“Just pull on a pair of jeans. Living in the mountains is a whole lot easier if you leave the heels in your closet.” She winked at Madeline.
But Madeline hadn’t brought jeans. She had another pair of slacks in her bag. Slacks that went with these shoes and this blazer. She hadn’t planned on recreational wear, she’d planned on three days of what she thought would be meetings. “It’s okay,” she said, and forced a smile. “I’m not staying long. Thanks for the aspirin,” she said, shook two from the bottle, and made her way to her room.
The Bear Cub was definitely a lodge room, with low, beamed ceilings, an adobe fireplace, and a four-poster bed with a quilt cover. And, naturally, the obligatory bearskin rug. The room was certainly cozy, just as Dani had said when Madeline had checked in. Perhaps too cozy—Madeline felt as if she were sleeping in a bear’s den.
She kicked off her shoes first, and one of them ended up on the snout of the bearskin. She took the aspirin, then collapsed back onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling.
She was exhausted. Emotionally, physically, all of it.
Madeline, who always had a plan, who had every moment of her day mapped out, didn’t know where to go from here.
She did not like the way uncertainty felt.
She, Emma, and Libby had argued about what to do, punctuated by generally unhelpful advice from Jackson Crane. Luke hadn’t said much. She could sense he wanted to hold someone responsible for his father’s poor decisions, and she felt for him in that regard, she truly did—she was no stranger to a parent making bad decisions. But she’d been making up for bad parents all her life, and she didn’t want, or even know how, to make up for his.
A faint beeping filtered into her thoughts. Madeline dug her cell phone out of her purse and noticed that she had missed two calls.
Both from Stephen.
She winced, tossed the phone into her purse.
She would call him, she would. But right now she was starving. Madeline sat up, looked at her shoes, and with a wince, stuffed her feet back into them.
She could hear the din of the Stakeout before she realized it was coming from the blue western building with the wooden porch and the swinging saloon doors. From the look of the packed gravel parking lot across the street, everyone in Pine River was here. Madeline dreaded going to restaurants alone; it seemed to give off a lonely, cat lady vibe. But then, she couldn’t remember ever being this hungry before. Ravenous! With a little salt and pepper, she would eat the railing.
She stepped in through the swinging saloon doors to the hostess desk.
“Table for two?” the hostess asked without looking up.
“One,” Madeline said.
The young woman glanced up, her gaze flicking over Madeline. “This way.” She picked up a menu and started walking through the crowded room, past the bar where people stood shoulder to shoulder, past tables where food had been served family style.
She finally stopped at a small two-top near the back of the restaurant, just outside the kitchen and next to the wait station. “Drink?” she asked, and put a menu on the table as Madeline squeezed into a chair between the table and the wall.
“Wine,” Madeline said. “A big glass of red wine.”
“You got it,” the woman said, and disappeared into the crowd.
Only a few minutes later, a young man appeared carrying a bowl of wine on a stem. “Would you like to hear the specials?” he asked. “We have buffalo steaks tonight.”
As Madeline had been raised on cans of Chef Boyardee and ramen noodles, she was not particular about food—anything was good. And buffalo sounded wildly exotic. “I’ll have that,” she said.
The waiter whipped out his pad and jotted it down. “How would you like it cooked?”
“Umm… medium?”
“Sides?”
“Whatever you have,” she said, smiling. “Thanks.” She picked up the enormous glass of wine and sipped. She closed her eyes, felt the wine filtering down to her toes. She’d relaxed from the pent-up explosion of anxiety she’d felt building in her all day. Now, she felt nothing but a low-grade headache and a bone-deep exhaustion.…
Until the hairs on the back of her neck began to prickle.
Madeline suddenly felt as if someone was standing just beside her. She opened her eyes and let out a small gasp of surprise—there was someone standing beside her. His arms were crossed, and a beer bottle dangled from two fingers. His weight was all on one hip, and his gray eyes shone with a hint of amusement.
Madeline couldn’t help herself; she smiled. Those eyes inspired a lot of internal fluttering. A lot. “Hello, Luke.”