Aisha stared up the tree—way, way up—and despite not normally having any fear of heights, the backs of her knees wobbled, and her stomach turned to jelly. Jase had already removed as many of the branches as he could reach from the ground—which explained the mountains of sap-dripping limbs she’d had to maneuver around to find him. Missing its lower branches did nothing to make the tree look less formidable, however. If anything, the rough knobs and patches of angry pink flesh showing where bark had been sliced away only made the monster seem taller and scarier. Jase wasn’t really going to climb to the top of that. Was he?
She turned back to Jase, so thoroughly shocked that she forgot to be guarded and on the offensive. “You’re kidding me, right?”
He glanced up from where he was sitting on the fresh stump of a much smaller tree, fastening wicked-looking spikes to his boots with a series of straps and buckles. “What’s to kid about? It’s gotta come down.”
“And so you’re going to climb it, just like that—with a chainsaw?”
Jase nodded like it was perfectly normal behavior. He stood, flexed his feet, then stooped to readjust his boots. “Yeah. It’s too close to Chinook cabin, and too tall to fall in one swoop. It needs to come down in pieces, so it won’t take out the building—or snag any nearby trees and knock them onto other cabins or what have you.”
“And I’m . . . spotting for you. Which basically means . . . watching in case you fall from a huge tree, armed with a running chainsaw.”
Jase gave each strap another firm tug, rocked back and forth a bit, and finally seemed satisfied by how they felt. Maybe for the first time since they met, he didn’t look slightly past her or away when he talked to her. He met her gaze directly and Aisha was unhappily hit with a zinging sensation. He had the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen, though sexy was also an incredibly fitting adjective. Heavy lidded with lovely long lashes and the most interesting irises—cool gray-blue, with brown rings at their outer edge. He seemed surprised by the eye contact too but didn’t break it. Just gave a slow smile.
“Well, hopefully, I’ll manage to toss the saw if I start coming down—so it won’t land on top of me. If I yell ‘heads up,’ run.”
“You’ve got to be—”
“Yeah,” he agreed quickly, ducking his head and averting his eyes again with the shyness she was more used to from him. “I’m kidding. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry. I’ve done this a lot. You’re really just here for Callum’s peace of mind—but if I do happen to fall, don’t bother with the ambulance. Just call the coroner right off the bat.”
“Not funny.”
But it kind of was. They both smiled a little and Aisha felt . . . weird.
As Jase harnessed himself to the tree, sunk his spikes into the trunk, and started to climb, any humor about how nuts he was disappeared. “Please be careful,” she called earnestly.
He looked over his shoulder and for half a second seemed touched by her concern. Then he grinned in a surprisingly cocky way. “Careful’s for pussies.”
So he was just your typical arrogant guy after all. His obliviousness to the dangers of his work, and his casual use of a word she hated made Aisha irritable again—a state she was far more comfortable with, regarding him. It was a bit ironic though, to find herself on firm ground once more, as he moved steadily away from it.
She traversed the distance they’d agreed on, about two hundred feet or so, far out of the range of where any of the sections might fall, or so they hoped. Then turned and watched him scurry up the tree, like he wasn’t carrying a saw that was probably a third of his bodyweight, while wearing the world’s heaviest steel-toed boots, and cumbersome leather pants.
That first time she’d laid eyes on Jase, she’d been awestruck by his height and his superhero physique, but now she got it. He wasn’t born with it, or not all of it, at least. He was built from the crazy amount of physical work he did for his living—so fit that he made even the most strenuous tasks look effortless.
The heavy metal buzz of the saw pulsed in her blood, and the crash of newly shorn tree branches hitting the ground reverberated through her. Every five or ten branches, depending on the size, Jase climbed down and bucked the limbs into more manageable pieces. Then they worked together to move the sections that would be cut for firewood into a growing pile and threw the bushy needled boughs into huge stacks that would eventually be burned.
“You don’t have to help—” Jase started to say before they moved the first batch, but she’d just rolled her eyes and put on her leather work gloves.
“Don’t be dumb. It’s going to be a long day as it is. I’m not getting paid to sit and watch you.” But she sort of was.
