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Was she accepting applications? And if the answer to that pressing question was yes, then what kind of timeline was she looking at? Not long. She didn’t have room for long. If all went well, she’d be headed back to New York soon, to the publishing world, where she would, hopefully, work daily with the kind of authors who shaped her ideas of what romance looked like.
Milly lived with her nose between the pages of a book or a spreadsheet, rarely looking up long enough to take chances. Then again, the last chance she’d taken on love left her with a broken heart. At a time when she’d needed support and companionship, she’d been hung out to dry.
“And what makes you a good candidate?” she asked.
He cleared his throat and leaned in; his mouth was so close she could feel his breath skate down her neck. “I guess you’ll have to interview me. But I must warn you, I excel in practical application.”
Seconds ticked away as he waited for her to respond and, well, she had nothing to explain away what was transpiring between them. It was electric and heady, and nothing like she’d ever felt before. Maybe it was because he was showing interest or maybe it was timing—but this moment felt different than the other times they’d spent together over the past couple of months. Not that they’d spent more than a few minutes in the same room, or even alone. While she worked for the lodge, she was a consultant who worked most of the time from home, not an employee with an office, so she rarely saw him. But he’d never looked at her the way he was right then.
“Are you watching this?” Kat asked, smacking Milly’s arm. That’s when Milly realized she’d been staring at Lucas’s mouth.
He grinned. “Like I said, practical application.”
“Hello? Earth to Milly!” Kat said. “Pay attention or you’ll miss it.”
Milly dragged her gaze to Kat. “You’re really going to do it?”
“A dare is a dare, even if it is with Big Bad Lawman.” Then her friend locked her hands behind her back and dropped to her knees in front of Nolan.
Nolan didn’t even budge, except to put his hands on his hips, but Milly noticed that the “Big Bad Lawman” was actually blushing. “Is this some kind of joke?”
“No joke. A dare,” Kat said. “I have to take your belt off. With my teeth. You game?”
“Should we time it?” His left eyebrow rose a fraction. “Say, sixty seconds?”
“Thirty and the next round is on you.”
“Deal.”
Gemma took out her phone and pulled up the timer app. “Thirty seconds … and … go!” Her finger crashed down on the Start button.
Kat went to work, expertly unfastening the buckle and then yanking hard with her teeth. The bar went silent as everyone watched with rapt attention. Kat took her dares seriously, so it wasn’t a surprise that when she was finished, she triumphantly lifted her hands in the air like a goal post, belt still hanging from her lips. “Well?” She looked at Gemma expectantly.
“Eighteen seconds,” Gemma said.
“Take that.” She threw down the belt like a football in the end zone, then stood and puffed her chest out. Nolan laughed, and the crowd erupted in cheers, as if she’d just won a gold medal. Kat grabbed his face and puckered her lips, giving Nolan a big smack of a kiss. Nolan stood there, stock still as if trying to compute what was happening. “Anyone ever tell you that you kiss like a corpse? You need to work on that.”
Before he could respond, Kat was already onto her next thought. “Hey, Tim. The next round is on the big guy here!”
“Keep your horse off my property or I’ll be calling the glue factory come morning,” Nolan said, and then walked off, refastening his belt without a backward glance.
“See ya, Milly,” Lucas said and took a seat at the other end of the bar, where it looked as if he was joining a group of friends.
She expected her friends to give her a hard time, but when she looked back at them, they were staring down at the flip side of Kat’s note. “What does it say?” she asked.
“She set up a college fund for Tessa,” Kat said in disbelief. “Why would she do that?”
“Because she loved you. And you love Tessa,” Milly said, referring to Kat’s teenaged sister. Kat was practically raising Tessa after their grandpa passed a few years back. Kat moved home to help their dad with Tessa. Kat’s mom was, well, unreliable, unaccountable, and unfit to be a mom and her dad was a cross-country truck driver who left Tessa alone most of the time. Which was why Tessa spent a lot of her time at Kat’s. In fact, Kat was in the process of trying to gain custody of her sister. “She knew you were stressed about her college fund and wanted to help.”
Kat tilted her head back and blinked up at the ceiling.
“Are you crying?” Gemma asked.
“You know I don’t cry. It’s just allergies.” Kat wiped her face. “Your turn, Mills.”
Milly knew about the start-up money and college fund, but she had no idea what her letter included.
“Okay, here goes nothing.” Giving the urn a gentle glance, she opened her note and cleared the emotion from her throat. “I dare you to do something for you and not what people expect you to do. Inside our hidey hole is a first-class ticket to anywhere you want to go. Chase happy.”
