Jill pulled the empty plate away from him and set it in the bus bin under the counter. “So now I’m freaking out.”
“Understandable. It was a hard decision for me to make, and I wasn’t in jeopardy of letting a parent down with my choice. My mom always knew about my interest in being a writer. I still get to run, Jill, only now I do it for fun.”
“And that’s enough?”
“For me it is. But I’m not you. Only you can decide if running for pleasure and not for competition will be enough.”
“That’s part of the problem. You had your writing to pursue.” She looked around the empty bar. “This isn’t exactly a career.”
“Then figure out what you want.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“Look, you’ve done the hard part. You quit running—”
“Took a break from running. I’m not sure about anything.”
“Okay, you took a break. Whatever.” He picked up a toothpick from the dispenser and popped it in his mouth. “So now that you’ve taken a break, use the time you normally train and figure out what you want to do.”
“It’s more complicated than that. What I want to do could involve moving. The Lower Fork and surrounding areas aren’t exactly thriving in the accounting arena.”
“That depends on what kind of work you want. There’s plenty of bookkeeping and account management for a farm or ranch in Hailey. I’m sure Dodge could give you a handful of names right now.” He ran his tongue along his teeth in thought. “Westmoreland has the hospital and the college. Hell, Tommy owns four businesses here in the Lower Fork. You could always talk to him if you want to stay.”
Jill nodded. She didn’t know if she felt better or worse. Lyle had basically told her exactly what she didn’t want to hear: the direction of her life was totally and completely up to her. “Well, thanks, Lyle. I appreciate you listening.” She came around the bar and gave him a hug as he stood up to leave.
They both looked over as the door to the restaurant opened. Jill sucked in a hasty breath when she recognized Tyler Bloodworth and quickly returned her gaze to Lyle.
“Friend of yours?” Lyle whispered before placing a friendly kiss on her cheek.
“Something like that.” She eased out of his grasp and tried to compose herself as her heart fluttered in her chest. Damn it, she didn’t need another complication at the exact moment her life was falling apart.
Lyle’s hands drifted down her arms and he let his fingers linger in hers before dropping her hands and walking toward the door. Jill eyed him curiously as he slipped outside. He was normally pretty touchy-feely, much more so than any of her other guy friends, but something about the way he’d looked at her with mischief in his eyes made her think he was up to something.
Chapter 11
Ty stood just inside the doorway, watching Jill with a look of cool indifference, but his jaw was clenched so tight he could barely force the breath in and out of his lungs. He felt like he’d been punched in the gut. He’d expected to find Jill mad, maybe even a little cold, but never did he expect to find her in the arms of another man.
“We’re getting ready to shut down for lunch,” she told him.
“I’ll take whatever you’ve got left. Soup, the special.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever.”
She nodded, but didn’t move. He couldn’t read the look on her face, somewhere between irritated and unapproachable.
A kernel of apprehension took root in his gut as he tried to shake off his irrational anger. “You okay?” he asked.
“You left before I could thank you.” When he stared at her, confounded, she said, “When I broke my leg. For the ride to the hospital. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
He shrugged because he couldn’t tell if she was happy about seeing him again or not. “That was nothing.” He glanced down at her legs. She wore loose fitting jeans and an old pair of running shoes. The plain black t-shirt shouldn’t have made lust curl in his belly, but logic didn’t seem to stop his body from responding to hers. He rubbed his hand over the ache while she stood staring. “How’s the leg?”
“Better.”
She slid her hands into her back pockets, pulling the shirt tight against her chest. He fought hard to keep his eyes on hers.
“I’ll go see what Stevie has in the back. Take a seat wherever you want.”
He figured she’d have less of a chance to slip away from him if he sat at the bar. He was about to take the same seat where he’d bragged about his chances with her and thought better of it. He moved two seats down, to the center of the bar, and sat.
She came out of the back carrying a big plastic cup and set it down in front of him with a container of sugar packets. He smiled when he realized she’d brought him tea.
“Sweet, right?”
He nodded and dumped two packets into the mix. “Thanks.”
“Lyle says it’s not the same unless you sweeten it while it brews, but this is the best we can do.”
“Lyle?” he asked.
She jerked her head toward the door as if he’d just left. Her dark brown ponytail swung like a pendulum against her back. Her hair had grown in the time they’d spent apart. “Lyle Woodward. He just left.”
“Is he from the south?”
“Atlanta, originally. He lives in Hailey now.”
Ty bobbed his head up and down, stalling. He didn’t gather his nerve until she turned to leave. “Jill?”
The pleasant flush of her cheeks made her light brown eyes appear huge and inviting. He felt clumsy and out of practice with women, since he’d spent all last summer avoiding her and the school year engrossed in his studies. He worried that when he finally saw her, Jill wouldn’t be as mesmerizing, she wouldn’t hold the appeal that had followed him like a fog for the last year. He worried for nothing.
“I owe you an apology.”
Her brow furrowed. “Umm, you do?”
“I was here the other day and ran into Eddie, Shane, and Cody. I was asking about you—how your leg was—and they seemed to think I was asking for a different reason and—”
“Oh, that.” She reached for a rag under the counter and began wiping furiously at the surface of the bar. “It’s okay.”
