Discovering You (Miller Lodge Romance Book 1)

by Jadelynn Asher

  “Lisa!” The door banged open, and Lisa regretted not locking it as Beth barged in.

  Lisa sighed and raised herself up on her elbows. “Not so loud. There are kids asleep a couple doors down.”

  Beth stuck her tongue out and shut the door more quietly than she’d opened it. She sat on the foot of Lisa’s bed, the lights on her hat dim as the batteries had died. “I just saw Charles back to his car.”

  “That was nice of you.”

  “It should have been you!”

  Lisa sighed and pulled herself all the way up. “I only had slippers on and didn’t want to go outside. And why should it have been me? We’re broken up, Beth!”

  “But…but this was your chance to not be broken up, and you were so mean! You didn’t even try to encourage him!”

  Lisa found Beth’s indignant attitude annoying. She hadn’t asked Beth to get in the middle of her love life. Or lack there of. “Because I don’t want to date him, Beth! I don’t know what makes you think I wanted to get back together with Charles.”

  Beth opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She closed it and stared at Lisa. “Well, because…you aren’t dating anyone else. So I thought you were…” She waved her hand vaguely. “Moping.”

  “Moping? Really?”

  Beth shook her head. “Maybe that’s the wrong word, but whatever you want to call it. When you stop socializing because you’re trying to get over someone.”

  Lisa frowned and crossed her legs under her, getting more comfortable. “Okay, maybe there was a little moping at first, but that was over like a month ago.”

  “But you’re still not dating.” Beth worried at the point like a dog with a bone, and Lisa clamped down on a sigh. Beth always meant well, but that didn’t make some of her attempts to help any less annoying.

  “I’m taking twenty-one credit hours, and I’ve been working on midterm projects all month. It’s not exactly been the best time to go hunt down a date or three. I go to the dorm stuff. It’s not like I’m a complete hermit.”

  “Huh.” Beth took off her hat and ran her fingers through her hair, which stuck out from her head at odd angles. “I guess I hadn’t thought about it that way. You are going to date again, right?”

  “Of course.” Lisa almost brought up that she was going out with Jason the following evening, but she stopped herself. She still needed to talk to Jason about what had happened tonight and make sure he still wanted to go out. It had all been so weird. Either way, she wasn’t sure it was information Beth needed to know. It was a casual thing and she didn’t want Beth reading too much into it. Because she would.

  Beth nodded, but she still didn’t act like she was going anywhere. Lisa let the silence go on for a moment, but she’d never been the type to just sit and wait, and she was tired. “So what else is on your mind, because it’s obvious something is.”

  “I…oh…” Beth worried her bottom lip between her teeth. “I was just thinking. Since you don’t want to date Charles anymore. Would you…I mean would it be weird… what if I dated him? Not that I know if he wants to, but if he did and if I did. Would you be mad?”

  The question caught Lisa by surprise, though as she thought about it, it shouldn’t have. Beth had always liked Charles, not that she’d ever tried to lure him away or anything, but she had mentioned more than once that she thought he was dreamy. Lisa considered if she should try to warn Beth off, but truthfully, she didn’t want Charles and maybe all the reasons they hadn’t been good together wouldn’t be a problem for him and Beth. Lisa wasn’t about to be the girl who didn’t want a boy but wouldn’t let anyone else have him either. That was…lame.

  “Lisa?”

  “Huh? Oh…I wouldn’t be mad.” She found a smile and shrugged. “No reason to be, but if you get married you should name your first kid after me.”

  Beth raised both eyebrows and snorted. “What if it’s a boy?”

  “Be progressive.” Lisa covered a yawn, not bothering to try to hide it. She was exhausted and really wanted to sleep until about noon, which was unusual for her, but just this once it sounded divine. “Okay…so now that we’ve got your future children planned out can I please go to bed?”

