Page 40

He wouldn’t meet my eyes.

When we were going over the excursions he had planned today, he kept looking at my hands, then his clipboard, and finally out of the window behind my desk.

Everything except me was worth his full attention and the sting that caused was one I wasn’t prepared for. Especially since I couldn’t think of anything I’d done wrong.

This couldn’t be about that fucking cat. He could bring her home tonight if he just opened his mouth and talked to me.

All I had gotten so far today was a few grunts of agreement before he moved on, usually to a completely opposite side of the resort.

Every time frustration coiled in my chest, making it tight, I tried to remember True’s words.

Maybe he was processing something and wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.

But in all the twenty years we’d been friends, he’d never been cold to me once.

Noah was the walking definition of sunshine. I didn’t know how to cope with him being any other way. All I wanted to do was make it right, but he wouldn’t tell me what was wrong, so there was nothing to fix.

Now, it was the end of the day and I’d tracked him down in the back area of the resort. The quiet place where he usually chopped wood for the fireplaces in winter and worked on whatever he felt like.

He had free rein over his responsibilities here and I trusted him to do whatever was best for the resort. Our friendship had created a level of trust that I didn’t have with many other people. He loved this place as much as I did, so whether he was leading excursions, teaching a ski lesson, or filling in at the gift shop, I knew things were handled and done right the first time.

“Hey, I’m heading out. Did you get True’s text about dinner?” Of course I knew he’d seen the text, I’d seen him react to it at 10AM when she sent it. It was 6 now, but what the fuck else was I supposed to say? He’d reduced me to small talk in less than twenty-four hours.

“It’s just us tonight.”

It might have been my imagination, but I swear he flinched atjust us tonight.

Noah drew his bottom lip into his mouth and I did a double take at the absence of his golds.

Then he looked up from the table saw separating us and nodded. “Um, I’ma stay a little while longer and work on True’s desk. Then I’ll grab something to eat from the dining hall before I come home. So you ain’t gotta cook anything for me.”

In silence, I watched him pull a pencil from his tool belt and mark something on the wood.

“Oh, aight. Ima head to Lucky’s and have a drink. I’ll catch up with you later.”

“Drive safe,” he muttered after my departure, his voice fading as soon as he turned the power tool back on. I walked back through the resort and out to the parking lot with a stunned frown on my face.

What the fuck was going on?

When I reached my truck, Noah’s identical Denali was parked beside it. The only difference was my matte paint job compared to his glossy finish. That and the cat draped across his hood, like she was lounging in the lap of luxury.

The cat meowed and observed me with a squinted stare as if I was intruding on her “me time.”

“Not now, Duchess.”

When she trilled at me again, I hopped in my driver’s seat and started the engine. I had enough on my plate without adding bickering with a damn cat to the list.

Instead of going for the beer I normally got at Lucky’s, I asked Trinity for a neat bourbon as soon as I sat down.

There was a bar at Wolfe Summit, but I liked coming here to put distance between myself and work.

The people watching was more entertaining at Lucky’s too. But tonight, all I could focus on was the heat of this liquor burning my chest.

That didn’t mean I was oblivious to the woman on my right, throwing hints and leaning into me every chance she got.

Her name was Treasure, if I remembered correctly and she’d introduced herself to me the second I sat down.

“What are you getting into after this, handsome?” she purred suggestively, her long nails running along the arm of my navy, tweed suit jacket.