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CHAPTER 1
JORDAN
Ipull into the expansive circular drive in front of the main hotel at Mountain Ridge Resort, getting a good long look at the famous lake, dotted with canoes and stand-up paddleboards and people in swimsuits.
Ainsley’s practically bouncing in the seat next to me. “We’re here!” she exclaims, a big grin on her face. “J-man, I’m so glad you’re with me for the next two weeks—it’s gonna be so awesome!”
I smile back at her, trying not to fall into those gorgeous brown eyes of hers. I’m happy to see her regain some of the sparkle she’s lost over the past year, as her engagement fell through and her great-aunt died. “I’m glad you invited me.”
(Not that I’m sorry she broke up with Jake the Jerk. She deserves better.)
“Aunt Nell said her family used to come here every other year when she was growing up,” Ainsley tells me. “They would stay in one of the front lawn cabins near the lake, and she’d share a bed with her cousins.”
I smile at the idea and park my car in the checking-in spot. “So where are we staying?”
“I don’t know,” Ainsley says, flipping her ponytail off her shoulder and opening her door. “The lawyer’s office arranged everything. Let’s go find out, shall we?”
I leave the suitcases in the car and follow her inside, enjoying the look of the mellow wood tones and natural stone in the lobby. Local artwork is displayed on the walls.
I’ve never been here before. Mountain Ridge Resort is only an hour and a half drive from Rivertown, but the place is generally known as a luxury resort with five-star dining and practically every outdoor activity you could wish for, other than snorkeling maybe. There’s even a spelunking club that regularly explores the natural caves in the area.
It’s fancy. A well-known movie was filmed here years ago, and it quickly became part of the lore of the resort, along with the finding of a skeleton on the bottom of the lake during one of its periods of disappearance—a resort guest who fell overboard from a boat in the early 1920s and whose body wasn’t found for eighty years.
Oh yeah, there’s the unusual behavior of the lake, too. Scientists from the nearby Virginia Tech university study the lake and its unusual geology; it apparently drains and refills from time to time.
It’s full now, and really beautiful.
Like Ainsley. I smile, turning back to her. She’s still at the front desk, looking worried and speaking animatedly with the clerk. I walk back up the hall toward her. “What’s going on?”
“They’re booked up,” Ainsley says to me, then turns back to the clerk. “But my lawyer’s office arranged all this, and they assured me we could have two rooms in the main lodge!”
The clerk gives us a sympathetic look. “We’re not completely booked,” he says cautiously, “but the lodgings that are unoccupied are some of our cabins. They generally sleep from four to eight people, and I’m not sure I can take up so much room for just two people. If you want the main lodge, you might have to reschedule.”
I shake my head. I have a continuing-education conference the Monday after this vacation.
“There’s a wedding this weekend,” the clerk, whose nametag reads Ted, explains. “And each of the weekends until Labor Day, I’m afraid. Wedding guests tend to fill up the main lodge.”
“How about the smallest cabin?” I suggest. “If there’s an additional charge, I’ll cover it.” I don’t earn a ton of money, but I’ve been careful to set aside some extra, and I just finished repaying my grad-school loans.
Ted checks his computer. “Looks like this rustic cabin is free until…lessee…actually, it’s not booked at all until the end of the month.” He looks up smiling. “Y’all are in luck! One bedroom with two queen beds, and the pricing on this cabin tracks with the same size room in the main lodge so there’s no additional charge. Do you want it?”
“Yes,” Ainsley and I say at the same time, then look at each other and laugh.
Ted gives us a printed map with our cabin circled on it, and a brochure for activities at the lodge. We go back outside into the sunshine, and I admire the way it falls on Ainsley’s dark hair.
“I’m relieved that worked out,” she says.
Me too. But when we get inside the tiny cabin and see that there’s only one room aside from the bathroom, I feel a qualm.
How am I going to stay in the same bedroom as my best friend, who doesn’t know that I’ve been in love with her forever?
How can I be this close to her and not do all the things I want to do to her?