  Beth pushed to her feet, stretching before picking up her hat. “Yeah. I’m beat too. I think I’m just gonna check my email before Grandma turns off the wi-fi again and then fall on my face. Sleep well.”

  “You too.”

  5

  Jason stood in the hallway doing the ‘I’m going somewhere’ pat down to make sure he had all of the necessary things for a date: wallet, keys, cell phone, jacket, cash…check, check, check. He’d woken in a better mood than he’d gone to bed in and decided to go ahead with the date with Lisa. The situation with Chuckles had been weird and not exactly her fault since Beth had orchestrated the whole thing. An evening at the Piano Bar would be a much better measure of compatibility. And, hey, even if they still didn’t hit it off, he could eat deep fried foods, drink a Wasatch, and enjoy the music. It was a decent enough trade off.

  He hadn’t seen Lisa yet today as his day had been hijacked by his Dad and a tour of the upper property and the new cabins going in there. They’d talked Daniel into coming with them, Grandma and Mom being happy to take on the kids, and Austin and Alex had met them half way to the lake. Jason hadn’t seen his dad so happy in a long time. It’d been a while since he’d been surrounded by all of his boys at the same time. Jason felt a little bad for not bringing Beth along, but some brotherly bonding felt good, and they were already a mob.

  Jason ran his hand through his hair, still damp from the shower, and then knocked on Lisa’s door. He expected to hear the sounds of movement beyond the door, or for her to call out ‘just a minute’ because, in his experience, girls always did that. Even if they’d been ready for hours. But the only sound was silence.

  After a few minutes he knocked again and double checked his phone. He was on time and there weren’t any messages. Then again, messages were easily thwarted by the mountains and Grandma’s random wi-fi ‘free times’ when she shut off the router in order to encourage family togetherness. After a third knock, he cautiously opened the door and glanced inside.

  “Lisa?”

  The room was clean. Not the kind of clean that came from merely having a tidy guest, but the kind of clean that meant no one was living there anymore. The hardwood floor shone with a recent sweeping, and the hand-quilted blankets were neatly folded at the foot of the bed. At some point today Lisa had left, and she hadn’t even bothered to tell him. Or something was wrong and she hadn’t been able to tell him.

  He checked his phone and swore at the ‘no service’ icon in the top left corner. He didn’t care about family togetherness right now. He wanted to know what had happened. Jason walked down to the next door and knocked, waiting less time before pushing the door open. Just like Lisa’s room, Beth’s room was empty. Unlike Lisa’s room it wasn’t clean, with an unmade bed and half a dozen candy wrappers scattered on the floor, but her luggage was gone. Wherever the girls were, it seemed likely they were together. That made sense given Beth was Lisa’s ride, but it still didn’t answer the why.

  Jason pushed the door closed and started down the stairs, flicking through his contacts list until he found Lisa’s number. They’d exchanged digits after dinner a couple nights ago reasoning that made coordinating things easier. He made his way to the corner of the kitchen where the router sat and plugged it in, wishing, once again, that he got decent service up here without the hard line.

  While the router powered up and went through all of its procedures Jason pulled up a stool, thinking about what he wanted to say. His first concern was that everyone was all right, a concern he used to squash the idea that maybe she’d run away from an evening with him—did he dare think of it as a date?—after seeing Charlie again. It’s not like he and Lisa were that close, but rejection was still rejection and it stung.

  Finally, the router showed a steady green light, and the ‘no service’
on his phone was replaced by a few weak bars. He flicked open the messenger app and set to texting. He could have called, but this was more comfortable and less humiliating if she was avoiding him.

  *Hey. I’m here, but you’re not. I thought we were going to dinner. You girls okay?*

  The message zipped off and within a few seconds he saw the dots that meant she was typing.

