If there hadn’t been so much hair on Easton’s face, River might have been able to tell if the comment made Easton flush with embarrassment.
Token protest to their existence made, Graham took their orders and payment with the quick, professional actions of someone who had to move a lot of patrons through his door. Except the man had never met Bree. Bree, who could spend an hour staring at a menu in a restaurant. Give her more than three options, and they would be stuck for an hour.
To his credit, Graham tried to be patient. He waited. And waited. And waited some more. Eventually, he leaned on the counter.
“Darlin’, I hate to break it to you, but the options aren’t going to get any better the longer you think about it. I can put the meat on the fries or the fries on the meat. Or get you really drunk. But that’s it.”
As usual, Jessie—impatient as ever—was going insane. “Hey there, SH. Help a lady out. What’s good here?”
“SH?” Zoey asked.
“Sexy Hagrid,” they replied in unison.
The look that crossed Graham’s face was akin to a small child at Christmas. “Everyone’s eating for free.”
“He’s not like Hagrid,” Zoey protested. “Your muscles are much more muscly and less ogre-ish. And the beard is sexy, not off-putting.”
“Far sexier than Hagrid.” River winked at him while Jessie sized up his arms.
“Hagrid after a lot of cardio.”
Bree chimed in. “Maybe if Hagrid and a wood nymph had a slightly less Hagrid-esque child.”
When Easton stood, River hooked his arm and pulled him back down, snickering. “Come on. You’re one of the crew now. You’re going to get some ribbing. It’s part of the whole ‘we’re isolated on location, so we annoy each other as much as possible’ theory of surviving film shoots.”
“No cameras,” Graham warned them as he dropped a fresh basket of fries into the fryer. “I will deep-fry your equipment.”
“He actually will,” Zoey said. She flashed a pretty smile at Graham, then turned shy eyes to River. “You’re River Lane, aren’t you?”
“Most days.” River turned to Zoey with the friendly pleasantness she always took when meeting fans. “It’s nice to meet you, Zoey.”
Unlike with Easton, it was more than easy to see the flush of embarrassment on the other woman’s face. Zoey opened her mouth, then closed it again. She mumbled something close to it’s nice to meet you, then sat back down on her seat.
“Hey, East, I think my fiancée got starstruck,” Graham said, not unkindly. “Help a lady out? Anything embarrassing you could share about your companion over there?”
Oh, they were doing this now?
“Graham, don’t tease her,” Zoey immediately said. “I mean it, mister.”
“Can Easton tease her?” he countered. “They’re teammates. She said the ribbing was mutual.”
“Your ribbing gets mean.”
“Easton can tease me all he wants,” River told the other woman reassuringly. “Bring it on. When your life is regularly plastered over entertainment news, and rarely with stories that are true, you build up a thick skin.”
When Easton’s mouth twitched a little on one side, River knew he was willing to play the game.
“She did kidnap me,” Easton said.
“No, I didn’t.” River shook her head. “You offered me the ride. If anyone was kidnapped, it was me. You’ll have to do better than that.”
“She tried to poison me with the worst coffee I’ve ever had.”
“There’s no accounting for taste.” River stole one of his fries. “Come on. Hit me where I live.”
“She told me I had to go on a date with her tonight.”
Despite herself, River couldn’t keep the offense out of her voice. “I did not. I never once pressured you—and this is not a date.”
“Food, alcohol, your being mad at me. Feels like most of my dates. If you order a salad and steal all my fries, I might as well call it what it is.”
Graham leaned on the counter, stealing Zoey’s hand. “Sounds rough, man. I’d try to save you from her, but I’m a little busy at the moment.”
Busy not helping his customers, not flipping the delicious-smelling burgers on the grill, and not even considering the french fries that currently had River drooling.
“You’re not the mayor, are you?” she asked suspiciously.
“Of course not. That’s way too much work for a guy like me.”
River felt her eyes narrow. That had rolled off his tongue far too easily. “So…if I were to say I was going to film wherever I wanted, that wouldn’t be your problem, right?”
A flinch. Ha! She had him.
“You owe me a permit.”
“Sorry, darlin’. I’m fresh out.” He gave her a charming smile. “You should ask Ashtyn Lockett. She might be able to help.”
Right. River snorted as she watched Graham completely ignoring the next person in line. “How do you even stay in business?” This man’s customer service skills were the absolute worst.
“Not without a lack of trying for the opposite. Your food’s there on the counter.”
Jessie looked horrified. “That’s ours? Dude, why didn’t you say anything?” He grabbed the tray and hustled off to the table Bree had saved for them.
Food served, Graham turned his full attention back to Zoey. The pair were adorable in their inability to focus on anything but each other. Which gave Easton a clear third wheel type of presence.
Drinking his beer with the occasional measured swig, Easton was studiously avoiding interrupting the love story happening three feet away. River was still starving, and her burger was calling her from the table, but she lingered.
“So, that reporter…”
“I’ll make a call,” Easton offered. “But my gut says Tasha’s not going to write a very nice article about you.”
