I walked through the living room to the wall of windows. The opposite side of the valley was too far away for me to identify a specific building, but I could guess where the lodge was by its proximity to the empty expanse of the ski slopes.
Miller is over there right now.
Was he sleeping? Probably way too early for someone who didn’t work the hours I did. Were they drinking and having fun? Swapping family stories and playing games?
“You don’t need to worry about me, Mom,” I assured her. “I told you I’m happy. I met a cute guy today and made him smile. That made me happy.” I shook myself out of the trance I was in and tried to cover up that mom-bomb with other news. “I also delivered a birthday cake to a woman in a nursing home who turned 100. Can you believe it? And the sweetest little girl was in my kickboxing class tonight with her mom. She was killing it.”
“Go back to the cute guy,” she said, never missing a beat. “And tell me everything.”
“There’s nothing to tell.” Yet. “I promise when there’s something to tell, I’ll let you know.”
She made a tsk sound. “I noticed you said ‘when’ rather than ‘if,’ so I’ll hold you to that.”
After she made a big point of asking me to call on Christmas Eve when all the family would be gathered, we said our goodbyes. I made my way back to the bedroom and stripped down in anticipation of a long, hot shower.
As soon as I stepped under the hard spray, I let the image of Miller flood my mind again.
Even if I didn’t see him again, it felt good to have been so drawn to someone, to have made him smile when he’d been feeling a little blue. This kind of sparked interest was one of the reasons I’d sold my previous business and moved to Colorado the year before. I wanted a life again, time to be someone outside of work, to have friends and lovers, adventure, time at home.
I wondered what it was about Miller Hobbs that had sparked such a reaction in me.
After the rest of the evening speculating, I came to zero conclusions, but I knew one thing.
I wanted to learn more. Much, much more.
3
Miller
My cousin Simone knew something was up the minute I walked into the kitchen back at the lodge.
“You’re blushing,” she accused. “Something happened.”
“It’s cold outside,” I countered, blushing even harder. “I challenge you to go out there and not come in with red cheeks.”
Her brother Jude snickered into his coffee while he lay snuggled up against his much larger husband’s side. I still couldn’t believe I was related to the Jude Marian. The first few times I’d joined the family at group dinners, I’d had to forcibly stop myself from staring at him.
But then he’d farted on purpose right when his brother Blue was trying to make a toast to his husband on his birthday, and Jude’s brothers and sister had made such a big dramatic deal of how disgusting he was, I’d laughed too hard to ever take him that seriously again.
“Where’d Miller go?” Simone asked Mikey, who was busy setting out more coffee mugs on the large island. “Who would have been there?”
“Leave him alone,” Tilly said, entering the room looking like she just stepped off the cover of a Growing Old Gracefully magazine. She wore a luscious ivory sweater and charcoal-gray slacks. A diamond-and-emerald broach in the shape of a wreath was pinned to a rose-colored cashmere scarf around her neck.
I gave her a grateful smile and then stuck out my tongue at Simone. “Yeah, what she said.”
Simone’s surprise quickly morphed into a teasing grin, and she shot me the bird while her brothers hooted in support of me.
I blushed even deeper. I’d done as Darius had said and dished it right back. Even though I was sweating in the spotlight of everyone’s attention, it felt kind of good to be part of the teasing instead of watching it from the outside.
Mikey grinned supportively right before he betrayed me. “I sent him to Honey’s to pick up some pastries for breakfast. The baker there is a total hottie. His name’s Danny.”
“Darius,” I corrected without thinking, tasting the syllables on my tongue. The name was alluring and familiar, strong and sweet, just like…
“Darius,” Simone and Jude singsonged back, and only then did I realize my error.
I bit back a groan. This was going to be excruciating.
“A hottie? Is that right?” Doc asked from his spot in a comfortable chair by the windows. Nico and West’s one-year-old lay on his chest and fiddled with a button on his shirt. Grandpa—who was actually my great-uncle but had invited me to call him Grandpa anyway—sat in a chair next to them and fed Doc a sip of coffee every few minutes so he didn’t have to take his arms away from little Reenie.