“Would you like to make a speech?” Wade handed her the microphone before she could say that no, she really did not want to make a speech, but thanks so much for thinking of her.
“Um, thanks for voting for me,” she said, her voice sounding a little bit scared when amplified so many times. She was used to giving speeches in courtrooms, but not with sound systems and all that. “I really enjoyed listening to all of you, though, so I don’t think it’s really fair to have just one winner.”
The audience clapped all the harder.
“No need to be modest,” Wade said, patting her on the shoulder. “Wes, how about coming up here and telling her about her prize?”
Oh, no. The prize. She’d just won a rock climbing lesson. This was just slightly awkward. But Wes didn’t seem to think it was awkward at all. He jumped up onto the stage, grinning like always, and took the microphone.
“Amber, you’ve won a two-hour lesson tomorrow taught by yours truly,” he said, and everyone clapped again. Then he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and guided her off the stage before she could protest.
Once they were out of the spotlight, she grabbed his arm. “I . . . you know I can’t do that,” she protested.
“I said you won a lesson. I didn’t say what kind.” He reached out and tucked a curl behind her ear. “Come on. It’s a gorgeous night out—let’s take a walk.”
Chapter Six
The stars were out in full force. As Wes and Amber moved away from the main buildings, the stars seemed even brighter, and Wes took a deep breath. He never stopped being amazed at this beautiful place where he got to live.
“My brain is so full of stuff right now, I don’t even know where to start,” Amber said, pressing her hands to her forehead.
“Start by taking a nice long walk with me.” Wes caught her fingers and intertwined them with his.
“A long walk? Like, how long?”
“Long enough to get away from some of the chaos, but not so long that you’ll wish we brought four-wheelers,” he said.
“That sounds like you’re trying to skirt the question.”
“Me? Never. I’m always completely direct.” He gave her fingers a squeeze and guided her toward the river.
He knew the terrain well enough that he could have crossed it with his eyes closed, but the light coming from the moon and stars served to guide them both and eased his mind about Amber tripping over something she didn’t know was there. Before long, the soothing sound of the rushing water greeted them.
He led her to a spot where the grass grew soft and spongy, and they sat together and listened to the water and looked up at the stars.
“So, about your lesson,” he said. “What would you like to learn? I’m excellent at eating, as you’ve already seen, so maybe you need an intermediate course rather than the beginner’s. I could teach you the finer points of sledding, but you’d have to come back in the winter for that. We could go horseback riding, swimming, golfing, hiking—anything you like for two hours. What will it be?”
She smiled and then looked thoughtful. “What about eating plus hiking? Carry along a picnic, like we did today?”
“I was hoping you’d say that. The mountains are my favorite part about this place, and you only sort of looked at them today. I’d like you to meet them on friendlier terms.”
“I love hiking. What time should we go?”
He raised an eyebrow. “What time do you have free?”
She made a low noise of frustration. “I wish I didn’t have to follow this stupid schedule. I honestly don’t know what we’re supposed to be getting out of it.” She fished in the pocket of her dress and pulled out a piece of paper. “I followed Giles’s example and actually brought it with me. We’re supposed to go rafting at one o’clock. That gives me all morning.”
“Perfect. Mornings are amazing around here, but you’ll want a jacket for the first little bit. Then as the sun gets higher, you’ll be dying of heat.”
“My favorite. Freezing and then baking. Like a microwave dinner.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “Not quite that dramatic, but I like the way you think.”
Her hair shimmered in the moonlight, and he wanted to touch it again. It had felt so soft when he’d tucked that one curl behind her ear. Did he really need an excuse? He reached out and played with a lock that rested on her shoulder. She didn’t say anything, but she scooted a little closer to him, and he smiled. This was nice. And going hiking together would be really nice. Now if only she were staying on the ranch a little longer . . . but that was a depressing thought, and he didn’t do depressing. He wanted to focus on what was happening in the here and now, and right here, right now, was a beautiful, intelligent woman who seemed to like him.
“I just keep thinking back to this afternoon,” Amber said after a long moment. “One minute, you were telling me about how you sometimes have to talk people down from the rocks, and then the next thing, you were actually doing it. It was either really coincidental or like you knew it was going to happen or something.”
“It was neither,” Wes replied. “It’s just something that happens frequently. Your mind can be totally made up—you can decide that you’re going to climb that cliff, but your body will give out before you’re ready for it to. Or you can have all the physical strength in the world, but your mind will put up a block and you’ll freeze. I’d say that out of every group of six new climbers, we have at least one who needs help breaking through.”
“That many?” She sounded surprised.
“Yep. And if you think about it, it makes sense—how many times a week do you find yourself needing to scale a cliff while you’re at work? It’s not something you’re used to facing, so you don’t have any resources to fall back on. It’s not easy.”
“That makes sense.” She brought her knees up to her chin and tucked her dress in modestly. “So that’s what you spend most of your time doing, then? Being an emergency therapist?”