It was heavy work and Jase wanted the tree down well before the afternoon light started to fade, so they didn’t chat much. Aisha wasn’t sure what she’d have said in terms of small talk, anyway. She was impressed by how hard he worked, and there was no way it was just because he was being chaperoned by the boss’s niece. A person couldn’t fake the kind of effort he was putting in and wouldn’t have the ability and stamina he had if today was a one off, for show.
At one point, he paused to take a long drink from a water bottle, then offered it to her. As she took a greedy slurp, he wiped his brow with his forearm and said, with admiration that seemed sincere—and was unwittingly exactly the kind of compliment, maybe the only kind of compliment, that made Aisha go weak in the knees—“You’re a friggen machine, hey?”
“Not like you though.” She meant it. He nodded like he appreciated the returned compliment as much as she’d appreciated his original one.
Finally, after a great deal of effort, there it was: two-hundred and fifty feet of branchless tree, waving like a blade of long grass in the light breeze now that its limbs weren’t holding it steady. It looked impossibly skinny at the top.
“Here goes nothing. Should be no problem, but make sure you stay back like we talked about.”
Aisha looked up at the sky—or, rather, at the extremely thick cloud cover, moody and wearing a dozen shades of gray. “Do you have time? It still gets dark pretty early these days.” Jase glanced at his watch. “Plenty of time. This is the fun—and fast—part.”
Aisha had to remind herself to breathe as she watched Jase make his final ascent. The tree bounced and swayed with his weight, especially as he neared the top, and her insides did similar.
And then, with a terrifically loud crack, the first segment thwomped to the ground. Jase descended part way and cut again. And repeat, repeat, repeat—until Aisha lost count of how many sections he’d cut. It was crazy how quickly the massive tree came down. Soon there was nothing left but a pile of logs in eight to ten foot lengths, and Jase was back on the ground, setting his saw down, and pulling off his hard hat. His shaved head gleamed with sweat and he pressed his fists into his lower lumbar and leaned back, stretching his overworked spine.
“I’m hungry from the feet up—but I’m also so beat that skipping food and going straight to bed is equally tempting.”
“Flattering,” Aisha quipped before she could stop herself, “but I hardly know you.”
Jase’s eyes dropped and his skin deepened to a rosy-plum hue that was already growing familiar to Aisha. She instantly felt bad for teasing him. Sometimes she definitely had too much of Sam in her for her own liking. Also, she’d changed her mind about her earlier snide observation that he was “your typical arrogant guy.” The only thing he seemed confident about was his ability to work—and fair enough. His high opinion there was obviously well-deserved. In every other aspect of life, he seemed almost painfully shy—though looking the way he did, she couldn’t understand why. He must be used to having women all over him in droves.
“I’m so sorry. I was only joking. I’m not—” She stalled mid-apology when Jase shrugged, and his slow grin appeared again.
“So not bed, perhaps, but maybe want to meet up in the dining hall later?”
A stupid tingle went through Aisha at the possibility the word “perhaps” suggested. This was how bad she was at flirting now. A man could cringe at her joke and kindly but firmly turn her down and she’d still be titillated.
“I don’t think so. I want to have a quiet night in with Mo.”
“Sounds nice.” Jase sounded like he meant it, which was refreshing. So often people her age said stupid stuff about her being tied down. He started gathering his gear. Aisha, for reasons she didn’t want to overthink, lingered too, reluctant to see the productive day come to an end. Someone in one of the nearby cabins must’ve started a fire in their woodstove because the cozy scent of burning cedar filled the chilling air, mingling with the sharp piney scent of their labor. The sun was just starting to set, and Aisha wished she had a thermos of hot chocolate or something to offer Jase and help tide him over until Jo served dinner.
Jase tossed his boots and the metal spikes he called “climbers” into the back of Jo’s pickup, which she’d volunteered for their use. Next, he hefted the chainsaw and situated it carefully in the truck box. When he finished, he glanced over at Aisha, as if surprised she was still there. She didn’t blame him. She was surprised too.
She started coiling a large piece of heavy chain that they’d thought they might need for moving some of the larger branches but hadn’t actually used. “I don’t know. Mo and I might come to the dining hall for dinner, after all. Whatever Jo’s making will be way better than anything I can scrounge up.”
