by Melinda Minx
“Back to the drawing board then,” David says. “I want you two working with Yousef on Vegas. Meet with him and have him get you up to speed.”
“What’s wrong?” Lindsay asks me as we step out of the meeting room. “Fucking Vegas! This rocks.”
Working with Yousef on Vegas. It should be exciting. How do you open a hotel in a city famous for its amazing hotels? It’s a serious challenge that will put my abilities to the test. But giving up on Evergreen Cove means that I may really never see Coal again.
“Nothing,” I say. “I just…”
Lindsay laughs and points at me. “He got you good, huh?”
“Shhh!” I say, hushing her. I whisper to her, “Don’t tell anyone about that! No one!”
“Why not?” Lindsay asks. “You think David or Yousef have never boned anyone on a business trip?”
“I want people to take me seriously.”
“Double standards,” Lindsay says. “If a man does it, it’s expected, but if a woman does it, suddenly it’s unprofessional? We gave the pitch all we could, Andrea. We did our research, we built a rapport, and we went in for the kill. If anything, finally getting laid seemed to loosen you up and made you better at your job.”
“Shut up! I don’t care about double standards, it’s not about that. It’s about me, personally. I don’t want people to think I screw around on business trips. It’s got nothing to do with the patriarchy, alright?”
“Alright,” Lindsay says. “We’ll find you a better guy in Vegas—”
November passes by in a blur. I’m so busy on the Vegas project that I almost forget Coal. Almost. When I feel particularly lonely, he worms his way back into my mind. Usually late at night. Usually when I’m wet.
Luckily I’m busy enough that Coal’s dirty grin burned into my brain is only a mild inconvenience.
I’ve more or less come to terms with the whole thing, and I guess that by Christmas I’ll have him totally out of my head.
“David wants to see us.”
It’s Lindsay’s voice.
I look up to see her head poking into my cubicle.
“Want me to get Yousef?” I ask.
“No,” Lindsay says. “Just you and me.”
Just me and Lindsay? David wouldn’t want to talk to us about Vegas without Yousef.
Lindsay reads my face and says, “Yeah, I’m worried he might be pulling us off Vegas.”
Fuck.
“He wouldn’t,” I say. “We’re making good progress, and Yousef is happy with us. There’s no reason he’d pull us.”
“Don’t jinx it,” Lindsay says.
We sit down, and David has a thick pile of folders and binders in front of him. Like a great wall of paperwork.
“I’m not pulling you two off Vegas,” he says.
We both let out audible and relieved sighs.
“However,” he says, “I need you two back on Evergreen Cove for the next week.”
I eye the big stack of papers. “Isn’t that over?”
“Of course not,” he says.
I narrow my eyes at him. “Didn’t we decide it wasn’t worth our time? That a buyout was impossible?”
“Yes,” David says. “We did. Your exact words, Andrea, were ‘Buying these two out will not get you the land.’”
“Right,” I say, nodding. “So...what are we doing here then?”
David slides the giant mountain of papers toward us. “Legal has been on it for a month. These are the zoning regulations, the loopholes, the loopholes to get around the loopholes—everything. We’re not going to buy them out, we’re going to sue them into the ground. You told me that the main reason they didn’t want to sell was that they were happy running the hotel? Once we snare them into a mosquito-ridden swamp of legal bullshit, they won’t enjoy running the hotel anymore. They’ll beg us to sell.”
Lindsay and I frown at each other. “So...isn’t this legal’s thing then? We’re not lawyers.”
“No,” David says. “But you two have an established relationship with the owners. You are the good cops, the lawyers are the bad cops. We’ve already launched the initial blitz of lawsuits. When you two arrive in Evergreen Cove next weekend to present the settlement buyout deal, you’ll look like saviors to them.”