“Yeah, well, she wrote a not-very-nice article about you. I couldn’t give two craps about what she says about me. So, the reporter. Tasha. How long were you two together?”
Easton raised one eyebrow of his own.
“You’re a really tall, very strong man. Men like you do this thing with their shoulders when they talk to someone they’re attracted to. They kind of drop them, a subconscious effort to make themselves less large, less intimidating.”
The eyebrows furrowed together, giving him a confused, cuddly bearlike appearance. “I’m not seeing her,” he finally said.
“I wasn’t worried,” River replied. “You were only dropping one shoulder. You didn’t go both shoulders, so I figured you weren’t totally on board.”
Easton’s voice was a warm, low rumble, like rocks snuggling up to each other. “No, both feet are firmly in the ocean and swimming for shore.”
“To smoother waters.” River tilted her glass to him. Easton clinked his beer to her Growly Bear, then they both took a sip. “Yikes. What does he put in these?”
“Enough sugar to mask the consequences.”
“Don’t worry. I can hold my liquor.” Licking the sweetness off her lips, River added, “This isn’t actually a date, you know. I hate to disappoint you, but I don’t date people who might leave me on a mountain summit if they get their feelings hurt.”
“Are my feelings going to get hurt?” His eyes crinkled.
That voice. She could wrap herself up in that voice and cuddle on the couch all day in it.
“Let’s say that I don’t have a track record of happy exes in my past. They always expect one thing, and when they realize I’m nothing like what they imagined, it always goes downhill. Really, really fast.”
Now, why did she say that? Talking about her exes was not the best way to…whatever it was they were doing right now.
Easton leaned into the counter, taking a fry and popping it into his mouth. “I have a hard time
seeing that.”
“You can take the girl out of Wyoming, but you can’t take the Wyoming out of the girl. If I can outdrink you, outride you, and outshoot you, that’s fine. But if I can change a tire faster than you without calling roadside assistance, then you and I aren’t going to last long.”
Easton took a sip of his beer, then asked, “Is this you trying to warn me or warn me off?”
“I suppose that’s up to you.”
He gazed at her.
“What?”
“I was thinking I’m not sure I want to go up a mountain with you.”
“Oh really? Why’s that?”
Leaning in, he let his eyes drop to her lips, but only for the briefest moment. “Because I’m not sure I could leave you up there.”
Damn, that man could heat up a room with a single sentence. The tension between them wasn’t thick enough to cut with a knife.…it was melted chocolate. Warm and gooey and impossible to get off her skin. Dragging her closer as it threatened to solidify into something as sweet but dangerously real.
A little too real. River inhaled a deep, steadying breath.
“I should probably go eat my food,” she murmured.
The low, deep rumble was even better when his voice softened. “I should stay right here.”
River lifted her drink, trying not to look as giddy as she felt. It was the drink. Graham had poisoned her and made her flirt to the point of giddiness. Definitely the diner owner’s fault.
As she walked away, River could hear Graham mutter to Easton, “Hey, buddy. You were going both shoulders there. Just sayin’.”
“Shut up.”
Unable to keep her lips from curving, River stole one more appreciative look at Easton as she joined her crew.
Yeah. She’d noticed the shoulder thing too.
Chapter 6
The evening had been fun—as fun as it could be listening to people screeching into the karaoke machine. By the time they left, Graham’s expression had turned pained. River might’ve felt bad for him if he hadn’t been such a brat.
“It won’t last forever,” Easton promised, clapping a sympathetic hand on Graham’s shoulder.
Groaning into his hands, Graham wasn’t convinced. “Yeah, buddy. I think it will.”
When they left the diner, River drove, having been careful to set her drink aside after a couple of sips. Bree had drunk deep on her Growly Bear, and Jessie had been talking to the gummy bears at the bottom of his glass by the time they left for Easton’s place.
She’d expected a cabin in the woods, with a borderline serial killer vibe. Following Easton along a narrow gravel lane through his family’s property had done nothing to dissuade her of the notion. But when they arrived, she’d found a nice—okay, adorable—house, complete with flower boxes on the windows and a rocking chair on the porch. Inside, everything was clean and organized, from the books in alphabetical order on hand-carved cedar bookshelves to the dishes angled perfectly so on the drying rack.
It wasn’t even extra weirdly overorganized. He’d left a sweatshirt draped on the back of a chair, and he had a loose change jar next to his keys, with several pens and a couple of wadded up receipts along with the quarters and dimes.
“You’re disappointingly normal.” Bree sighed. “I was hoping for the heads of baby dolls lining the walls.”
“I was thinking the same thing.” River shared a grin with her friend. “Not even a meat hook in sight.”
“The meat hooks are in the barn.”
They both went still, heads swiveling to the man closing the door behind them. Easton winked at them.
Jessie flopped down on the closest recliner. “Well, meat hooks or not, I’m glad we’re not sleeping in the car again. I’m too old for that. I should’ve stopped at half the Growly Bear like you did. The ceiling is spinning. What was in that thing?”
