seeing the world through Pandora goggles, lusting after Rolf because her heroine was horny for Brock.

  She didn’t dare raise her eyes off the matching logo on Rolf’s jacket. “This is, um, heavy.” She shrugged under the weight of her bag. “I want to put it in my room.”

  It was a small lie. She had well-developed laptop-lugging muscles.

  “I need to talk to you.” Rolf walked straight to his office, presuming she would follow him.

  She almost wanted to go all the way to her room first, just to prove a point, but rolled her eyes and went to his office. It was on the way, after all.

  She stood in the open doorway. He stood behind the desk, scanning its surface, then glanced at her like he was surprised she was there.

  “Put it down.” He pointed to the chair.

  Ugh. She entered the office and lowered the bag into the chair. “If this is about the schedule for retiling the bathroom showers—”

  “It’s not. Fit mine in however it works. No, I’m thinking that since I’m only using this office in the morning and evening, we could share this space.”

  “What?” Glory knew she shouldn’t argue. The busier the dining room grew, the fuller the pantry became. She was in the way and being squeezed out by dry goods. The lodge had two dozen rooms occupied by workers and contractors through the weekdays on a regular basis. This office would eventually be the management hub so the sooner she set it up as such, the better.

  Something about sharing space with Rolf, even in a cross-scheduled way, made her jumpy, though. He made her jumpy.

  He’d had a boner. With her on his lap.

  “I thought you would need it until you have an office at the base. Wasn’t that supposed to be end of June or something?”

  “Trigg is tasked with bringing in a portable work office by June thirtieth, but we have a satellite relay in the tent. I’m able to make calls and answer emails. I still need an hour at the desk here and there, but you could be in here the rest of the time.”

  “I can wait until you have your own space.”

  “I said I gave Trigg a deadline. I didn’t say he would meet it.” His mouth twisted with derision.

  “You guys,” she muttered, crossing her arms and looking to the ceiling.

  “What?” Rolf folded his arms. “He came to me four years ago and said he wanted to reopen this hill. I told him I didn’t want to run a lodge. I said that when he found someone to take on that part of it, we could get started. Four years it took him to find your dad.”

  “Doesn’t he have an intense training schedule?” He was doing a bunch of dry land training around working. She suspected Trigg was mostly focused on hitting the podium as high or higher than his older brother at the same age and wanted to keep winning as long as
he could. “When would he have had the time to find someone?”

  “Are you defending him?”

  “I’m stating a fact.” Her nose tingled as if she scented smoke or some other dangerous substance. She gave it a rub. “Plus, he’s like his dog. He only jumps on people he likes.” She meant her dad, but Trigg did make her laugh, same as Murphy. It was endearing.

  Rolf was more like a wolf. Fascinating to watch, but liable to rip your throat out at the first opportunity.

  The gleam of his stare turned so bronze and hard at her silly little joke, her heart began pounding in trepidation. A muscle pulsed at the side of his jaw.

  “What? I stand by what I said in the hut,” she told him, chin high, as if she were Joan of Arc, ready to burn for her beliefs when she was trembling in her sandals. “I never had siblings. Whatever bone of contention is between you two, you both need to let it go.”

  “Ha!” He looked away, shook his head. “Sure.”

  “I give up,” she muttered, shouldering her bag and heading to the door, but couldn’t resist adding, “I just don’t think you should blame him for something your dad did.”

  Silence.

  She glanced back, expecting to see she was being sliced-and-diced by death lasers shooting from his eyes.

  His eyes were narrowed and flinty, but unreadable. “Is that what he said? That I blame him?”

  “No.” Shit. Now she was sorry she’d said anything. She really didn’t want to get between these two, especially if she caused unnecessary misunderstandings about something so personal. With a little sigh, she closed the door and set her bag by her feet.

  “He told me your dad fooled around on your mom with his. That he married her right after your mom died. When you said the other day that you were still angry with your father, I took that to mean that was why.” She tried an apologetic shrug. “I shouldn’t be getting so personal, but I always wished I had a sibling. It frustrates me to see you two fighting all the time.”

  His cheek ticked. “We’re competitive. Our father was the same, he just steered it into business. Other than our dad, Trigg and I don’t have much in common. I knew that the day he broke his skis in half and told me to fuck off because he wanted to board. Skiing is discipline and technical precision. Boarding is loose and wild. It’s probably a good thing he chose it, because if he was breaking my downhill records, I would be killing myself trying to stay ahead of him. Trashing the shit out of each other is our way of keeping things from getting physical. It’s not pretty, but there it is. Also, telling him he can’t do something is about the only way to get him to do it, so…” He lifted a negligent brow.

  “So why are you still mad at your dad, then?”

  “For Trigg. But mostly for dying,” he said, as if that was obvious. “The company wasn’t ready to lose him any more than I was. The wrong people were in charge, but I wasn’t ready to retire from racing. It was a fucking mess and then Trigg started on about this place, which I was thinking about selling at one point, we needed the capital so bad. Hanging on to it wasn’t easy and now we’re basically gambling everything on it again.”

  “Oh.” She didn’t know what else to say. Did he realize he was confiding again? In her?

  Maybe he did realize it, because he took a breath and touched the keyboard to wake up his monitor. “I’m going to answer a few emails, then head down to the base. Move in and set up however you like, soon as you want.”

  “’Kay. Thanks.” She picked up her bag and walked up to her room, wondering why he was being so nice to her lately.

  *

  It was the longest day of the year. Rolf was walking around the lodge to the back entrance with Nate and Trigg, all three of them dragging their feet after helping pour concrete since half the contractor’s team had called in hungover after watching last night’s hockey final. They were filthy, sweaty, and thirsty.

