“Same.”
“Good choice. The men up here like a woman with a bit of padding. And you two certainly need a bit.” She sauntered away, refilling coffee as she went.
“I’m not sure if that was a compliment or not.” Sloan reached for her coffee.
Grier glanced up from where she was dumping a plastic creamer into hers. “Actually, I don’t think it was an insult. I think it’s a refreshing change.”
“Refreshing?”
“Yeah. Everything in New York is about maintaining our image. It’s nice to hear a different version of perfect.”
Sloan glanced into the shimmering top of her cup. Grier’s words had struck a chord. “Do you really think we live that way?”
“Not you and me, in how we treat each other. But yeah, I think there’s something of the rat race in how we live. Especially in our jobs. Hell, would you actually go out and buy Armani if you weren’t trying to impress the latest editor you’re wooing?”
Sloan thought about her latest purchase, a gorgeous charcoal suit. “Maybe.”
“Okay. Wrong example, queen of the closet. But think about it in a broader sense. When’s the last time you went out without makeup? Or even thought about wearing ratty old jeans to pick up Sunday-night Chinese food.”
“Is it wrong to get fixed up? Or to want to look nice?”
Grier waved a hand. “No, no. That’s not what I meant. I mean the whole idea of doing it because it’s expected of you. Like every moment needs to be scripted to perfection.”
Sloan couldn’t help but think of the unscripted moments she’d shared the evening before with Walker. The all-consuming heat that had built up between them. The
immediacy
of it all. He saw her and he took her.
Which made his rejection that much more upsetting.
One moment they were so wrapped up in each other there wasn’t enough room between them to slip a piece of paper and the next he was checking out and sending her back to her room.
At Grier’s questioning look, Sloan returned her attention to their conversation. “You sound like you’ve suddenly become a fan of Alaska.”
Grier shrugged. “It’s not so bad. And that’s all because of you, by the way.”
Sloan reached out and laid a hand over Grier’s. “It’s all because of you. And who you are. I simply provided the liquor to drop natural inhibitions for a few brief moments so everyone could get to know the real you.”
“That you did.” Grier squeezed back before reaching for another creamer. “And while the people part has definitely improved, I wouldn’t say much else has improved. Walker called me yesterday. Kate’s still not backing down on the house.”
“Do you want it that badly?”
“I don’t know. Honestly, there’s a huge part of me that wants to just give it to her and be done.”
“So why don’t you?”
“It’s like he wanted me to have it, you know.” Grier fiddled with the empty plastic creamer. “And I don’t have a problem giving it up. Hell, a month ago I didn’t even know it existed. But I can’t quite shake the fact that he wanted me to see what it’s like up here. Try it for a while. But no matter what I think, all I look like is the greedy interloper.”
“And you think you’re wrong for that?”
“I don’t think it makes me very sympathetic to anyone.”
“Why does anyone else matter?”
Grier’s gaze tripped around the room before settling back on Sloan. “He lived here. Made a life here. I’d like to think these people he called his friends thought well of me.”
Before Sloan could say anything, Grier added, “After the year I’ve had, I can’t figure out if it’s the universe kicking my ass some more or if it’s a second chance. But, whatever the answer, I’m just not quite ready to give it up.”
“Then you shouldn’t.”
Two heaping plates of pancakes were laid out before them. As the warm scent of bacon wafted toward her, Sloan couldn’t help but wonder how it was that she and her best friend—two New Yorkers to the core—had ended up having a cozy breakfast for two in the middle of Alaska.
The thought didn’t have much time to take root as their twosome rapidly expanded.
“Mind if we pull our table up?” Sloan glanced up at another tree-sized man with several days’ worth of growth on his cheeks. His equally massive friend hung back slightly. “You two look like you could use some company.”
“Be our guest.” Grier waved a hand.
After quick introductions, Sloan couldn’t hold back a smile. “Tom and George. Those are your real names. No nicknames we need to be aware of?”
“No, no nicknames here.”
“That must make you unique in this town.”
“That it does,” Tom, the quieter of the two, agreed.
As their conversation spun out, Sloan had to acknowledge that not only were Tom and George enjoyable breakfast companions, but they could provide some great material for the backstory in her article. “Do you both mind if I interview you a bit?”
“Interview us? For the story you’re writing?” George sat forward, an eager smile across his face. “We’re in.”
The conversation Sloan thought was between the four of them was quickly interrupted by a series of shouts.
“Can we get in?”
“Hey! I want to be interviewed!”
“What about us?”
Grier’s attempt at a discreet giggle missed horribly as her laughter carried across the table. “There really is no such thing as privacy in this town.”
“If you want privacy, don’t go out,” Tom pointed out reasonably.
Sloan reached for the steno pad she kept in her purse, amusement at the sage advice lightening the mantle of melancholy she hadn’t even realized hung around her shoulders. “You’re all sure? You really want to be interviewed?”
A chorus of yesses came back at her.
“Let me put this another way. Who here doesn’t want to be interviewed?”
When no one uttered a sound or raised their hands, Sloan shrugged. “Okay. You’re my witness, Grier.” She rummaged in her bag for another pad of paper and a pen, shoving both across the table. “Please take notes on who’s who.”
Grier picked up the pen. “Got it.”
Turning back toward the crowd, Sloan jumped in with the question she’d been wondering about from the start. “What’s wrong with the women right here in Indigo?”
