Chapter Eighteen

“You drinking that beer or just looking at it?” Mack shot Austin a look as she ran a cloth over the surface of the bar.

Austin took a halfhearted sip.

“What’s wrong with you, anyway? Where’s that Sam girl? I liked her—even if she has no taste in burgers.” Mack stopped cleaning and frowned at him. “Don’t tell me you scared her away.”

“Believe it or not, I wasn’t the asshole this time,” Austin said glumly, and Mack raised an eyebrow.

“Shit, Austin, I was just kidding.” She rapped on the door to the kitchen to get Connor’s attention. “I’d pour you another beer, but you’re barely making it through that.”

“I don’t want anything.” Austin stared into the glass. “I just want to sit here and feel like an idiot.”

It beat feeling like an idiot at home, which was what he’d been doing, staring into the ashes of the fireplace and thinking how blind he’d been.

Then he’d discovered an even better way to torture himself. A Google image search for Samantha Kane yielded hundreds of photos. He’d scrolled endlessly through a repeating loop of her face. Sam smiling for the cameras. Sam looking stern walking out of the Kane offices with an entourage in tow. Sam standing behind a podium, bathed in stage light.

Sure, he’d read the news stories about the company, the turnover from father to daughter. He and his friends talked plenty about Kane’s plans to transform Gold Mountain into a massive resort. But he’d never looked closely enough at her picture to imprint her face in his mind. He thought of everything Sam—no, Samantha—had said about her father, her grief, and how much she seemed to love the places he took her in the snow. It was impossible to put together the heartfelt person he’d met with the impersonal face looking out from his screen.

He’d slammed the computer closed, heart pounding, and booked it over to Mack Daddy’s. At least there he had company, even if he wasn’t much for talking.

Although, he was beginning to think it would have been better to stay home alone. Mack was darting him worried looks, Connor was calling for someone to cover him, and he was in the process of telling them both to leave him alone when Claire slammed down on a bar stool next to him and said, “Don’t even think about doing that thing I know you’re doing.”

“Uh, nice to see you, too. It’s been a while. How’s Maya?”

“I put Abbi on emergency babysitting detail so I could come over here.”

“How’d you know I’d be here?”

“Because there are so many other places any of us go when a relationship ends?”

Austin felt three faces looking way too intently at him.

“It wasn’t a relationship,” he told Claire. “I’ll be fine.”

“Sure,” Claire said. “If you insist. But you should at least keep the gloves.”

He spun on the bar stool. “How’d you know about that?”

“She came to see me.” Mack poured a glass of wine, and Claire took a sip like Austin wasn’t about to jump out of his seat, wanting to know every detail about where Sam had been, what she’d said, what Claire thought of her. “That massage, you know.”

“I can’t believe she stayed for it.”

“I can’t believe you want to return them.”

“Wait—she got you a new pair of gloves?” Mack looked from Austin to Claire and back again. “You? That’s, like, serious.” She sounded impressed.

“This is a lot more complicated than a pair of gloves, you guys,” Austin said before they could all gang up on him.

“She told me who she is,” Claire said.

That got Austin’s attention.

And everyone else’s. “Who is she?” Mack asked eagerly.

Claire glanced at Austin. He gestured for her to go ahead and say it. He couldn’t get the words out without them sticking in his throat.

“Samantha Kane,” Claire whispered.

Mack’s mouth froze in an O. Even Connor let out a “holy shit.” Austin groaned and covered his face in his hands.

“So now you all know and we can move on to pretending this never happened.”

“I don’t get it,” Mack said. “How on earth did you fuck Samantha Kane?” Austin glared at her, and she held up her hands. “I’m just saying.”

“I didn’t know she was Samantha Kane when I was—” fucking her, he almost said but couldn’t. “With her,” he decided, since it wasn’t like they’d had sex one time and that was it. No—regardless of how he’d insisted it wasn’t a relationship, he’d taken her to the shelter, and up to the peak, and said those things to her about the metal that flashed in his dreams, the cries that filled his mind in the night.

Once again, it hit him how he’d been played. He’d felt that close to her, too close to brush it off as nothing. And yet he hadn’t even known who she was.

“So she lied to you.” Mack refilled Austin’s glass and handed it back to him. “On the house,” she added. “That fucking bitch.”

Connor made a face. “That seems a little harsh. She didn’t tell him the truth, yeah. But that’s not the same as lying.”

Mack raised an eyebrow at him. “Remind me never, ever to date you.”

“I’m just saying. We weren’t there. We don’t know her the way Austin does.”

“Aren’t you listening?” Austin interjected. “That’s the whole point. I don’t know her, either.”

“It’s not like you slept with an ax murderer.”

