Rocky Mountain Nights (Roberts of Silver Springs #6) Read online

  The wall had hands that reached out to catch her. “I was just looking for you!”

  Bekah looked up, realizing the man in front of her was Hunter. He was much bigger than he’d looked in the gazebo. “You were? I hope you’re not still angry that I interrupted your work earlier. If you are, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck, looking embarrassed. “I actually was trying to find you to apologize and explain. I’ve had writers’ block for a few months now, and I was sitting in that gazebo, and suddenly all I could think about was what needed to happen next in my story. So I started dictating it into my phone…and your words were picked up by my dictation software. I was frustrated.”

  “I had no idea you were working. I’m very sorry.”

  “Did you think I was just sitting there having a nice chat with myself?”

  Bekah shrugged. “Honestly, I was thinking about my work, and I didn’t even notice anyone was there until you spoke to me.” As much as she hated to admit she lived in her own world, she often did. She could be in a crowded room, and unless she felt like being around people, she could tune them all out.

  “Wow. I wish I had that kind of focus. I need to be able to tune out everyone and everything around me.”

  “I hope you can get a lot done while you’re here.” She stepped off the boardwalk and walked past him. “Have a good day, Hunter!”

  He stood and watched her leave, fascinated by the brain inside that gorgeous woman. Maybe he could get her to teach him some of her concentration tricks. It would sure make his life easier.

  Chapter Two

  That evening, Bekah was unable to sleep—as usual. She didn’t know what it was about her, but she’d never been able to sleep well at night. Her parents always referred to her as their “little vampire.”

  Rather than lie in bed staring at the ceiling in her room in the attic of the B&B, she got up and plugged her headphones into her phone. She’d go for a walk around the B&B grounds. That always helped her to sleep.

  She got outside and breathed in the fresh mountain air. So many people who lived in Silver Springs took the beautiful place and clean air for granted, but she’d promised herself she’d never do that.

  As she walked, her mind was on how she was going to find a way to motivate Jennifer. From what she’d seen after knowing the other girl since kindergarten, the only thing she really cared about was taking away Bri’s boyfriends and Jack. Jack was Bri’s big brother, and he’d recently hooked back up with his high school sweetheart, much to Jennifer’s chagrin. Jennifer had been crushing on Jack for as long as anyone could remember.

  She hoped something would come to her the next day, because she had no idea what to do now. She’d never forget the look on Bri’s face when Bekah had told her that Jennifer would be working for them for at least a week.

  “Are you kidding me? Why would you agree to that?”

  “Money. Enough to make a real dent in the loan we took out for renovations.” Bekah sighed. “I can tell her no if I need to, but I think it’s a great way to get free help and pay off loans all at the same time.”

  Bri shook her head. “You know as well as I do that she’s not going to really be a help around here. She’s too worried about breaking a fingernail.”

  “She’s going to be my responsibility not yours.” Bekah shrugged. “I’ll go back and tell Mrs. Olson we can’t do it.”

  “No, you won’t. Just keep her out of my way.”

  “I’ll do my very best.”

  “It’s appreciated.” Bri hugged Bekah. “I don’t envy you the task you have ahead of you.”

  Bekah kept walking. Jennifer would be there at ten, which was earlier than Bekah usually got up, but she’d survive. At least she’d be able to sit and watch Jennifer work instead of doing everything herself. She would make sure the other woman could clean a potty and make a perfect hospital corner. Why not? It might be fun to see the diva do some real work for a change.

  She walked over to sit on the swing in the center of the gazebo, shocked to see someone else there. No one else was ever out at this time of the night. She got closer, and when she recognized Hunter, she turned to walk away. She wasn’t about to disturb his work again.

  “Wait!”

  Bekah barely heard him over her headphones, so she plucked them out of her ears. “Do you need something?”

  Hunter shook his head. “No, I just thought it would be nice to have someone to talk to for a bit.” Back in Denver he was always alone. He had friends, but when he was working on a book, he’d go for three or four months without seeing anyone other than the people who delivered food to him. He had a gym there in his home, and everything he needed was delivered. Thank heavens for Amazon.

  Bekah shrugged, walking over to him and sitting beside him on the swing. She noticed he didn’t have a phone or laptop out. He did have a pen and a small notebook though. “What are you doing with that?” she asked.

  He looked down at his hands and shrugged sheepishly. “I tend to take notes of everything around me. I want to remember everything I see, hear, feel, or smell. It helps me to be a better writer.”

  “Why not just type it into your phone? Or better yet, dictate it!”

  He shrugged. “I remember it better this way, because it has more of an impact on me to actually write something. I’m not writing books in here, of course, but the notes I take almost always end up in a book somewhere.”

