“Maybe not, but that’s the rules,” the man said.
He would not be argued out of it. The only option left to Madeline that did not entail forking over an extra one hundred and fifty bucks was to take the car back to Denver and get another one. It was one enormous loop of red tape, but Madeline was not the sort to let go of one hundred and fifty bucks without a fight.
“Fine,” she said pertly to the car guy. “I’ll return it tomorrow and check it out again. Will that make you happy?”
“Not particularly, but it doesn’t matter to me. Would you like me to reserve that for you?”
She rolled her eyes. “Please.”
“Okay. Midsize or compact?”
“You already know what I want! I already have the car, which, I’d like to point out is a kind of a piece of junk.”
“Sorry, but I can’t guarantee it will be that car,” the man said.
Madeline thought she was teetering on the edge of losing her mind completely. As she argued with the man about renting yet a different car, she noticed Luke walking down the street toward her, his hands shoved in his pocket, his gaze on the sidewalk in front of him. Her pulse instantly ticked up, and her mind was suddenly clouded with the memory of that kiss, that singularly spectacular and quite unexpected, delicious, knee-melting kiss.
As Luke walked past her, he glanced up briefly, took two steps, then stopped and took two steps back, dipping a little to better see her, a smile on his face.
Madeline gestured to her cell phone, then held up one finger to indicate she’d only be a minute longer. “Okay,” Madeline said. “Thanks. I’ll be there tomorrow.” She clicked off the phone and smiled at Luke.
“So what did you do with Madeline?” he asked. “You know, the woman in bad shoes and stained shirt?”
“You should recognize me by now, as this is the bazillionth time you’ve ‘run into me,’” she said, making air quotations with her hands.
“That’s because you happen to be staying at the place with the best breakfast in town. So what’s going on here? You decide to stay a couple of days and do a complete about-face?”
“You know what they say, when in Rome,” she said airily.
Luke folded his arms across his chest and eyed her up and down. “I like it,” he said, nodding approvingly. “I like it a lot. But I didn’t have you pegged for the polka dot type.”
Madeline laughed.
“I didn’t think you could get any cuter, but you just did.” He reached for the tail of her braid and playfully flicked it.
Madeline was thrilled with his approval. Absurdly thrilled. So thrilled that she set feminism back about two decades. “It’s just a sundress,” she said.
“It’s a dress all right,” he said easily, and Madeline could feel herself melting inside. “Before you were cute in a Madeline-work-no-play kind of way. Now you’re cute in a funky, fun way. Like the jacket,” he added with a crooked smile.
Madeline realized she was beaming. But no one had ever called her fun before, and she was surprised by how much she liked it.
“Heading out to the ranch?” he asked.
“Ah, yes. About that,” she said, crossing her feet at the ankles, which was a little hard to do in hiking boots, “I’ve been kicked out of the Grizzly Lodge and I need a place to stay.”
“That’s not good,” he said casually, his gaze sliding down her body to her boots, and slowly up her legs again.
“I’m sorry—I know you’d rather I stay somewhere else. But there isn’t really any other place.”
Luke shrugged. “What’s one more at this point? Technically, it belongs to you. In fact, you should stay in my old room. Last one on the left,” he said, and flicked his gaze over her. “The bed’s pretty comfortable.”
A tiny shiver slipped down her spine. “I promise it will be like I was never there. In fact, I won’t be there much. I have to work, I’ve got it all lined up. And I have to go to Denver tomorrow—”
“Denver? What for?”
“To return that crappy little car and get a new one,” she said. “It’s a complication with the rental company that defies all logic and is too absurd to even say out loud.”
“I know you don’t like complications,” he said, playing with the tip of her braid again, rubbing it between his fingers. “As it happens, I’m going to Denver tomorrow, too. I could pick you up and bring you back if you need a ride.” He tugged on her braid, forcing her to take a step closer to him.
“Great idea… but then I’d have nothing to drive while I’m here.”
“You could drive my mom’s Pontiac. It’s not the most stylish thing in the world, but it runs like a tank.”
Madeline remembered the Pontiac in the garage. It looked like a tank. “I don’t know how to drive a tank,” she said. “And I don’t have night goggles.”