Next weekend? Shit. I’ll be going back to Evergreen Cove? I sigh. It’s not like I have to see Coal. I’d have to go out of my way to see him. I won’t run into him at the supermarket. But then again, being just a few miles’ hike away from him will have his teasing grin right back in my head. I’ll remember all the wonderful things he did to me in bed, and—dammit! Why couldn’t I have just been sent to Vegas? They even have a saying for Vegas—what happens there, stays there.
What happens in Evergreen Cove, apparently, follows you around for months.
“Where’s your fire?” David asks. “You get to redeem yourselves, take out these greedy squatters!”
Greedy squatters? They have owned the hotel for decades, and they love what they do. These legal threats and buyouts are shoving them off the land and stopping them from living out the last years of their lives doing what they love.
Coal was right. We are the bad guys. Damn it.
Lindsay grabs my shoulder, clenches her fist, and says, “We’ve got this, David! We won’t let you down!”
I nod. “We have the fire.”
“Good,” David says. “I want to send you two up there early to relax a bit. Be seen around town a bit rather than just showing up and throwing the book at them.”
Lindsay smiles. “Maybe we can go hiking, Andrea? That sounds relaxing.”
My face burns red, but I just nod.
6
Coal
I can’t get her out of my head.
Andrea.
Fuck, I should never have let her into my bed. I couldn’t have left her out in the snow to freeze—I had to at least bring her into my cabin. But not into my bed.
Okay, so maybe she crawled into my bed while I was sleeping. But I should have kicked her right out.
Now the isolation and routine I’ve spent the better part of two years building up—that zen-like calm and focus—is shattered.
It’s not like I haven’t fucked a woman since going to the cabin. Far from it. I need pussy like I need air, but it’s usually just fucking.
Usually.
I get my dick wet, I cum, and then I leave. That’s how it’s supposed to work. It’s how I thought it would work with Andrea.
Maybe it’s because she invaded my cabin? Normally I just go to a bar and then go back to the woman’s place. Then when I’m done, I can just go back to my cabin, alone. The world of my cabin and the forest never touches the world outside. Fucking Andrea in my own bed changed that, but that’s not enough to explain it away.
It was something about her—something I can’t put my finger on. Even if I had just met her at a bar like all the other girls, I know she’d still be in my head the same as she is now.
I gotta’ get her out of my head. That’s the only thing I can do. I’ve tried focusing on hunting and fishing. I’ve tried ignoring the problem. And now it’s time to try fucking.
It’s time to get my dick wet again. Time to hit the bar and have some meaningless sex. It might just be that Andrea’s getting to me so much because I haven’t come inside a woman for over a month. Once I feel that release again, she’ll fade away.
I walk into town just as the sun is setting. The electric lights feel alien to me, and the drone of cars passing by just feels wrong.
I walk deeper into town, and seeing people shuffling around on the streets slowly phases me back into society.
I’m good at blending in when I need to. No one is going to look at me and see some crazy mountain man wandering wide-eyed through town. I’ve got my nice clothes on, I’m freshly shaved, and I’m ready to fuck.
It’s not too different from hunting, really. I put on cologne—a scent to attract my target—and I blend in. Rather than camouflage for the fore
st, I camouflage myself as a normal civilian who works some chump nine-to-five. I pretend I’m a guy who didn’t lose all his brothers in Afghanistan. A guy who isn’t hung up on one woman from over a month ago. One he’s never going to see again.
Once I blend in, I can move freely among my prey, and I’ll claim whatever woman I want. Even when I blend in, I still stand out among woman. They want me even if they don’t know why they’re drawn to me.
I step into the bar and order a whiskey. I have a feeling I’ll need to get pretty fucking drunk to really get into it tonight.
The bartender is a woman with a really low-cut shirt and really nice cleavage. She smiles at me—a smile that says she wants more than just a tip. More than just the tip. She bends over as she slides the glass across the counter to me, giving me an intentional eyeful.
“You from out of town?” she asks me.
“Sort of,” I say.
“I’d have remembered you,” she says, licking her lips.
