Taming His Montana Heart(9)
“Where are you from if you don’t mind me asking?” she asked.
He brushed snow off his collar. “Chicago.”
“Seriously?” She clamped a hand over her mouth. “That didn’t come out right. I’m just surprised you went from a metropolitan area to here.”
“It was what I needed to do. What about you? Where were you living before you came here?”
“Oregon.” No way would she tell him why she’d had to leave the state.
He stared down at her for a long time while she floated in every second he gave her. “Oregon,” he muttered. “Are there enough snowmobiles there for a number of businesses to succeed?”
“Not as many as here or Alaska of course but quite a few.”
“Then mystery solved, at least part of it.”
“What mystery are you talking about?”
His gaze remained intense. “I was wondering why you got into the business so early in life. Most young teens don’t have jobs.”
“I did.”
“You certainly did. During the interview, we focused on your skills, not much about how you acquired those skills.”
She’d deliberately tailored her responses so she could say as little as possible about why she’d spent all her free time working for her brother’s in-laws. It wasn’t that she had anything to hide. She just didn’t want to risk going down a road she’d been avoiding for years.
Hoping to continue to do so, she busied herself wiping snow off the side mirror. Unless it stopped snowing, her effort would soon be undone. “About the grooming equipment, there are a couple of used ones for sale in Kalispell. Maybe your uncle—”
“I’ll get him to agree that new is better.”
She relaxed a little more. All she had to do was remember that her relationship with Shaw was one hundred percent professional, and he didn’t care about her personal life. As for her interest in him—
“I’m glad we had this conversation.” Not sure she wanted to leave after all, she nevertheless opened the driver’s side door. A pickup towing a trailer was circling the parking lot. Hopefully it wouldn’t get stuck and hem her in. “I wasn’t sure how to bring up what you might decide is an unnecessary expense.”
“Don’t ever hesitate to approach me.”
As she slid around the door in preparation for getting behind the wheel, his warm hand brushed her snow-chilled one. What he’d just said about approaching him cemented itself inside her. Between that and the light touch, she stopped thinking of herself as a Lake Serene employee. Right now she was a woman, deep down where it counted.
A woman in the presence of a man who meant more to her than he had a few hours ago.
Chapter Three
Once Haley had backed out of her parking space and eased around the snow-covered trailer behind the undersized pickup, Shaw turned away intending to return to the lodge and up the stairs to where he lived. Three steps later he stopped and stared at the SUV’s taillights through the falling white. Haley was heading toward the trailer park where most of the employees lived. Hopefully she was content with the one he’d earmarked for the snowmobile operation manager. He’d been concerned because when she’d come onboard, the only vacant trailer was one of the smaller ones but maybe it didn’t matter since she lived alone.
Alone.
He knew what that felt like.
She was out of sight now, probably shifted down and heading up the snow covered gravel slope leading to her place. He’d noted groceries in the SUV’s back which meant she had some unloading to do before she could shut out the cold and dark.
He should have asked if she carried a weapon. She might say yes or be shocked by the question. Whatever her reaction, he had no intention of telling her why he still looked at the world through cop eyes. No way would he let anything bad happen to Haley.
He jammed his hands in his coat pockets and started walking. The fingers of his right hand brushed his smartphone where he no doubt had several text messages, but they could wait.
Yes, they could. For the first time in longer than he wanted to think about, he wasn’t putting his job front and center. Despite the cold and so much snow falling that he had trouble seeing, he was content to remain outside.
To be one with the quiet now that the trailer pulling pickup driver had given up.
Barely thinking about what he was doing, he angled to the left so he could go around the lodge. While Haley and he had been in there, the restaurant had started to fill with visitors chilled from a day spent in the elements.
From what he could tell, he was the only one at the side of the lodge opposite the parking lot and front door. He had to work at keeping his footing and occasionally sank into loose snow up to his hips, but the physical exertion felt good. Staying physically fit had been one of the things he enjoyed the most about being a police officer. He still exercised thanks to the weights and treadmill in his apartment, but it wasn’t the same.
He was sweating by the time he reached the area devoted to outdoor summer activities. A treeless, grassy slope filled the space between the lodge and lake. If he kept going, he’d wind up on ice. He went to within about fifty feet of it and stared out at what little he could see of one of the primary reasons people came to the area.
The outside lodge lights turned the storm into something unreal. If he didn’t think about how soon he’d start shivering, he could picture himself staying here until morning while breathing frigid air, watching treetops sway, listening to the ice groan, and imagining Mount Lynx guarding his world.