Mack rolled her eyes. “I love how Connor thinks truthfulness about her basic identity and/or her motivation in completely fucking Austin over are irrelevant here.”

“Yeah,” Claire said. “But what about the fact that Sam likes him?”

“Don’t sound so shocked,” Austin grumbled.

“I just mean that even though this started one way, something changed for her. She was crying on that massage table, Austin. She didn’t get those gloves for you to buy you out. And she didn’t press you about your life so she’d have leverage. She was falling in love with you. And you—” She threw up her hands. “You were you, which means you showed her the time of her life and then started pushing her away even before you knew you had an ironclad excuse to get her out of your life.”

“Now that,” Austin said, raising his glass to clink it with hers, “is the biggest load of bullshit I’ve heard all week. And believe me when I say I’ve heard a lot.”

Claire slid off her stool. “I’m just saying. You guys obviously connected in a real way or neither of you would be this upset. And she’s obviously more than just some CEO or you wouldn’t have had anything to connect over in the first place. You think you have everything planned out, like God forbid you let anyone into your life to shake things up, but think about it, Austin. Just—don’t be so quick to throw this one away.”

She gave Austin a hug. “And now I’ve got to go pick up my evidence that I know all about plans going awry.” She laughed at herself as Mack told her to bring Maya next time, she’d have a hot chocolate waiting for her with extra whipped cream.

Claire left, and Mack refilled Austin’s glass. Connor had to head back into the kitchen, but it wasn’t long before he came back with a plate loaded with way too much food.

“Roast chicken, mashed potatoes, and those lemony greens I know you like,” he announced.

“You don’t have to do this,” Austin said.

“Women may love your independent broody thing, but someone’s got to make sure you eat. Plus you need something to soak up the booze Mack is plying you with.”

“She sure is a good friend,” Austin said with a grin.

Connor paused for a moment, and Austin thought he was going to go back to the kitchen. But Connor leaned his elbows on the bar and sighed. “You shouldn’t feel bad. If you do—you shouldn’t. If you hate her, that’s fine. But you don’t have to, you know?”

“I’m not sure what the other options are. It’s not like I could ever actually date her at this point.”

“Neutral indifference? Fond memory? Thing of the past you never dwell on again?”

Austin laughed. “You’re good at this.”

“Dude. We all have skeletons. Not all of them are quite as, uh, high profile as yours. But don’t you remember that snowboarder with the pigtails who kept hanging around the bar that time?”

“Of course. Everyone else knew that was a no-fly zone. But no, you were the one who had to go for it.” Austin rolled his eyes.

“How was I supposed to know she’d never want to leave?”

“Is this supposed to be some kind of helpful analogy?”

“I’m just saying. We all do things that aren’t the world’s best ideas. We all get involved with people before we fully know them. Sometimes it’s for the better, sometimes it’s not. And yet, miraculously, the world goes on.”

He patted Austin on the shoulder and went back to work. Austin nodded, thanking him for the food, the advice, the company. But secretly, his insides wrenched at what Connor said.

He knew what his friend meant. This was one blip. It didn’t have to define him or change his life forever.

But what if he didn’t want the world to go on as usual? What if he’d liked the way things had started to change when Sam came into his life? He thought about Amelia, her eyes rimmed with red as she confessed her fears to Austin—that she wouldn’t be good enough for him. That she’d try her best and still fall short.

Did he expect too much? Was he so rooted to one way of doing things, he couldn’t imagine trying anything else?

Of course he knew plans changed. The very fact that he was in Gold Mountain and not a pro skier in Colorado was proof. And yet how much more strongly did he cling to his home, his life, as a result? How much harder had that made it for him to embrace anything unexpected, where he couldn’t plan the outcome? Where he had no idea what came next.

“Hey, Mack,” he called, and she left a group of customers and came over to him.

“Another one?” she asked, but Austin said no. He needed to keep his head screwed on now.

“Do you guys have a fax machine here?”

“There’s one in the office. Why?”

“Can you give me the number? I might want to use it.”

“Sure,” she said and wrote it down. “What do you need it for?”

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I have no fucking clue what I’m doing.” He paused. “But I think for once in my life, that may be a good thing.”

He hopped off the bar stool and pulled out his cell phone—he’d actually brought it tonight. Mack was looking at him like he was crazy, and he probably was. But that didn’t bother him. In fact, he felt better than he had ever since he and Sam came back from the snowmobile ride and he’d found himself doing exactly what Claire accused him of—picking a fight just to push Sam away.

Better, maybe, than he’d felt even before that. Ever since he got the first letter from Kane Enterprises on that heavy, embossed stationery. Who cared what anyone thought? Who cared what he’d said he had planned?

Before he could change his mind, he opened up his recent calls and dialed the first number that came up.