  *Hi. Sorry. Your mom was supposed to tell you we had to go. One of Beth’s midterm files got corrupted. She has to get a new copy to the professor today and trying to use the connection up there was making her hyperventilate.*

  Jason read the message twice. He could fully imagine Beth pacing around the kitchen and grumbling at her computer while anything tried to upload. She put on a big show about not caring about school, but she didn’t want to fail. Especially over something so dumb as a corrupted file. And if the professor was being a stickler about getting it in despite the Fall Break they’d probably give Beth an F for something out of her control too. He’d had a few professors with that attitude.

  *Are you going to come back up once things are worked out?*

  *Not planning on it. It’s a long drive and we were coming back home tomorrow anyway.*

  Jason sighed, leaning back against the wall and balancing the stool up on two legs. Everything she wrote was perfectly sensible. Perfectly reasonable. And it was just a dinner. A first dinner even. It was still a disappointment, and the idea that he could just go himself held little appeal.

  The dancing dots started up again.

  *Raincheck on tonight?*

  He stared at the three words, trying to decide what he thought. Lisa was cute, but was she really worth chasing so hard? They’d had a nice talk and a moment or two, but then she’d blown him off at the party and again today. Was she really worth getting to know? He tapped his thumbs on the edge of the phone before responding.

  *Sure. Next time.*

  Lisa got out of the truck, left behind as Beth ran pell-mell for the dorm. If the moment had been a cartoon, Lisa was certain there would have been a Beth-shaped puff of smoke left behind. She sighed, glancing at her phone again. Jason’s last text had come fifteen minutes ago, and she kept looking at it. She was probably reading too much into it, but the texts seemed disappointed to her. She’d wanted to talk to Jason before they left, but no one had known exactly where he was—somewhere on the mountain with his dad and brothers was as close as his mom knew—and phones weren’t much use up there. Just one more reason wandering off into the wilderness seemed like a bad idea, even if it was a beautiful place.

  She tried to figure out an apology, or even if she should apologize. It wasn’t like she’d meant for any of this to happen, but Beth had been so upset it was natural to help her roommate get back. And, of anyone, Lisa understood not wanting to get a bad grade, especially over something dumb. She’d done the right thing. So why did it feel like she’d missed an opportunity she would regret?

  6

  Lisa leaned back, stretching her back against her melamine dorm chair until her spine popped. The Christmas holiday had flown by, and while she was looking forward to her new classes, she was sad to be away from home again. No. Not really sad because she was happy to be here. It was just that she missed getting up in the morning and talking with her mother and making her father coffee. There was a sense of home that was just the three of them and she always missed it when school started again. Not to mention Arizona had been warm.

  Her gaze darted to the stripped bed on the other side of the room, and she held back a sigh. It didn’t help that Beth had moved off campus over the break. She and Charles were apparently getting on like a figurative house on fire, and when an opening at a complex closer to him came up, Beth had jumped at the chance. Lisa supposed she couldn’t blame Beth, and she didn’t mind having the whole dorm room, such as it was, to herself, but she was really going to miss her roommate.

  She glanced at the clock and pushed back from the little single person desk that came with the room and scooped up her backpack. She was looking forward to her first class, even if it started at 7 in the morning. It was an astronomy course which would fill out an extra science elective for her and cover the GE requirement for a physical science without having to take the stupid basic science class that had somewhere been missed between her ConEd and AP classes. Most importantly, it sounded fun. She’d remembered visiting the lodge with Beth and looking at the stars over the lake. She liked the idea of putting names to those stars and understanding more about how they worked. It was a great class to help her brain wake up first thing in the morning.

  Lisa bundled up in every stitch of winter gear she had and hit the campus at a careful penguin inspired shuffle. A combination of salt and ice crunched under her feet and her breath snuck through her scarf in little plumes of steam in the grey of predawn. It took ten minutes to get to the science building, and by then she was dealing with the odd combination of sweating under her coat while her nose dripped from the cold.