“I guess, in a way.” He chuckled. “I started out down on the ground, anchoring people, like Noah and Paislee do now, but we discovered somewhere along the way that I’m best when I can oversee and leap in where I’m needed. And yeah, that quite often requires some on-the-cliff therapy.”
She turned to face him, studying his eyes. He wondered what she could see in them—she seemed mystified, but he didn’t know why. “I can see that about you,” she said after a long moment. “There’s something . . . it’s hard to describe, but I feel like I can trust you. Like if I were on a cliff, you’d always be there to come get me.”
For the shortest moment, Wes felt as though they were talking about something bigger than rock climbing, and the air all but crackled. But he had to be imagining it—he’d only met her that morning, and things just didn’t happen that fast. Although, they had for Liz and Jack, and Glen and Kaya, and—he stopped himself before he listed everyone he knew who had fallen in love on the ranch. They went back decades—there was something about this place that brought people together.
And that’s all this was. The magic of the night and the stars and the river. When she went back home, things would go back to normal.
He kept telling himself that . . .
It was time to pull this thing back around. “That’s my job,” he said, giving her a shoulder bump. “What kind of person would I be to take people climbing and leave them stranded up there?”
“A really rotten one,” she replied. “Almost as rotten as someone who spends the entire night flirting with his date and then never kisses her.”
“What?” Where had that even come from? He tried to reason it out, but it was no use. Almost as soon as he heard the word “kiss,” his arms were already reaching for her, and then he was holding her close and he was done for.
***
Amber laughed quietly as she closed her bedroom door. The look on Wes’s face . . . she would take that memory out and polish it up on rainy days for the rest of her life. She had no idea why
she said it. She’d had every intention of keeping things light and friendly, no strings attached, so she could say good-bye on Sunday and go on with her life. But sitting there with him in the moonlight, all she wanted was for him to kiss her, and then she said it, and then he was kissing her, and . . .
Wow.
She’d been kissed before, and by some pretty good kissers, too. But this was unlike any other kiss she’d ever experienced. Of course there were all the zings and sizzles and explosions that are supposed to go along with a kiss, and it didn’t hurt that he was really muscular and good-looking and all that superficial whatever that girls are supposed to go for, but there was this moment when he pulled back and looked into her eyes, something that made her feel valued and cherished and like she was something amazing. No one had ever looked at her like that, and it had rocked her to the core.
She sighed as she pulled on her pajamas. This wasn’t supposed to be happening, but it was.
She was falling for a guy who had absolutely no place in her life whatsoever.
Maybe a good night’s sleep would help put everything into perspective. After all, just about anyone would look amazing in the moonlight, next to a river.
Chapter Seven
A good night’s sleep did absolutely nothing to solve Amber’s problem. She went to sleep thinking about Wes’s arm around her waist and woke up thinking about how he’d escorted her to her door, kissed her knuckles, and asked if she liked pasta salad or potato salad better. And when she asked if the potato salad had dill pickles in it because she hated sweet ones, he brought her in for another kiss, asked her why she had to be so perfect, and then told her he’d see her in the morning.
And morning was here now, and she couldn’t wait to see him.
She knew it was silly to try to look cute just to go hiking, but she did spend five minutes trying to decide which of her three clean T-shirts to wear, and then whether to do a ponytail or a braid. Good grief—she hadn’t spent this much time choosing her clothes since she was in high school. Her work outfits were all classic, tailored suits with blouses and she just had to mix and match. But T-shirts? This was hard!
It was hard because this was Wes.
And Wes meant something.
She sank down onto the bed to pull on her boots, but stopped before she laced them and rested her head in her hands. What was she doing? And how many times was she going to ask herself that question?
Being an adult was hard.
She bounded down the stairs a few minutes later to find Wes leaning on the counter, talking to Gwen. He turned at her approach and grinned, and she melted all over again. Dang it. Why did he have to be so . . . grinny? And why did his teeth have to be so perfect? Wait . . . maybe there was a little chip in that one. Oh, nope. No chip. His teeth were perfect after all.
Dang it.
He reached out and took her hand as they walked outside, and she let him because it didn’t matter what she thought about it—that was where her hand wanted to be. He’d parked a four-wheeler outside the bunkhouse. He climbed on, she got on behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist—which was where her arms wanted to be—and they took off. As they jounced along, she pressed her face into his shirt and smelled laundry detergent and cologne, a mixture of cinnamon and sandalwood, from what she could tell. And then she grinned. Who wears cologne to go hiking?
Someone who wanted to impress her.
Someone who cared what she thought.
Someone who lived in Idaho and had roots here and loved this place and this family with a devotion she’d never seen before.
Someone she’d leave behind when she went home.
She closed her eyes, breathed in cinnamon, and tried not to think about it.
They reached the trailhead, and Wes brought the four-wheeler to a stop. She didn’t move for a moment—she didn’t want to break the spell. He didn’t move either, but placed his hand on top of hers, and they just sat that way for a minute.
