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But even as she started to fall asleep content and sated, she knew that all good things had to come to an end.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The small plow rumbled towards the lodge from a nearby shed, turned around in the circular driveway and headed down the private mountain lane that led to the main road. Huge mounds of snow were forced far enough aside that the guests of the Red Hills Resort would finally be able to get off of the side of the mountain.
Natalie watched it from her bedroom window with an equal mixture of relief and sadness.
Well, she told herself it was an equal measure anyway. In reality, she wasn’t quite sure.
In a few days, Natalie was due to start her new job, a job she’d been looking forward to, on the island of Elysium. She’d been excited at the prospect of living on a tropical Caribbean Island and embarking on this latest chapter of her life.
Except these last few days had taken everything Natalie thought she knew and had thrown it all in the air.
Because she’d met Jared.
And she’d fallen in love.
And Elysium was two thousand miles away from where Jared’s own obligations lay, give or take a couple hundred miles.
But perhaps none of that really mattered at all. It wasn’t like they’d discussed the future. Maybe they didn’t have one and it was all wishful thinking on her part.
It was unlike Natalie to be melancholy, but that’s how she felt right now. The truth was, neither of them had expected to form a relationship. That had come completely out of the blue.
Could be there was nothing to discuss.
Perhaps Jared thought of her as nothing more than an enjoyable interlude; one submissive of the many he was sure to meet as he fulfilled his role as the Dungeon Master of Red Hills Resort.
It felt like so much more than that to Natalie, though.
Could she really be reading it so wrong?
She was young, it was true; but Natalie didn’t think she was prone to unrealistic flights of fancy.
She knew they both had obligations. She understood that things were likely to be challenging. She didn’t expect it to be a bed of roses.
But she did want it to be.
To become something more than just a passing fancy, a holiday fling, or simply a prolonged play date, dictated by circumstance.
Neither had Natalie ever experienced any kind of crisis of confidence. But right now, she felt unaccountably off balance; anxious about what the immediate future - as in the next sixty minutes - might reveal.
She wasn’t used to feeling this vulnerable, and she knew it was all because of Jared. He alone had the ability to turn her life upside down with just a few words.
It was an uncomfortable feeling.
There was a knock on the door of her suite, and Natalie’s pulse kicked into high gear at the thought that it might be him.
Logically, she knew it wasn’t, of course. She’d given him the second of the two key cards she’d been allocated when Jessie, the receptionist, had initially mistaken Natalie and her brother as a couple. And she knew he’d gone out to help Tobias.
Which meant it was most likely Nathan.
Natalie sighed and berated herself as she crossed to open the door, trying not to show her disappointment when it was indeed her twin who stood on the other side.
“Hey,” he greeted, pushing off the doorframe where he was lounging and following her into the room. “Are you packed? I just got a message to say our transport will be here within the hour. And Luca’s got his jet on standby for us at Pond’s Field airport, forty minutes away, so we can make up a bit of lost time instead of having to drive all the way to Denver International.”
“Yeah, I’m almost done,” Natalie replied, trying for a cheerfulness she was far from feeling.
Her brother eyed her critically, and Natalie wondered what her expression revealed as she did her best to push away the pang that tightened her chest.
