Page 27 of Snowed In with her Mountain Men
CAMRYN
“Meeting?” Ryder squinted, looking more closely at the fine-tip wording. “Meeting for what?”
He was the last to arrive in the kitchen, and he was fifteen minutes late. Not that it mattered. He hadn’t even seen the message until now. The others had come on time, but I seriously doubted they even noticed the tiny, blocked out print that I’d carefully scrawled beneath it.
“Why the hell is it written so small?” he complained.
“Because I wrote it in permanent marker,” I answered him, cracking the cap off a bottle, “so none of you could rub it out.”
He blinked, then stared in pleasant shock at my offering.
“Where’d you get that?”
“Shut up and take it already.”
I’d plied each of them with their favorite beer, fresh from the distributor I discovered at the far end of town.
I’d had to drive all the way to the bottom tip of Crescent Springs to get it, but I wanted this to go well.
I needed them happy, and open, and their walls down. In short, I wanted answers.
“So what exactly is this ‘house meeting’ about?” grinned Oakley.
With the tip of my finger, I pointed out the tiny, near-microscopic text beneath my announcement.
“House Meeting, tonight, 9pm,” I read aloud. “To reveal why you boys are digging and sifting every square inch of dirt surrounding the cabin.”
They looked at each other, the same way they had last time. Eventually, Oakley spoke up.
“We’re not at liberty to discuss that.”
“Reveal,” I read again, pointing to my text. “Not discuss. Reveal.”
Once more the kitchen fell silent, and I looked them over one by one.
Oakley was still in his Deputy’s uniform, looking hot as hell.
Ryder was fresh from the slopes, where I’d learned he taught snowboard lessons at two different local resorts.
He did this intermittently, when not making house calls to fix plumbing and heating systems up and down the mountain, for people who normally couldn’t be reached by anything other than the Marauder.
Jaxon however, had spent the day in his room drawing, sketching, even painting. I’d only been in there for our nighttime hookups, but today I’d walked in during the daylight hour and was blown away by the scope of his creativity. That is, until he promptly threw me out.
“Look, I’m giving up my ass for you boys,” I smirked, turning sideways to show off the goods. “You’ll enjoy the exhilarating, taboo thrill of being the first to plow me back there. The least you can do is let me in on your little secret.”
More silence. More shared looks.
“Plow you, huh?” Ryder’s eyes were all lit up.
“ Gently plow me,” I sighed, making a slow patting motion with one hand. “Is that really all you heard just now?”
“Look, it’s your ass ,” he shrugged. “Not my fault you got me hooked on it.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. He was being cute, of course. But I needed to keep them on track.
“Look, every night you guys come home and go right back outside,” I said. “You dig for hours. You sift dirt. You come in filthy and dirty and frozen to the bone.”
“So?”
“So if you tell me what you’re looking for out there, maybe I could help you find it.”
The kitchen fell silent again. Apparently, they were holding strong. Their solidarity only deepened my curiosity, as I wondered what could possibly be so important that—
“Diamonds.”
The word came from Jaxon, who was, of course, the last person I expected to hear from. Oakley and Ryder shared my sentiment, by their looks of absolute incredulity.
“We’re looking for diamonds,” he said again. “Buried at the base of a tree.”
All I could do was blink. “Which tree?”
He smirked back at me and shrugged his shoulders.
“You mean you don’t know?”
Jaxon’s chair creaked as he shifted his great weight. He sighed heavily.
“If we did, would we be tearing out every tree around the cabin?”
I found my usual seat and sat down. His answer had left me completely perplexed. That the answer had come from him, was even more unexpected.
“We really don’t know what we’re looking for,” Jaxon went on, “other than diamonds. Very expensive, very valuable, uncut stones. They could be in a bag, or a container, or a box. Or they could be loose,” he smiled wearily, “and we could be looking for a handful of tiny, crystal clear jewels in a whole ocean of ice and snow.”
Diamonds. Holy shit. Of all the things he could’ve said.
“Who buried them?” I asked.
Again the boys fell silent. But the answer wasn’t far off.
“It was Sarge, wasn’t it?”
Jaxon’s beard twitched. Eventually, he nodded.
“How do you know they were buried at the base of a tree?”
“That’s a long story,” Ryder spoke up. He tilted his beer back and looked at me pointedly. “Maybe for another time.”
I stared back at him for a moment, then nodded. There were times to pry, times to press. But there were also times to take your winnings and leave.
“Alright then,” I nodded, reaching for my own drink. Leaning back, I kicked my feet up on the chair directly across from me.
“Which one of you is going to get me a shovel?”