He sat up straighter and drank his soda water before belching loudly to beat mine. “I am hot, aren’t I?”
I chuckled with a shake of my head. While I had a couple ofinches on Pace, there was no doubt he had me beat in the muscle department. Being a firefighter came with the additional superpower of automatically being perceived as attractive. I carefully curated my loner, woodsman reputation and wasn’t planning on changing that anytime soon.
“I’ve inflated your Thanksgiving float-sized ego even more,” I said.
“There’s always room for growth.” He set down his empty can and dusted his hands. “Now that we’ve sufficiently stroked each other’s egos, are you going to tell me if you’ve advertised the guesthouse for rent yet?”
I made an annoyed exhalation.
“Levi, my man. You said you were going to do it last month. You’re bleeding money. Cozy Creek Inn and the Lodge are always booked now, even in the off-season.”
“I don’t care?—”
“I know. Money doesn’t matter to you and your artistic soul. Unfortunately, even you are constrained by the realities of our capitalist society.”
“But—” I smacked my mouth, blinking slowly at his sarcasm, annoyed at being mocked. “I did post it. Last month, like I said I would,” I finished.
He widened his eyes and looked over the twenty yards to the one-bedroom guest home, as though expecting it to be occupied. “Good man. Any bites?”
“Not yet,” I said. I didn’t follow his gaze to the house.
“What?” He pulled out his phone from his coat pocket andunlocked it in one smooth motion. “That’s crazy. Every other rental around here is booked out as far as they open their calendars.” He typed on his screen. “Where are you? I don’t see your listing.”
I sighed. I reached back and grabbed my phone from the rocking chair. “Here.”
After pulling up the site, I handed it to him. As he read, his hopeful, good-natured smile melted off his face.
When he handed me back my phone, he took off his hat again to mess with his hair. “You don’t want to rent this place, do you?” he asked.
“What are you talking about?” I squinted at the ground, feeling defensive.
“I get your whole vibe is grumpy mountain man, and I’m not trying to strip you of that finely tuned aesthetic, but maybe, and just hear me out, this ad is slightly off-putting.”
“The price is more than reasonable,” I defended.
“Sure,” he dragged out the word. “But it’s the mildly threatening undertone that has me concerned.” He looked back at the phone resting on the step between us. “Wait, no. Not mildly. There’s an actual threat in there.” He ran a hand over his chin.
“I can’t have some thin-skinned city dweller coming up here thinking this is going to be a cute pic-to-gram moment or whatever. Hashtag mountains.” I crossed my arms as heat burned up my neck.
His head dropped to his hands. “Oh my God,” he mumbled in his palms.
You are a grumpy ass.
Unthinkingly, I glanced at the guesthouse shrouded in cold darkness as a shiver of guilt ran through me. I pushed her voice away and instead dug some dirt from under my nail.
Composing himself, Pace asked, “How many inquiries have you had?”
I grumbled.
“I’m going to take that as none.”
“Not my fault people can’t handle Colorado conditions.”
“Okay. Here’s what we’ll do. I’m gonna make a few changes. Things like instead of the hostile tone, say something like ‘cozy one-bedroom home located in the dense and wild Rockies and precautions should be taken to avoid danger.’”
I grumbled, not even bothering to hide my annoyance anymore. Why should I have to sugarcoat it?
But on and on Pace went until he’d completely rewritten the listing. All that remained the same was the asking price.
