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I mean, I know he noticed, but he ignored me.
And since then he's spent the last ten years pretending I don't exist. The bastard.
He got married some years ago, but it didn't take, and I can't say I was all that sorry. Except that Holt Woods is determinedly single these days. Doesn't date. Doesn't really socialize much, except with other rangers. Spends his free time in his cabin up on Big Horn Ridge doing nothing but working out, apparently, because under that plaid button-down is a solid stack of muscle.
Damn. I can still feel the way he looked at me when I was naked getting out of the lake, and it still hits me low in the belly.
We lock eyes, and the impact of Holt's gaze makes me lose my breath. I have to look away while I'm reaching into the ice to grab a couple of bottled Michelobs for an order.
"You okay?" Billy asks me.
"Sure." My voice is almost steady, as my sister Sammi approaches the bar, with her sweetie's arm around her waist.
"Hey, Sage," she says, her sunny smile directed right at me. "I hope you don't mind that we came here for beers and snacks."
"Not at all," I say. "Hi, Zane. What do you guys want? Need a menu for the snacks?"
"We'll want an order of nachos, an order of potato skins, and an order of onion rings," Zane says. "And a round of--what do you think, Samantha, maybe IPAs?"
She wrinkles her nose. "I don't want beer, and I know Gabi wants a margarita. Can I just have a lemonade, Sage?"
"Of course." I send the food order to the kitchen and pull out three bottles of locally brewed pale ale, then pour my sister a glass of the fresh-made lemonade we keep on hand all summer. "Sure you don't want a shot of vodka in it?" I ask, mixing a margarita for the tray.
She shakes her head, then looks up at Zane with a goofy, dreamy expression that makes my heart turn over. My baby sister is inluuuuuuuvvvv.
But it looks like Zane is, too, because he's giving her the same goofy, dreamy face back. I hand Zane the tray. "Your server will bring your food when it's ready. Want me to start a tab for you?"
"Cool," he says, still staring into Sammi's eyes.
I mean, love sure looks goofy as hell on other people, but I'm starting to believe that it exists.
Two minutes later, Holt Woods is standing at the bar, looking like a human-shaped mountain with dark eyes and lips so full you automatically think about kissing them. Once again my breath deserts me. "Evening," he says to me before I can get enough air to greet him.
CHAPTER TWO
HOLT
"You're coming to the bar with us, right?" my colleague Clint Dumont says, pointing at me. "Zane will be there, and the girls."
"I don't have to get dressed up, do I?"
"Hell, no. It's just Boots 'N' Beer. You can wear lederhosen, for all I care."
I roll my eyes, but I agree to meet them there and stay for at least a drink or two, and a best-of-three darts challenge.
I almost never go out. Not my thing, not anymore. When we were dating, Lisa and I used to go out on Saturday nights. The first year we were married it got to where she was hitting the bar every night, with or without me, and saying things like she thought being married would fix things--would fix her--but it hadn't. She wouldn't say why she needed fixing, either. The second year, it got to where she was staying drunk most of the day. She wouldn't consider counseling. She wouldn't consider therapy. She lost her job and lied to me about it.
I finally realized that she was never going to sober up if I kept pretending everything was okay. I filed for divorce after three years of marriage. For a long time, I was really angry that she wasn't able to face her demons, much less tell me what caused them. And then I was just...down, I guess. Sad.
And not ready to face the idea of dating again. Not when Lisa's alcohol addiction seemed to come out of the blue. It's so hard to really know people.
Except if you've known them a long time, maybe.
Take my buddy Clint. He's a little younger than I am, and he's a solid park ranger. Really cares about the lake's health. Got burned by love, like me. Unlike me, he dealt with it by becoming a serial dater. A playboy. And then he met Gabi, and fell hard--hard enough to commit to her within bare weeks. Surprising? Not to me. He was waiting for the right woman; he just didn't know how to deal with her until she told him she needed him to be all in.
Then he was all in. But he's always been that kind of guy, anyway. When you grow up in a small town, you know people and you know how they're likely to behave.
So here I am at Boots 'N' Beer, mildly cursing the music and the neon holiday lights still strung up around the bar, and the noise of patrons who are already drunk. Then I see who's tending bar, and my stomach does this weird swoop.
