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But by the time I reach their table, Trent’s halfway back to the buffet. We’re two ships passing in the yoga-retreat-center dining area. I plop down across from Maggie, and she tents her brow.
“Whoa. What happened to you? And where were you and Cole last night? Everyone was out by the fire except you two…”
Her eyes travel in a circle around my head, and I know she’s taking in my unusually-awful-looking hair.
I pat my tangled, damp curls. “Um, we did hang out by a fire, it just wasn’t here.”
“Where, then?”
“Out, like, two hours from here on foot. We were out there hiking, trying to find Blue—”
“The goat?”
“Yeah, the goat. Blue. He chewed a hole through our yurt and ran off, and we really wanted to find him before—”
“We?”
“We. Cole and I.”
She gets a smirky look as she lifts her glass of smoothie and draws in a long sip.
I know she’s waiting for an explanation for why that last sentence just rolled right off the tip of my tongue.
But I’m more interested in her and Trent right now.
Has Trent’s attitude changed, about Beryl?
And about me?
She won’t let me pester her with questions on that front until I do some explaining, though. I can see it in the way she’s pursing her lips, studying me.
My hand inches up and I nervously rake through my damp locks again.
“Anyway, we didn’t find Blue, but we had to spend the night out there. Cole built a fire, and it actually wasn’t that bad being out there. We saw the sun come up this morning.”
I twist around and crane my neck, trying to get a view of the other tables.
“Have you seen him lately?” I scan the room, but I still don’t see him, so I swivel back around to face Maggie. “We skipped the yoga class this morning, whatever it was.”
“Hatha flow. It was incredible.” She lets loose a happy sigh.
“Nice. I was so tired, I totally crashed. And when I woke up from my nap, Cole wasn’t around.”
“Weird,” she says. “I went down to my car before class started to grab my sandals, and his truck wasn’t there.”
I pinch my brows together. “Really? Thatisweird. Where would he go? Everything’s here.”
I mean, noteverything. There’s no bacon here on Sunrise Ranch.
No sausage patties, or beer, or televisions showing pro-fly fishers waving their poles around.
Or, maybe he snuck off to go check his email like I did yesterday. I turn around again to do another scan, hopeful he’s appeared in the twenty seconds since I last looked.
“I know he’s in the middle of trying to lock down a new helicopter lease,” I say, as I catalog the same faces. Glasses guy. Girl with the pixie cut. Tall woman with kinky black hair. Short guy…
I spot Trent over by the lunch buffet, too, heaping salad greens onto his plate.
No Cole, though.
