Jennifer Greene - Rock Solid

She wanted to chuckle at his strip routine—the devil!—and normally she would have. Just then, though, her sense of humor seemed to be suffering a short gasp. “Everything?” she asked weakly.

“Well, if you have to have a pacifier, I guess you can take the cell phone to snuggle in bed with. You can’t get any reception here anyway, so there’s really no harm—but that’s it. Everything else gets locked up. If you just can’t stand it, you can come in and stroke the computer every now and then.” Even the twinkle was unrelenting. And those fingers kept saying “gimme.”

For a moment she stared at him in numb panic. Yes, of course, this was exactly why she’d come. A month forced away from work. A place where she couldn’t do business or get into stress no matter how hard she tried. For that matter, she was paying a near fortune for Mr. Cashner McKay to take charge of her life and boss her around just like this, so it didn’t make any sense to balk. “But you have a TV somewhere, don’t you?” she asked bravely.

“Yup. In my living quarters. But nowhere any of the guests can see it.”

She was reassured that at least some proof of civilization existed and was close by. Still, she gulped again. “I, um, haven’t been separated from my daily dose of the Dow Jones for almost nine years.”

“I understand,” he said patiently. “One of our longtime guests is a doctor who always hyperventilates for the first few days without his pager. The first few days are the hardest, but I promise, it really does get easier after that. If you panic, I’ll let you in here to see your stuff, okay? But I want you to give it a chance.”

“Of course I’ll give it a chance. In fact, I can’t wait to get started on your whole program.” But she struggled with him for a minute when he tried to take the lizard computer case. It was like being severed from her own, personal, life-giving umbilical cord. “You have a phone somewhere in the lodge—?”

“Of course we do. Several. You’re not really cut off from anything, Lexie. Jed flies in with supplies a couple times a week. Guests come and go. And my private quarters have all the technology you’re used to if we need to contact a doctor or civilization or if relatives happen to need you. Now, are you ready to see your room?”

He took her toys. All of them. Even the palm reader. Even the headset for her disc player.

And then he motioned her toward a back staircase and led the way up. “Last week, the place was full—for us, that means ten guests, the max we can handle at a time. Or the max we want to. For the next couple of weeks, it’ll be extra nice, though, just you and a few others. Come summer, we’ll be extra busy again. Now…the library’s on the third floor in the back, and it’s well stocked. Workout gym, massage room and hot tub are in the square building off the north— Bubba comes in three times a week to do the masseuse thing. You’ll meet him tomorrow, and you’ll meet Keegan at dinner tonight. Keegan’s working on his Ph.D. as a naturalist, and in the meantime trading cooking and some bookkeeping for room and board. And George makes up the last of the staff, he’s the housekeeper…he’s a little on the gruff side, but he gets the job done, comes in around four mornings a week and we cope the rest of the time on our own. You leave the house, let someone know. Or check out at the desk in the kitchen. Lots of great places to wander, but we don’t want you getting lost….”

The more Cash informed her about the lodge setup, the more Lexie kept thinking: lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Maybe this was a mistake. Back in Chicago, coming here had seemed like such a foolproof idea. Since she was too much of a workaholic to force herself to rest, she’d chosen to go where she simply had to. And this place certainly fit that bill, except that she’d never envisioned anywhere so uncivilized that it actually had bears and cougars. And no malls.

“Here, you go.” At the top of the stairs, Cash motioned her inside the first room to the west, then stepped in himself and lined up her luggage as obediently as Catholic school children. After that he pushed open the sash of the far window, letting in another gush of stinging fresh air. “Okay now…the bathroom’s through that door. Dinner’ll be served around six, so you’ve got some time to unwind, unpack, wander around. If you need anything before then—”

“No, honestly, I’m fine.”

“No questions at all so far? You like the room?”

“No questions. And the room’s wonderful.” She saw the four-poster bed and bureau in wild cherry wood, the country quilt and feather mattress. The bed alone could have slept three people her size. Maybe four.

The bedroom window in her Chicago apartment—her $2,000 a month Chicago apartment—viewed someone else’s bedroom in someone else’s pricey Chicago apartment. Here she looked out on mountains that were too damn breathtaking to make a picture postcard. Nobody’d believe they were real. Yet somehow she was the one who felt unreal, just trying to look around and believe she could possibly fit in around here.

“Lexie?” When his hand touched her shoulder, she spun around with a city woman’s instincts honed against getting too close to strangers. His hand jerked back, yet his shrewd blue eyes suddenly rested on her face, something warm and evocative and completely unexpected in his eyes.

Cash had been nothing but kind and friendly from their first phone contact, and certainly since she’d arrived here. Still, his attitude had been exactly what she’d expected and exactly what it should be—completely impersonal. That he might see her differently from the other city slickers who came to his Silver Mountain hadn’t occurred to her…until she suddenly felt his gaze on her face, the connection in his touch.

“You’re feeling like a fish thrown in the desert, aren’t you?” he asked quietly.

“Yes.” There was no point in denying it.

“So did I, once upon a time. But I’ve been in your shoes, Lex, working so hard and so furiously that I didn’t realize I was forgetting to stop and take a breath. And this mountain has magic, I swear. You don’t have to be an outdoor person to get the benefits…you don’t ever have to do anything like this again, either. But we both have the same goal—not to send you back home until you feel rested and recharged again. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said, and decided then and there that she was in love with him.

Having only known him for less than a half hour, of course, she didn’t exactly mean a death-defying type of love—but she wasn’t looking for that, anyway. She’d come here expecting the next month to be a penance, though, and instead McKay was not only kind and perceptive, but as a bonus, he had a quick sense of humor. Maybe the next few weeks weren’t going to be as terrible as she’d dreaded.

Once Cash disappeared downstairs, she opened suitcases and closets, pushed off her sandals and started settling in. Yet only minutes later, she heard the distant high-pitched squeal of a child, and she wandered over to the window to investigate.

The boy bounding up the mountain path, yelling for Cash, was easy to identify as a McKay. He had Cash’s same tawny hair and long legs. The urchin was maybe eight? Nine? Not so old that he cared a hoot if his hair was wind-tangled or his jeans dirt-dusted from the bottoms up.

And right below her bedroom window, Lexie suddenly saw the child leap in the air—obviously trusting without question that he was going to be safely caught. And Cash was suddenly there, swinging him around and high as if the boy weighed nothing. She heard the child’s joyous, “Guess what, Cash? Guess what?”

And then Cash’s low, rumbling laughter before both of them lowered their voices and ducked out of sight.