She’s making this too easy. No hunter likes it when a deer walks right up to them. There’s gotta’ be at least a little chase.
“Yeah, well,” I say. I drain the glass. “Get me another.”
She obeys, but when she brings me my second glass, she flirts even harder with me.
I chug down the second whisky, but I’m still not feeling it. All I can think of is Andrea’s screaming voice as I pound her into oblivion.
I reach into my wallet and slam some money down onto the bar.
“Thanks,” I mutter, cutting the bartender off in mid-sentence.
I get up off my stool and walk off.
I step outside into the cold air. It should feel refreshing to be back outside, but even this air doesn’t feel fresh to me anymore. To someone from the city, like Andrea, this air would be as fresh as it gets. But for me, it’s tainted by even this small bit of civilization. It feels stifling.
I barely feel the whisky. Maybe I can just go to another bar, one that’s more crowded. I need one that’s so loud that I don’t even need to speak. I need to get so drunk that I couldn’t speak coherently even if I wanted to.
Women. Let one break through your shell, even just for one night, and you’ll be ruined for months.
As I walk down the sidewalk, a voice calls out behind me. “Winters? Coal Winters? Is that really you?”
Fuck. I recognize the voice, but I can’t quite place it. I turn around and see a man with wide shoulders, strong arms, and a bit of a beer gut. He has wild curly hair sprouting up out of his scalp, and a hard face with a cleft chin. He smiles when I make eye contact, and his whole demeanor softens when he recognizes me.
Then I finally recognize him. Curly. From basic training.
“Curly,” I say in disbelief. “Shit...now I get it! I thought your nickname was ironic.”
He laughs and runs a hand through his hair. “The guys saw how hurt I was when they shaved off my locks; they were just giving me shit for it.”
Curly—and all the rest of us—had shaved heads during basic. It was hard to place him at first, but as soon as he smiled, I recognized him.
“Shit, man,” Curly says. “I never really thought I’d see you again. Didn’t you join the SEALs?”
We shake hands, both squeezing hard. Curly’s grip is rock solid; he may have gotten himself a bit of a gut, but his strength is all still there.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m out though. You got sent to Iraq, right?”
“For a while,” Curly says, nodding. “Then Syria. Now I’m a fucking lawyer. Can you believe that?”
“Good for you, man.”
“You on vacation here, too? Got a wife?”
“Nah,” I say. I consider elaborating, but I just leave it at that.
“You always were a man of few words, Winters. So no vacation, or no wife?”
“No to both. I live around here.”
Curly arches an eyebrow at me. “Really? In town? You work as a bouncer or something then?”
“Nah, I hunt, I fish, I make furniture. I live in the woods. It’s great man, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
He gives me a knowing look. Only men who have served can understand it—we cope with what we’ve been and what we’ve done in our own ways, and Curly suddenly understands everything there is to know about me. He doesn’t need to ask any more questions.
“So...you just came into town for a drink?” Curly asks. “My wife is doing some bullshit spa thing with her friends. Want to go get drunk?”
I nod. “I’m way ahead of you. Let’s go to another bar, though, I’m not feeling this one.”
Shit, maybe drinking and shooting the shit with Curly will be a better way to get Andrea out of my head than fucking some random woman. It can’t hurt to try, and if it doesn’t work, there’s always plenty of women willing and hungry for it.
7
Andrea
“Let’s get drunk,” Lindsay says. “David told us to blend in. Everyone who comes here gets drunk.”
I sigh. “I don’t really feel like going out.”
“You’d rather go hiking?” She winks at me.
“No. I’d rather order room service and binge watch House Hunters until I pass out.”
Lindsay grabs me by the arm. “Unacceptable. I need you recharged and invigorated for what lays ahead of us. If we don’t knock this out quick, it could drag on, and we might get pulled off Vegas. I am not risking that, Andrea.”