“I never meant to insinuate that you were…that I was…” He rubbed the back of his neck and struggled for words to explain without making it obvious he was interested. Well, any more obvious.
“Trust me, Ty. I know you didn’t mean anything. Shane thinks any woman who doesn’t fall at his feet is gay. He was baiting you when you were just being nice.”
“I might have made it seem as though there were more to it than that.”
She glanced up at him and his heart gave one long, hard thump against his ribs. She lifted her chin in the air and raised a single brow at him, staring into his eyes.
She gave an uncomfortable shrug of her shoulders. “Don’t worry. I’m not holding you to barroom talk. Besides, you’ve got a girlfriend and I—”
“I don’t have a girlfriend anymore.”
She blinked once and stared at him.
“I broke up with Dana last year.”
“Oh.” Their eyes met, held.
Stevie came out of the back with a steaming bowl of beef stew and a wedge of bread. “Last of the stew,” he said as he set the bowl down in front of Ty. Ty could have punched him for interrupting what was starting to feel like an intimate moment. “Dishes are piling up in the back, Jill. If you want to make your afternoon training, you’d better get a move on.”
Jill looked at Ty and rapped her fingers on the counter. “I gotta go. You okay with everything?”
No, he wanted to say. I’m dying here. “Yep. I’m good.”
Chapter 12
Olivia sat on the couch munching a bag of chips and washing them down with a diet soda, figuring one would balance the other out. If only she could get the math problem she struggled with to balance. She clutched her chest and shrieked when Jill opened the door
and stepped inside.
“What are you doing here?” Olivia asked. “You scared the crap out of me.”
“I live here, remember?”
Olivia twisted the sports watch on her wrist. “Not at five o’clock you don’t. Why aren’t you on your hundredth lap around some track?”
Jill eased onto the couch and slumped back against the cushions. “I quit this morning.”
“Quit what?”
“Seriously? Why is that everyone’s first question?” She tossed her keys on the coffee table and stretched out her legs. “I quit training. I’m taking a break.”
“Didn’t you just take a break—literally?”
Jill scrunched up her face, rolled her eyes, and began nervously chewing her bottom lip. “I’m taking a break of my own doing. A mental health break.”
“But…I don’t understand. I thought you couldn’t wait to get out of your parents’ house and start running again. What happened?”
“I don’t know.” She shot to her feet and began to pace around the small den. “I was miserable living with my parents and I thought I’d be better once I got out of the house. I am better, or I was.” She gave Olivia a glassy eyed stare. “I’ve started having doubts about my life. I always assumed I’d pursue running as a career and whatever else happened would happen after I achieved my goals. Breaking my leg changed all that and I’m starting to feel like I’d better have a backup plan.”
“So what’s your backup plan?”
She sank onto the couch again. “I have no idea.”
“Okay.” Olivia sat up. “At least you’ve got your degree.” She closed her textbook with an audible pop and tossed it onto the coffee table. “I don’t know what possessed me to take a few semesters off school. All I managed to do was delay the inevitable.”
“What’s the inevitable? Getting a job?”
“Eventually. Right now the inevitable is this class. Remind me again why I chose to get a teaching degree?”
“The same reason I chose accounting. So we could get jobs.”
“Oh, yeah.” She picked up the bag of chips and offered some to Jill, but she refused. Jill watched what she ate, but she usually gave in and had a few chips. Her not eating them now meant she was seriously stressed. “So get a real job and see how you like it.”
“Where am I going to get a real job, huh? I want to figure out what I want to do with my life without picking up and moving to some city. I want to figure it out here.”
“So find a job here. I’m sure there are entry level accounting positions in Westmoreland.”
“I don’t think I need to be in the same town as my parents right now. My dad’s pissed.”
“Okay, but that kinda limits your options.”
“I know. Do you think Tommy is in need of bookkeeping help with any of his businesses?”
“You think he’d tell me?” Olivia took a swig out of her drink and set the can down. “I’ll bet, for you, he’d invent one.”
“I don’t want him to create some position he doesn’t need just to get me through a rough patch.”
“How do you know he doesn’t need help? The man runs four businesses and he told me today he’s taking the lead in organizing the group to stop the ski development. I’m sure he’d be grateful to pass something along to you.”
“Does he ever sleep?” Jill asked.
“Who knows? What he needs more than sleep is someone to sleep with. He’s such a tightass.”
Jill reached over to rub Olivia’s leg. “Are you fighting again?”
“When are we not? He won’t even let me lead more than one trip a day.”
“That’s because you’re back in school and he wants you to finish your degree.”
Olivia scrunched up her face. “So will you talk to Tommy?”
“I guess. I certainly can’t sit around the apartment day and night worrying about my future.” She rubbed a fist to her ribcage. “I can already feel the pressure building in my chest. Maybe I need to take a run.”
“I thought you were taking a break?”
“From training. From my dad, basically. That doesn’t mean I can’t run for pleasure.”
“Who does that?” Olivia shivered in horror. Thank God she’d been blessed with good metabolism.
