Page 2 of Sparked By the Mountain Man Hotshot

“Aspen gold. Everybody driving up the pass to look at trees. The whole town pretending it invented autumn.” I should stop talking. I keep talking. “I put it in the butter. Don’t tell the trees.”

“Reid,” he says.

He holds out a hand, and I realize we’re doing this. We’re introducing ourselves, the plates barely down.

“Reagan.”

I take his hand. It’s warm and rough and closes around mine like he’s checking whether I’m real. A current of something goes up my arm and lands somewhere I’m not going to think about in front of eight firefighters.

I let go first. I’m just being professional.

Really. I am.

“You’re new,” he says.

“I’m seasonal. There’s a difference. New means you’re staying.” I hear how that comes across a half-second too late and add, “That was more honest than I meant it to be. Enjoy your trout.”

One of the other men—big and grinning—leans across. “She always this fun, or is it the September feelings?”

“Ignore Noah,” Reid says, not looking away from me. “How long’s the season?”

Not a question, the way he says it. He’s checking that a door is locked.

“Until the lifts open, if I’m lucky. Until Thursday if I’m me.” Stop. Talking. “There’s one permanent spot. Chef gives it to whoever owns the room this week.”

“And who owns the room?”

“Historically? Not me.” I pick up an empty water glass I don’t need, because my hands have decided we’re leaving. “I’m very good at the trout, though. Put that in your report.”

“I don’t write reports.”

“Everybody writes reports. You have a clipboard face.”

That does it. The maybe-smile becomes a real one. It’s brief—gone before the others can catch him having it—but it does something to his whole face. For one second, he looks less like a monument and more like a man who’s just been caught.

“Reid.” Noah again, delighted. “She got you.”

“She did not get me.”

“You’re smiling. You don’t smile at soft opens. You inspect them.”

“I’m inspecting the trout.” Reid’s eyes haven’t left me. “It’s very good trout.”

Somewhere behind me, the kitchen door bangs and Marchetti’s voice cuts across the patio asking where his sous is. I am, technically, the answer, holding a water glass I stole and being inspected.

“That’s me,” I say. “The missing sous. Wanted in three states.”

“Reagan.” Reid says my name like he’s trying the weight of it, and I have the deeply inconvenient thought that I could get used to a man saying it exactly that carefully. “You’ll be here tomorrow.”

“Soft open runs all week. I’ll practically live here.”

“Good.” He picks up his fork. “Then I know where to find the trout.”

I walk back to my kitchen with a stolen glass and a pulse doing something athletic, and I tell myself it’s the adrenaline. It’s a table of eight, it’s the paint fumes. I tell myself he’s just a customer with a clipboard face.

Thursday’s coming. The permanent spot’s already spoken for, same as everything good—gone before my turn ever comes around.

I tell myself all of it, right up until I push through the door and catch Marchetti writing something next to my name. I can’t make out what he’s writing, but he wanted me to see that there was something to read.