At the blank stares, she elaborated. “That you have to look outside the town for women.”
When more blank stares greeted her, Sloan wondered if there was some unspoken code she’d missed. What she didn’t expect was the raised hand at the back of the room. “Yes?”
A small man stood up. He wasn’t unattractive, but he didn’t have the rugged presence of the others. Not just in physical size, but in demeanor as well. “There aren’t enough of them.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The women. There aren’t enough of them. The men outnumber the women almost two to one.”
“Oh.”
“And then, when you factor in that there are some men who all the women seem to go for, well, it’s an honor that bachelorettes come up here wanting to meet us.”
An unfamiliar tightness coalesced in her chest as she watched the man standing there, his words honest and not even remotely tinged with bitterness.
Instead, he stood and spoke fact.
And in that moment, Sloan had the startling realization that loneliness could touch you anywhere, whether you were in the middle of eight million people or seven hundred and twelve.
Chapter Eleven
W
alker found her at the café, surrounded by men, after he and Jack got done hammering up the bleachers.
“She’s quite a looker,” Jack leaned toward him and murmured. “And it sure looks like the town’s taken to her.”
Walker figured the man was entitled to a few jabs, especially after his own prodding and poking about Jess, but damn, if the sight didn’t irritate him. “She’s trouble.”
“More like trouble follows her, I’d guess.” Jack slapped him on the back before following their waitress to a table.
Shouts and laughter rang out through the room and Sloan was clearly the ringleader among the ruckus.
Trouble
was right.
“So what happens after the auction and dinner dance?”
George Tapper admonished her. “If you need to ask that, you’re not a very good reporter, Ms. McKinley. Nor do you have a very good imagination.”
A round of guffaws went up and Sloan’s fair complexion turned a rosy shade of dark pink. Despite her obvious embarrassment, she maintained her composure. “I meant after-after. Not right after. When the women go home.”
A man in the back—Boone Fellows, Walker thought—hollered back. “Some don’t go home.”
“Oh?” Those bright blue eyes lit up like the Fourth of July. “What do you mean?”
George nodded sagely. “Lots of the bachelorettes have stayed up here. Margaret and Tanya stayed a few years back.”
“Don’t forget Marcy!” one man hollered.
Maria, their waitress, added to the list as she floated around refilling coffees. “Darla and Melissa about seven or eight years ago. And remember Wade? Up and moving off to Arizona three years ago to go with that girl from Phoenix.”
“That’s quite a few love matches.” Sloan scribbled on a notepad in her lap. “Is that what you’re all hoping for?”
Walker’s gut tightened at the question.
Was that what they were all hoping for?
A wife to come home to? Someone to tie themselves to for the rest of their lives?
Commitment. The promise of forever.
There wasn’t any such thing. His father had proven that one, even if no one else knew it but him.
And in keeping that secret, he’d managed to carve off his own little piece of misery. Caught between his grandmother’s memories of her perfect son and the cold reality of truth.
Nope. He liked his commitment-free life just fine. No commitment meant no hurt feelings when someone moved on. No long, endless years marking time with someone you didn’t really care about. And most of all, it meant there wasn’t any deception.
Based on the round of resounding “yesses
,
” “sures” and “absolutelys,” Walker figured he was the only man in town who felt that way.
Roman didn’t count now that he didn’t live there any longer. And Mick’s sudden and marked interest in Grier had him wondering if his friend’s bachelorhood wasn’t something he’d abandon if given half the chance.
With a glance at Jack’s face as he ordered his breakfast, Walker added the man to his mental tally of confirmed bachelors.
At least there were two of them who felt the same way.
“He can’t keep his eyes off of you.”
“Grier. You’re bordering on the way Susan treats Avery with the whole she-knows-better crap. Enough with this.”
“But he likes you, Sloan. I know it.”
Sloan resolutely avoided glancing across the diner. The men had proven incredibly helpful, but all had reluctantly said their good-byes as they were called off to their various jobs. And now she and Grier sat alone in the dining room along with Walker and a man she hadn’t met yet.
“If he liked me, Princess Dry Spell would be sitting proudly in the brand-new castle of Princess Got Me Some. Instead, I’m nursing a serious case of postorgasm embarrassment because he ran out on me.”
“You don’t know why he ran off. Avery said she interrupted you guys. Maybe
he
was embarrassed.”
“You seriously expect me to believe a few moments of inconvenient awkwardness will keep a man from closing the deal with a willing woman?” Sloan stopped just short of dropping her head in her hands and let out a light groan instead. “A
very
willing woman.”
“There has to be a reason.”
“Yes, and you’re looking at her.”
“No way. And if you think that then your mother’s bullshit has affected you far worse than I suspected.”
Sloan glanced up from her coffee. “What does any of this have to do with my mother?”
“You tell me? You’ve been weird for the last week and I think it’s tied to what happened at Thanksgiving. Actually, for what’s been happening a lot longer than that.”
The eagle eyes of friendship bored into her psyche as a sharp pain hit her gut. “You know the holidays aren’t easy.”
“A lot of people struggle at the holidays. It’s a time of joy and it’s disheartening when you don’t feel any.”
Leaning forward, Sloan lowered her voice to a whisper, unwilling to broadcast her personal embarrassment through the diner. “I’m just so sick of it. The constant focus on being single. It gets so old, this relentless focus on something I can’t control. The holidays only shine a spotlight on it.”