  The sun was still high and warm, despite it being six o’clock. Murphy diverted to the creek that ran into the pond. It was trickling so steady and inviting, Rolf was tempted to lie down in it himself.

  Then, like a beacon, paradise. Marvin, who had plenty of faults, but hospitality wasn’t one of them, had set out tables and chairs on the half-finished patio off the lounge.

  Glory sat there, a glass of wine at her elbow while she traced the cap of a pen around her nude lips, gaze on the papers before her. She wore a summer dress, big white polka dots on pale pink. He was eye level with her naked calves and bare feet, both tucked beneath her chair, toes gently pointed on top of the sandals she had kicked off.

  At what point he had become poetic about a pair of feet, he didn’t know, but they were the sexiest thing he’d seen in a long while.

  “I think I just fell in love,” Trigg said.

  Glory lifted her head, gaze striking into Rolf’s with a start and something else that she disguised in a blink as she took in the other men.

  Sexual awareness. It rolled through him like a hit of schnapps every time he saw her, but this was the first time he realized it was the same for her.

  He had read her reaction to him as a deliberate play when they’d first met. After their blowup, he hadn’t seen much of her to discern any reaction besides repulsion. She still seemed to be avoiding him, even though they had come back to speaking terms.

  Seeing that vibration of desire quiver unabated in her lashes, however, gave him a jab of excitement, reciprocation, deep in the pit of his gut. Lower.

  “Well, don’t you boys look fancy,” she said, using a neutral smile to cover up whatever was going on in that pretty head of hers.

  “What are you doing?” Trigg climbed the scaffolding that stood on this side of the rail-less deck. “Writing in your diary?”

  “What? No.” She closed her notebook, frowning with wariness as Trigg approached.

  It was the tiniest undercurrent that might not have registered, but Rolf was staring right at her, looking for signs she reacted to his brother the same way she reacted to him. He used what was left of his strength to climb, get his feet on the deck, and stand.

  “Fuck it,” Nate sighed from below. “I’m walking around.”

  “Lemme read it.” Trigg jerked his chin at her notebook.

  “What? No.” Glory gathered her notebook to her chest. Her posture grew defensive.

  “You’re blushing.” Trigg gave a low chuckle. “What is it?” He made a feint for it, just screwing around, but Glory went even redder.

  “Don’t.”

  As Rolf approached, she shot him a look, but not as though searching for a rescuer. Tension increased around her eyes. Her gaze lumped him in with the other bully, full of persecution as she pressed deeper into her chair. Beneath growing hostility, he read real fear. The injury of betrayal. He’d seen something like it the morning over the coffee heart, when she had ripped him a new one. She’d been pushed hard enough, when she was already hurting, she had had to turn and fight.

  “So sensitive,” Trigg teased, weaving like he was looking for an opening.

  Rolf could have let her put Trigg in his place. He wanted to see her drop-kick his brother with a shin to the nuts, but such a wave of protectiveness rose in him, he nearly snapped in half. Teasing Glory was one thing. Hurting her was verboten.

  “Grow the fuck up.”

  His brother shot him a look, more for the tone than his words. Rolf was not fucking around and Trigg knew it.

  Glory was looking down at her lap, where her book was protectively nestled. She was blinking fast, chin set. “You guys want beer?” Her voice sounded strained as she put her exit strategy in place.

  “I got ’em,” Nate said, arriving with three longnecks, completely oblivious to the undercurrents as he sat down across from Glory. “Been meaning to ask you, can I put in for a room? One of the big ones, if it’s available.”

  “Um, sure.” She cleared her throat and swiveled to pick up her wine, still on the edge of her chair, back straight. The red was fading from her skin, leaving her face pale.
She still had a firm grip on her notebook. “We don’t have any corners, but there’s a middle one on the second floor. Do you need me to buy a cot for your son? We’ll have to get some eventually.”

  “I’ll bring the bed he was using at my rental in Haven.” Nate scratched his stubbled beard, glancing at Rolf. “This way I’m not wasting gas driving into Haven unless it’s my night to have him.”

  He could work longer hours, Rolf heard in that remark. Nate already worked a lot of overtime. Not for the cash, but to book extra time with his kid.

  “You sure it’s okay to have him here?” Nate asked Glory. “We’ll probably take off and go fishing or something anyway. Really just sleeping here.”

  “Devon is great about blocking off her work area, so it shouldn’t be a safety issue. And we already have children here,” she said, sending a pithy look toward Trigg.

  “Come on, Glory. I was teasing,” Trigg said, trying to tweak a lock of her hair.

  She sharply veered away.

  “Kiss and make up,” he urged.

  “I don’t like beards.”

  “No?” Trigg swung a smirk to Rolf. He shaved maybe twice a year, wearing stubble all winter for sure and only shaving if he happened to go on a tropical vacation and his face was too warm in the sun.

  “How do you feel about man-buns?” Rolf asked her, eyeing Trigg’s.

  “Pass.”

  Rolf tucked the wet mouth of his bottle against his smile.

  When he glanced at Glory, she was staring right at him. Icily. She turned the same glare onto Trigg.

  “What?” Trigg said.

  The sound of cars leaving for the day crunched on gravel and the air carried the scent of barbecue as Devon’s crew began preparing their evening meals.

  Glory drained the last of her wine. “You know what I like?” She set down her glass with a force that almost broke the stem. “Family values. Give me a single dad any day. Or night.” She blinked adoringly at Nate.