Jase smiled. “Oh, I see how it is. She’ll deign to grace us with her company if the food is good enough, hey?”
Aisha shook her head at him and walked off without saying good-bye. She wanted a shower. And to stop making an ass of herself.
An hour later, Aisha entered the dining hall and the scent of Jo’s delicious lamb curry and Callum’s homemade naan lit up every happy sensor in her brain. The cheerful roar of the small crowd, which included two cabins’ guests, the new kitchen staff, and the other two chambermaids that Jo had brought in for some extra hours to do other clean-up, suggested everyone was looking forward to dinner as much as she was.
Aisha said her hellos, then settled herself and Mo in chairs near—but not right beside—Jase’s. It was a silly attempt on her behalf to make it seem like they weren’t sitting together when they obviously were, and after a few minutes, he changed seats to one right next to hers, so they wouldn’t have to small talk as loudly. Then he proceeded to eat so much that even ever-ravenous Mo noticed.
“Wow, you eat a lot,” she said, raising her eyebrows and widening her eyes to emphasize her point.
“Thank you,” Jase said humbly, as if Mo had meant it as high praise and wasn’t just voicing a typically tactless four-year-old’s observation. And who knew, maybe it was a compliment. She did seem impressed.
Aisha ate with a voracity that matched Jase’s, though she didn’t come close to competing with the volume he consumed. When she’d taken the sharpest edge off her hunger, and Mo was finished and had asked if she could go play with Lego in the corner of the big room, Aisha finally caved to her desire—at least partially—and struck up a real conversation. “When you first showed me the tree you were going to climb, I thought I’d have a heart attack.”
Jase broke a piece of naan in half and dipped it in his third bowl of curry. “Me too.”
“Really? You didn’t look like it fazed you at all.”
“It’s why I don’t eat lunch on days I’m climbing. I’m afraid my nerves will make me hurl—and today it was extra bad.”
“Why?”
“Well, who wants to puke in front of a pretty girl?” His smile showed again, along with maybe the tiniest twinkle in his eye? He was getting used to her. And he thought she was pretty. Both ideas were frighteningly pleasing.
“You’re seriously scared when you take down trees like that?”
“Only an idiot wouldn’t be wary of climbing a tree that tall or bringing down a snag.”
“So, why do it then?”
Jase squinted like the question didn’t make sense, then shrugged. “It has to be done, right? I was a little intimidated when I saw the scope of what Jo and Callum need done, but I signed on for the job, so I’ll see it through.”
Aisha was impressed against her will—and also skeptical, something she was much more comfortable with. “So if you ‘sign on’ for something, you always see it through, even if it’s not what you expected or it’s harder than you think it will be?”
His bowl scraped clean and apparently finally satiated, Jase stirred cane sugar into his mug of chai and considered her question. Or, at least, Aisha thought he was considering it because he didn’t answer right off.
He didn’t sip the tea, however, just kept stirring. When he eventually looked up, he didn’t seem surprised to find Aisha staring at him, though she was embarrassed to be caught at it—again. In fact, he nodded like her scrutiny was part of their conversation and added in a soft, serious voice, “I try to.”
That was the moment Aisha realized she was in trouble. She didn’t just find Jason-call-me-Jase attractive. That, as annoying and potentially problematic as it was, she could deal with. But she actually liked him. Found him interesting. Admired the work he could do in a day. He wasn’t just a pretty face, and that made him much, much more dangerous.
“Where is Colton anyway?” she blurted to change the subject, not because she really cared.
A shadow passed behind Jase’s eyes, and again he seemed to weigh his words before answering. “In town, had some prior commitment. He should be here for work tomorrow . . . I hope.”
Something in the length of the pause before Jase said “I hope” suggested there was more he wanted to say. Aisha tilted her head, waiting, but he offered no follow up, just turned his attention to his chai again. And Aisha, never one to spurn a good cup of tea, sipped hers too. It was kind of nice, just sitting, sipping tea . . . with a man. Jase looked over and caught her gaze. The shadow was gone, his eyes were smiling again—and it seemed to her that he was enjoying himself too.