“What makes you say that?”
“You’re surly.”
Trevor lifted his cup. “Nah, caffeine just hasn’t had time to take effect.”
“This is more than a normal morning grump. If you hadn’t been interested in this woman, you’d be telling me all about what happened on that highway.” Sam narrowed his gaze, studying him. “I’m thinking she was a red-hot redhead.”
Ignoring him, Trevor took another sip of coffee and repressed the grimace when it went down.
“Exotic looking? Black hair?”
He didn’t bat an eyelash.
“A blond princess?”
“More like a sleeping beauty,” Trevor blurted. “She spoke openly to me, as if I were her brother or husband, and she was almost abnormally naive.”
“And you liked her.”
Trevor rolled his eyes. “Lord, Sam. Is this junior high?”
“Was that a yes, my cynical friend?” Sam’s tanned cheeks formed two deep crevices when he smiled.
Trevor scowled. Sam had been the world’s biggest cynic until he’d fallen for Darla. Now he’d decided he had some obligation to pull Trevor into romantic bliss alongside him. The guy had been nudging him toward women constantly, and he’d been way too interested in Trevor’s weekends.
“Did you get her number, bud?”
Sighing, Trevor strode into his office.
“What about her name?” Sam asked from beyond the wall.
“Just settle yourself down, Sam. She was a tourist. I’ll never see her again.”
Sam fell silent, thank God.
Trevor set the cup on top of his file cabinet and pulled out a topographic map, refusing to think about the woman another second.
He’d never been the type to start up with anyone he couldn’t afford to know well. His parents had been expert at that—between the two of them they’d been married six times. Several of those marriages had lasted less than a year, and several had produced children.
Trevor had eight stepsiblings between the ages of two and his own thirty-two. Except for the toddler, they all had commitment issues.
Not him, though. He stuck with long-term, noncontractual relationships with women who appreciated his realistic view of marriage. He’d been with Martie for four years and Christina for three. Chris had moved on five months ago, and Trevor hadn’t found his next serious girlfriend, yet.
But he would. And they’d have fun and no regrets.
Clearing a spot on his desk, Trevor moved his cup there, then carried the map around to sit and study it. Five college-age counselors would be arriving in three days, requiring a week of intensive training. The following Monday, twenty-six younger boys would arrive, and those were merely the first-session campers. By the end of the next seven weeks, ninety-six boys in various stages of adolescence would have rotated in and out of here. As director of the camp, Trevor needed to be ready.
He lifted the map, forcing himself to think about day hikes and climbing excursions.
“Hey, Trev?”
“Yeah.”
“What color was that rattletrap?”
He froze in his seat for a moment. Then he got up and walked out to the front office, where Sam stood gazing out the screen door. A tan car was pulling into the drive. Trevor watched it slow to a stop behind his Jeep.
When that shoe hit the ground beneath the car door, he knew it was her. Maybe she was lost again.
“Sam, I’ll give you twenty bucks to go out there and give her directions to Longmont. I’m behind on work.”
Sam didn’t answer immediately. Probably because he was preoccupied, watching the leggy brunette get out of the car. “Your sleeping beauty?” he asked.
“She’s not mine, but yeah.”
“She doesn’t look lost now.” Sam’s chuckle got on Trevor’s nerves.
“She said she was going to Longmont,” Trevor said.
“Darla’s friend is arriving this weekend sometime,” Sam reminded him. “Isabel Blume? From Kansas?”
Isabel Blume, from…Kansas.
The lost woman was Darla’s good friend? Trevor would never have suspected. Darla wore leather boots, sturdy jeans and a short haircut that’d require little fuss while she worked around the ranch. She was as good as Trevor and Sam at following a trail and better at fires and fishing.
Trevor couldn’t imagine the lost woman doing any of those things. Hadn’t Darla said her friend was coming to help wherever she was needed, so Sam and Darla’s dadgum July wedding could be saved?
“Your fiancée didn’t tell me her friend was so…”
So, what? Friendly? Sexy?
Distracting?
“…green.”
Sam had already headed outside. Trevor watched him step off the porch to shake the woman’s hand. He watched her smile that same, openly friendly smile. Then he watched her skirt flutter up again.
He’d have to be careful to keep his thoughts off those legs and on the safety of the camp kids.
He’d also have to discourage any more electrified touches or lingering looks. It might be all right to entertain sexual thoughts about a woman he knew he’d never see again, but in the real world, this one wasn’t his type.
Too dewy-eyed. She’d want the white picket fence, the scruffy dog and two children—a boy and a girl if it worked out, but of course she’d adore whichever she got.
Trevor knew that story, too. It had always read like pure fiction to him.
Besides, he had other things to worry about. The ninety-six boys whose parents had paid for this camp deserved his undivided attention. Those kids would learn nothing good from watching their camp director engage in a dalliance with some sexy tourist.
In fact, he’d love to teach them the opposite: that a man should be strong enough to wait for a healthy relationship with a woman he admired.
There went her skirt again.
Okay, so he did admire her legs.
“What in blazes is she doing wearing a skirt to a Colorado mountain lodge, anyway?” he complained to himself just before he shoved his way out the screen door.
“IT IS YOU!” Isabel said as soon as she saw her highway rescuer appear outside. “I knew that Jeep was familiar.”
“Thought you were headed to Longmont.”
“I was. I mean, I did go through there.” She glanced out toward the road. Hadn’t Darla told her she would pass through Longmont? “I was told I had to, to get here.”
The trill of a cell phone interrupted.
“That’s mine,” Sam said, digging it out of his shirt pocket. “Could you help her with her bags, bud? We’re putting her in the Ripple River room, up at the house.”
Isabel watched him put the phone to his ear and walk toward the far end of the porch.
“You were past Longmont when I saw you, only a few miles from here,” the younger man said, returning to the conversation Isabel would have been happy to forget.
She felt silly about getting lost, but this had been her first time to travel so far without her sisters to help navigate. Considering the non-map-reading child she’d had for company, she’d done all right to lose her way only