Chapter 7
Boone
The rest of the group went on.
I’d told Jameson I was going to take her back to the trailhead.
It wasn’t ideal to split up the party, but we’d done it before when we had to. It was somewhat common for tourists to underestimate how wild the woods around here could be. And we’d messed up the difficulty ratings for our tour descriptions. What was an easy trail for us was brutal for some of the tourists. Updating the tour descriptions was at the top of the list of never-ending tasks.
But I wasn’t updating descriptions now. I was escorting this sexy vixen back to the trailhead.
Katie was sitting on the ground with her knees tugged up to her chest. “Now I’ll never see the reindeer.”
I chuckled at that and sat down too close to her. Then, I pulled one of the reindeer cookies out of my pack. “Here you go, Katie-Peach. One reindeer sighting for you.”
She looked at the cookie curiously and watched me eat mine. Then she took her eyes off me and gulped it down as though she were ravenous.
“Let me tell you a little secret, Katie. There are no reindeer. It’s just the cookies. Jameson’s mom bakes them for us.”
Her eyes lit up at the joke. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. And I’m a pretty raggedy-ass Santa. We’re just two guys trying to make a go of it. A friend of ours, Silas, has a wife who runs our website. Abby tends to make everything sound more appealing than it really is. This is an easy trail to us. Sorry if you feel misled.”
She shook her head. “No, your tour’s great. I’m the one who couldn’t keep up. Although maybe you could update the website to say something aboutmountainclimbing. That definitely wasn’t in the description.”
I laughed at that. “Hon, this wasn’t mountain climbing. This is what you call a rock scramble.”
She furrowed her brow. “You’re making that up.”
“Naw. We’d never take unskilled tourists on arealclimb. This is what you call a class two scramble. No ropes needed.”
“Well, it felt like I was holding on to the side of the mountain for dear life.”
“It might have felt that way. But look at it now. It’s not so steep. See? That’s the spot where you got stuck.”
She looked back up at the rock in the direction I was pointing.
“Now track your eyes a few feet to the left. See that? You were almost there.”
Katie let out a deep sigh. “You’re right. I wassoclose.”
I couldn’t help myself. I reached over and took her hand, squeezing it. “That’s all right. If you ever come back to the Ozarks again, I’ll take you to Snowflake Canyon. But maybe we can do it in better weather without snow on the ground. And with actual hiking boots on your feet.”
She met my eyes, and I got lost in them for a moment. Katie was captivating, even when she was vulnerable, like right now. Maybe even more so because of it.
“You’d really let me come back out on one of your hikes?”
“Hell, yeah. If you lived around here, we could go next weekend.”
She gave me a shy smile. “I couldn’t afford your rates, Boone.”
Shaking my head, I told her, “I’m not talking about as a client. I meant as… a friend.”
I watched as her breath caught in her throat. Pretty pink lips parted while she thought about what I’d just said.
Then she whispered, almost so quietly I could hardly hear it. “I’d like that.”
But even as a warm glow filled my chest, I realized how unrealistic I was being. I was trying to start something with a tourist who livedthreestates away.