Jill threw a pillow at her, smacking her in the face. “Speaking of pleasure,” Jill said after dodging Olivia’s throw. “I saw Tyler Bloodworth today.”
“Talk about burying the lead. When?”
“At The Tap.” Jill shrugged as if the sight of him hadn’t gotten to her. Her cheeks betrayed her indifference by turning a definite shade of pink. It always amazed Olivia how inexperienced her roommate was in matters of the heart. “He’s even better looking than I remember.”
“What’d he say?”
Jill began picking at a loose thread on the pillow cradled in her lap. “He apologized for whatever he’d said in front of the rat pack, although he never really explained what he said. As a matter of fact…” She tapped a finger to her lips. She never wore much makeup and yet her lips were rosy red. Olivia assumed it was from all the biting her bottom lip endured. “He did say that he may have made them think there was more to his comments than a misunderstanding.” She shook her head. “I’m not really sure what he meant, but I do know he’s single.”
“What happened to the annoying blonde who came to see him last year?”
“She was nice.”
“How would you know?” Olivia demanded.
“She came into The Tap once. The place was dead and she seemed a little down. I knew she was in town to see him and I didn’t want to get to know her, but when I gave her the bill, she asked if I knew Ty.”
“What’d you say?”
“I told her I knew who he was, but I didn’t know him that well.”
Olivia braced her hands on her knees and leaned forward. Wasn’t it just like Jill to hold this kind of information back for almost a year! “Why was she asking?”
“She asked me if I’d seen him with someone, ya know, a girl. I think she thought he was cheating on her.”
Olivia sat back against the cushions and pursed her lips. “So she was jealous, but didn’t know of whom?”
“I don’t remember seeing him with anyone last summer. He’d deflect everyone with the ‘I’ve got a girlfriend’ line and I never heard even a peep about him catting around.” Jill looked at Olivia. “Don’t you think we would have heard if he was seeing someone here?”
“Oh, yeah. No way he could have kept that a secret. Not in this fishbowl.”
“That’s what I thought.” She shrugged it away. “Anyway, he told me he broke up with her last year.”
“So he broke up with her.”
“That’s what he said.”
“Don’t you get it, Jill? How much more obvious could the guy be?”
“Obvious about what?”
Olivia shifted so her feet were on the floor. “You said yourself he apologized for the taunting, but not for the substance of what he’d said. Then, he makes sure you know he’s available.” She slapped her hands on her knees. “He’s totally hot for you.”
“That’s ridiculous. And I’m not interested.”
“Okay, now you’re just lying.”
“I’ve got too much going on right now to even think about starting something up with a fisherman who’s going to be gone in a few months.”
“You just told me you can’t sit around the apartment day and night, and yet you have no plans. Sounds like you’ve got plenty of time to start something up with a hot fisherman who’s been after you since last year. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re the reason he’s back.”
“That’s the most insane thing you’ve ever said. Stop putting ideas in my head, Olivia. He’s just here to fish, and even if he came back for some other reason, it sure wasn’t me.”
“Why? You’re hot, Jill, even though you do everything in your power to hide it. Apparently Indiana Jones thinks you’re hot anyway.”
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“What do you mean I hide it? And who is Indiana Jones?”
“Tyler! He’s going to teach at the local college back home. Didn’t he get his degree in archeology or something?”
“Economics,” Jill answered. “How in the world did you manage to confuse economics with archeology?”
She shooed Jill’s barb away with a wave of her hand. “Anyway, you totally downplay your looks.” When Jill rolled her eyes, Olivia continued. “You’ve got great hair. That rich brunette color makes your flawless skin glow, but yet you’re not all pasty white. Those big, brown eyes are both sexy and vulnerable at the same time. And even though you’ve run off every ounce of fat on your body, you still have a decent rack.”
Jill looked down at her chest. “Not compared to you, I don’t.”
“He’s not interested in me.” Olivia rubbed her hands together with glee. This, she thought, was going to be fun. “He’s interested in you. Now all we have to do is figure out how to make the first move.”
Chapter 13
Jill’s apartment sat along a two-lane highway with wide shoulders and very little traffic in the early morning hours. Years of training had made sleeping in impossible and by seven, Jill was stretching in the parking lot and eyeing the route she planned to take. A quarter mile past the local grocery store, she could veer into a neighborhood.
She glanced behind her toward the mountains where a small cabin sat tucked along a curvy road somewhere deep in the cover of blue spruce and aspen trees. She could picture Tyler in his shorts, no shirt, cupping his hands around a hot mug of coffee steaming in the chill of early morning. She shook her head to dislodge the image. Ty Bloodworth was a distraction, pure and simple.
She wouldn’t believe the lies Olivia fed her about his interest. She couldn’t afford to open her heart to that kind of disappointment. Not when she felt totally rudderless in her life, as if she was floating aimlessly down the river that fed the valley.
She started with a slow, deliberate pace. It always took around a half mile before her breathing felt relaxed and even. She wondered if her rehabilitation would cause that distance to lengthen. Just as she rounded the grocery store, she felt everything click into place: the steady in and out of her breathing, the long, methodical stride, the emptying of her mind. Nothing, absolutely nothing filled her with total peace the way a run could.
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