“Going and drinking won’t recharge me,” I say, pleadingly. “HGTV will.”
“You don’t have to drink then,” Lindsay says. “Just go dancing with me.”
Lindsay broke up with her boyfriend a few weeks ago. I know exactly what she wants, and why she wants me to go with her.
“If you want me to be your wing woman,” I say, “just ask.”
She scoffs. “You think I’m just trying to get laid? That’s only part of it.”
“What’s the other part?”
“It’s part of the healing process. My wounds with Mark are still fresh, and I need this to...reboot my system.”
“So your vagina is a computer now?”
“I saw that hot dress you unpacked, Andrea. Go put it on and meet me in the lobby in forty-five minutes.”
I roll my eyes, but agree. As much as I wanted to just eat and watch TV all night, having someone force me to go out makes it a bit easier. I’m not doing it for me, I’m doing it for her. And just maybe going out will help my state of mind, too. It’s like Lindsay says, it could reboot my system. Right now I’m infected with the Coal virus, and that won’t do.
Not that I’m planning on another one-night stand with a different guy. It’s just that the idea of going out and trying to have fun might do me a lot of good.
I decide to commit to the idea of having fun. I take way too long to get my makeup on and hair done, and before I know it, there’s a pounding on my door.
“Andrea!” Lindsay shouts through the door. “Pleasssseeeeee.”
I open the door with my makeup half on.
“Oh,” she says in a surprised voice. “You’re getting ready? So you’re going?”
“Yeah,” I say, smiling. “I just took too long to get ready.”
I look down at Lindsay and see that she’s fully decked out in a miniskirt and fuck-me heels. Her makeup looks amazing.
“Damn,” I say. “Why don’t you just do my makeup for me? That looks incredible.”
She’s not only good at it, but fast, and after ten minutes we are ready to roll. We head out of the hotel and walk right down the main street. The bars and good restaurants are all super close by.
“See,” Lindsay says. “This is showing us how valuable this real estate is. This hotel is centrally located and makes it easy to go out and have fun. If you get too drunk, you can just stumble right back to your room with minimal risk.”
I nod. All the other hotels are super small and dingy, or way too far outside of town. I see why David is pushing so hard for this buyout.
>
We go to some club that Lindsay has picked out. There’s a long line outside, but since we are two single women in tight dresses, we are let in after waiting for only a few minutes.
The club is packed with people dancing—mostly tourists from the looks of it. Very few people actually live in this town, and the expensive dresses and shoes all give me the impression that a lot of these people are from San Francisco and Portland.
Lindsay orders us drinks straight away—Mojitos—and mine goes straight to my head. I don’t usually drink, and when I do, it’s usually just a glass of wine with dinner.
Lindsay drains hers almost immediately and orders a second. “Want another?”
“No,” I say. “I’m good.”
I was determined to have fun, so I force myself to dance. And it is fucking fun; I don’t even think about Coal the whole time, except when I mentally note to myself that I’m not thinking about him...that doesn’t count, right?
Lindsay and I dance together, which is a blast, but soon the hungry guys start creeping up on us.
Some douchebag comes up right behind me and starts grinding on my ass, and I swat him away.
“Come on, sweetie, we’re just having fun,” he says, flashing a big, shit-eating grin. He smells like he’s been drinking since the late afternoon, and he’s big and strong enough to really scare me.
I look for Lindsay, hoping she can give me an excuse to get away from him, but I see her laughing and squeezing some guy’s arm. They’re both looking at each other as if they’ve already mentally fucked each other and are just waiting for it to physically happen.
Damn it.
“Look here, sweetie,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be like that. Let me buy you a drink at least.” His eyes look fiendish, like he’s on something.
Right. I’m going to let the creepy guy who smells like an old bottle of whiskey buy a drink for me. Rohypnol included at no extra charge.
“Oh my God!” I say. “Tiffany? Is that you?” I shout it really loud and point vaguely across the club.