Finally, her stomach growled, and she laughed. “Hey, do you mind if we eat a little bit before we hike? I didn’t take the time to grab anything before we headed out.”
He climbed off the ATV, opened the box on the back, and handed her a sack. “I anticipated such a moment.”
“Oh?” She opened the bag to find a breakfast sandwich inside—a fluffy English muffin with a scrambled egg, slice of cheese, slice of Canadian bacon, and hollandaise sauce. “Oh, wow. This looks good.”
“Bob makes McDonald’s weep with shame.”
They leaned against the four-wheeler side by side while they ate. Wes had also brought along some orange juice, and there was an outhouse at the base of the trail.
“Do you Westons think of everything?” she asked, nodding toward the small, neatly kept building. She’d never seen such immaculate outhouses in her life, if there were such things.
“You can thank the girls in the family for that,” he replied. “The men aren’t into the details so much.”
“I’ll have to send them thank-you notes,” she said, and then immediately regretted her words. Just another reminder that she was leaving the next day.
Wes must have sensed her sudden awkwardness because he fell silent as well. They chewed and swallowed their last bites, then gathered up their trash and stowed it away. “Shall we?” he asked, motioning in the direction of the trail.
“After I visit the little grizzly bear’s room,” she replied over her shoulder as she walked toward the outhouse.
There was even a bottle of hand sanitizer in a holder bolted to the wall. She smiled as she used it. Nowhere else in the world was the wilderness so accommodating.
Wes was loading more food into his backpack when she returned. He made sure the food box was latched securely, and then they headed up the trail. The subtle scents carried Amber away—the aroma of the fall leaves, the occasional wildflowers, the sage—she wished she could somehow bottle it all up to take with her. She wished she could bottle Wes up somehow, like a genie, and take him with her. Yeah, he’d appreciate that, she was sure.
She asked him questions about the trees and the flowers they passed, and he knew all their names. Then he started telling her stories of what it had been like to grow up here, and the Christmases and the birthdays and the family vacations, and the feelings built in her chest and grew stronger and stronger until she was in physical pain. She had to stop and sit down on a log, and he was immediately at her side.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, rubbing her back. “Do you need some water?”
She held up a hand. “No, it’s all right. I’m just . . .” She took a deep breath and forced a smile. “Do you mind if we sit here a minute?”
“Of course not.” He kept rubbing her back, and she leaned into his touch.
After a moment, she said, “You have such an amazing life here.”
“I really do. It’s not perfect all the time—we have our squabbles and our problems just like anyone else—but we have managed to create sort of our own little world here.”
“It’s an incredible world.” She’d meant her comment to sound casual, but her voice caught on the last word, and he looked at her intently.
“What’s the matter, Amber?”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be bothering you with this—it’s our second date. You don’t need to hear my whole life story.”
“Maybe that’s exactly what I should be hearing on our second date. And it’s actually our third.”
“What?”
“Yep. Rock climbing? That was all about you and me. Those other people? They were just for show.”
She couldn’t help it—she smiled, and she knew that was exactly what he was going for.
“So, you really wanna hear my sad story of woe?”
“I really do. That’s a perfect third-date activity.”
She took another deep breath, and tucked into his chest when he put his arm around her. If she could just stay right there, in that perfect hollow created by his shoulder, she
just knew that nothing could ever hurt her again.
“It’s just the whole family thing. The mom, dad, brothers, sisters, home—you have no idea how much I wanted that growing up. I have a mom and a sister, but no dad. He died in a drunk-driving accident when I was eight. Worst part? He was the drunk driver.”
Wes didn’t say anything, but brought his arm around her even closer.
“We moved in with my grandparents on their plantation. Yes, a real plantation, even though it’s pretty small and there are no slaves, so don’t even think that.”
“I wasn’t going to,” he protested.
“Well, everyone does, so I had to be sure. There used to be slaves, but they were all freed at the end of the Civil War.”
“I appreciate knowing that.”
“I’m sure you do.” She wanted to roll her eyes at him, but that would mean moving her head, and her head liked where it was. “Anyway, London was two, and she only has fleeting memories of him. But I was eight, and I remember all kinds of things. Like, when he was sober and he’d take us to the movies and then out for ice cream. Or when he was drunk and he’d yell and throw plates and things across the room.” She shook her head. “I know there are some people who don’t lose their tempers when they drink, but he wasn’t one of them.”
“I’m sorry.” Wes tangled his fingers in her ponytail, and she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she wiped away the few tears that had escaped.
“No, I’m sorry. I’m putting a damper on your perfectly lovely day. It’s just . . . when you talked about all the holidays and the things you did together growing up, and now you’re running this place together, something inside me sort of broke. I’ve always wanted that—getting together with family, doing things, important things. Like laughing.”
“Laughing is important. Don’t you laugh with your mom and sister? Are your grandparents still alive?”
Rugged Rockclimber (River's End Ranch Book 8) Page 5