  She scrambled into the astronomy class just seconds before the bell rang and dove for the first empty seat, shedding winter clothes onto the floor at her feet. As she pulled the bright pink knitted hat from her head, she looked up and accidentally met the gaze of the man sitting a few chairs away from her. The hat fell from her fingers as recognition set in. Jason! What was Beth’s brother, the date raincheck she’d never made, doing in an astronomy class here?

  She was suddenly filled with questions, none of which she could ask because the professor was starting the lecture, and she couldn’t bring herself to whisper or pass notes during a lecture. Not that she was able to pay attention either, which made her glad it was the first lecture and most of the information would be repeated or online.

  He looked good. The thought crowded its way into her brain, pushing past thoughts of the lecture. The thermal patterned top he wore stretched over his shoulders and chest, hinting at more muscle than she’d remembered. He’d cut his hair too, which made his eyes stand out. It surprised Lisa that she remembered so much about him when they’d only seen each other for a few days.

  Jason wasn’t looking at her. In fact, it seemed like he was determined not to look at her again. She couldn’t exactly blame him. They hadn’t parted on the best of terms, and she’d thought about reaching out to apologize for blowing him off several times, but it was something she just couldn’t do over text. It seemed like she had the opportunity in front of her now. At least if he was willing to let her try.

  The hour passed by in a slow grind. Jason stared at the screen as the professor rambled on about the difference between the science of astronomy and the folklore behind astrology. He’d known when he transferred schools that there was a chance he’d run into Lisa on campus, but he hadn’t expected it on the first day in his first class. He thought he was past his resentment of how she’d treated him. He’d even asked Beth about her during Christmas break, but seeing her sitting right there brought on a flood of thoughts and emotions. On one level she still appealed to him, and on the other was the remembered gut shot of going to dinner alone because he already had the reservation and didn’t want to talk to his mother about any of it. It was the only time in his life he’d been stood up.

  The moment the bell rang he shrugged into his jacket and joined the throng muscling out the door. He didn’t have another class for an hour, and Beth had told him one of the campus eateries had really good breakfast options. Burying himself in a platter of hash browns and eggs sounded really good.

  As he stepped outside and started down the walkway, the January wind slapped against his face with a welcome sting, reminding him that he needed to buy lift tickets if he wanted to go skiing over the Civil Rights holiday. The thought of hitting the slopes was a welcome distraction. Maybe he could get Beth to ditch her lame-ass boyfriend for the weekend and come too; that would be fun.

  “Jason!”

  He instinctively turned his head at the sound of her voice, seeing Lisa’s slim figure bun
dled up in enough winter gear to make him smile despite himself. It wasn’t that cold, at least not to the native born. He stopped walking, turning in time to see her foot hit a patch of unsalted ice. She lurched into a slide and, without thinking, Jason jumped forward and caught her around the waist, anchoring her until she got her feet under her.

  Her eyes were wide and startled and, this close, she smelled like lavender. Once he was sure she wasn’t going to slip again Jason released her. The oddness of the moment struck him, and Jason couldn’t stop his smile. “That’s not how I pictured seeing you again.”

  “Me either. I…when did you switch schools?”

  Jason shrugged. It was a natural question, and he didn’t mind the answer. “Over the break. My dad was up on that ladder at the boathouse again right before Fall finals. He fell and broke his leg. He’s too big for Mom to take care of easily, so I volunteered to move back home and finish school here while helping with his recovery. I graduate in April, which should work out pretty well with him being back to his stubborn self and in time for me to figure out my next step. It’s a little inconvenient, but all in all it works out.”

  Lisa nodded, shifting her bag higher on her shoulder. She blew out a puff of steam, her cheeks and nose turning pink in the early morning light. He could see she was freezing, but she didn’t complain.

  “I bet Beth is happy to have you closer to home.”

  “Eh…given her obsession with her boyfriend, I’m not sure she notices.”

  Lisa flinched slightly, reminding Jason that Beth’s current boyfriend was Lisa’s ex. He’d tried to ask Beth how that all worked out, but she’d been really good at dodging the question. Probably for good reasons.