“Graham’s sense of humor,” Easton informed them.
While Jessie made himself comfortable and Bree began fiddling with the handheld camera, Easton gave River a tour of the place. Fridge, check. Living room complete with spare pillows and blankets, check. Tiny bathroom with the white fluffy towels. Yep. Check, check, check.
Unfortunately, the towel situation was going to be a problem.
Not the number of towels available for use in Easton’s home or the quality of said towels. They were nice, bright white, and very fluffy. The problem was River kept imagining those towels wrapped around him, her mind nosediving straight to the gutter. Standing in Easton’s bathroom, River tried not to look directly at the towels in his muscled arms, all fluffy and soft and contrasting to his warm, tan skin.
“Here,” Easton told her, offering one. “There’s more in the cabinet for the others.”
“I don’t want it.” The words slipped out before River could keep them in. “I mean, it’s a towel. Nothing to see here. Move along.”
“How many of those Growly Bears did you drink again?” Easton’s eyes sparkled in the bathroom’s low lighting.
Sparkly eyes weren’t fair either. Neither was the proximity of this tiny bathroom, where a good breath could have her parts accidentally squished into his. And after watching him out of the corner of her eye all night at the Tourist Trap, squishing and squashing weren’t too far from her mind.
Especially if towels were involved.
“I’m going to shower.” River flapped her hand at him. “Shoo.”
“You can’t shoo me out of my own bathroom.” One side of his mouth twitched upward.
“Did you plan on staying?” River raised an eyebrow. The result was his neck flushing red as he muttered something inaudible, the door clicking shut behind him as he made his getaway.
After kicking Easton out of the bathroom, River took a quick shower. The water was hot and relaxing, even if her mind kept trying to cover Easton with chocolate sauce. The man had crawled into her head and was making a home there, a distraction to her even when he wasn’t present.
His shower curtain had cartoon rubber ducks on it. River thought that was funny for a mountaineer living in Alaska.
A knock on the door startled her out of her thoughts.
“It’s me,” Bree said through the door. “Can I brush my teeth? There’s a line forming out here.”
“Yeah, I’ll hurry it up.”
At the start of her career, River had done a handful of commercials and a couple of low-paying modeling gigs. Enough to be used to small spaces with multiple people getting ready. While Bree went about her flossing routine, River sadly ended her shower. Sneaking her hand outside the curtain to grab a towel, River wrapped herself up and sat on the edge of the tub.
“He’s awfully good-looking.” Bree glanced at River in the mirror, words muffled by her fingers and the floss. “I’m starting to think you like him.”
“If I did, it doesn’t matter.” With a sigh, River shook her head. “Besides, you know me. Tall and rugged always distracts me, but it’s the endgame I’m focused on.”
“Right.” Bree smirked at her.
River chewed her lower lip to keep from laughing. “Okay, I will admit that he’s gorgeous. And I kind of want to steal his hair tie and watch his hair flowing in the wind.”
Bree tossed her floss away, then flashed her teeth at the mirror to check her handiwork. “I want to steal his hair tie to see what’s under there. He might have a bald spot or a really big mole. Just saying. Now out. It’s my turn for a shower.”
River dressed quickly in soft yoga pants and a comfortable sweater, then padded through the unfamiliar house. She found Easton at the kitchen table, feet kicked up on a second chair as he combed through a stack of maps.
“There’s water in the fridge.” Easton indicated the counter behind him with a tilt of his head. “Glasses in the cupboard above the sink.”
Murmuring thanks, she poured herself
a glass and sat in the chair next to him. Peering at his papers, she tried to understand what she was looking at.
“What is that?” River leaned closer in inspection.
“A topographic map.”
“I know what a topographic map is. What’s this overlay?” She pointed to a feature on the map unlike any she was used to seeing, with several teardrop-shaped demarcations.
Easton dropped one foot down to the floor, turning so River could access the materials in front of him more readily. “It’s an avalanche map of the region.” With his index finger, he traced two of the shapes. “These are from last year. The third is from this spring.”
It was one thing to know these mountains had the risk of avalanches. It was another to have that risk right there in front of her. Maybe he caught on to the sudden increase in her heart rate, because Easton patted his hand down on the map, covering the forms from view.
“There’s not a mountain out there with snowpack that doesn’t have the potential of avalanches. Some mountain towns have controlled avalanches to keep the danger of a natural slide down. The resort does it.”
“Isn’t that dangerous for the town if something goes wrong?”
Easton shrugged. “I suppose they think it’s better to risk the townsfolk than risk losing a batch of tourists. Don’t know why. The tourists keep coming back.”
Not teasing him was impossible. “Ooh, harsh. Tourist party of three over here.”
“Yeah, but you’re not as annoying as most,” Easton said before adding, “You’re worse, actually.”
“You love us. We’re like cheap take-out food. Once you get used to us, you’ll always want us around.”
He chuckled, a lower, deeper rumble than his normal voice. “I’ll take your word for it.”
They shared an almost comfortable moment of silence. Almost. Easton cleared his throat.
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