  “I think that’s great.”

  “What are you doing out here at this time of night?”

  She shrugged. “I’m something of a night owl. That’s why my cousin and I are such good business partners. She’s an early bird. She makes breakfast every morning, and I sleep in.”

  He laughed. “I’m a night owl too. I find that night time is a good time for me to just think, and collect my thoughts for what I want to write the next day.”

  “Did you end up getting something done today, then?”

  “I had the best day ever. I wrote five-thousand words after I got back up to my room. I think I’m going to bring my laptop out here tomorrow and try to write.” He rested his head on the back of the swing. “I hope you know how wonderful this little place is. Even the air here just smells better.”

  Bekah smiled. “I know. This place…it’s really special. I had the privilege of being raised here, and I don’t see myself ever leaving.”

  He turned toward her on the bench. “So you have family here?”

  She nodded. “Lots of family here. There are ten Roberts cousins, and most of us still live here. There are a couple who are in and out of town, but most of us can’t imagine living anywhere but here.”

  “I know someone here is a musical lover. You don’t miss getting to see them live?”

  “That’s Bri, and she goes to Denver often to see plays if she has the desire. I used to go with her, but Anthony will be going now, I’m sure. I think she’ll be more settled now that the B&B is up and running…and now that she has Anthony in her life.”

  “Her husband? Has she been married long?”

  “Just since the end of May. I’ve never seen two people more in love.” All the Roberts mated for life. Her cousin, Jack, had met a girl in high school, and he’d never been able to move on from her, even though they’d split for a few years.

  “And how long have you been open?”

  “We opened April first. Bri and I always dreamed of opening a B&B together. When we were teens we’d tell our Grandma that she needed to turn her house into a B&B. She died while we were in college, and she left the house to us, so we started renovations right away. This is what she wanted us to do with it.” She sighed. “I just wish she could have been here to see it. We’re pretty proud of this place.”

  “You should be! I have a feeling I’ll be coming here more often to finish books.”

  “Why not just move here? I happen to know the best real estate agents in all of Colorado.”

  “Oh?”

&
nbsp; “My parents!” She grinned at him. “Seriously, though, if you want to move here, I could hook you up.”

  “Let’s see how writing the book goes. I assume if I lived here I’d have to actually shop for groceries…”

  Bekah sighed. “You don’t shop for groceries?”

  He shrugged. “I use a service.”

  “I’m sure you could hire some students from the college here to go to the grocery store for you. It would be the ultimate in laziness, but you could do it.”

  “Why lazy? I’m working all the time. I don’t have time to go to the grocery store.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You don’t spend even an hour of the week frivolously? You can spare that hour?”

  He frowned. “I spend time playing video games, sure, but I don’t have time for the grocery store.”

  “Lazy. That’s all there is to it. You’ll probably let poor Bri make your breakfast and lunch every day so you don’t have to walk all the way to your car to eat too, won’t you?”

  “Why wouldn’t I take advantage of breakfast at a bed and breakfast? Don’t you know what the second word there means?”

  She rolled her eyes. “And lunch?”

  “Bri’s lunches are outstanding.”

  “They are wonderful, but they’re not all that exciting.”

  “I write the excitement I need into my world. Mundane suits me just fine.” Hunter looked at her, studying her. “Do you need excitement?”

  “Need it? No, probably not. Sometimes I crave it. Don’t you ever have a day where you just want to kick off your shoes and go dancing until dawn?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Usually that means drinking until dawn as well, and I’m not much of a drinker.” He wasn’t a partier at all. Never had been.

  “You don’t have to be a drinker. I drink lemonade when I dance until dawn.” Bekah got to her feet, taking his hand and pulling him to his. “Dance with me. Haven’t you ever wanted to dance in the moonlight?”

  “No. Why would I want that?”

  “Why wouldn’t you?” she asked. “It should be on your bucket list.” She pulled her headphones out of her phone and turned the music up louder. “Dance with me, Hunter.”

  He looked at her for a moment, surprised by her. Women didn’t just grab him and ask him to dance. She took his hand and put it at her waist, gripping his other hand as a slow song started to play. “I…I don’t really dance.”

  She shrugged. “Just sway to the music then. No one will take your man card for that.”

  “You’re a girl! What do you know about man cards?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I have a brother. And male cousins. Trust me. I know about man cards.” She put her hand on his shoulder and swayed with him in the moonlight. “I could do this every night. You should write a book about dancing in gazebos as midnight.”

  He laughed softly. “Wrong genre. That might cut it in a romance novel, but mystery books are all about the whodunit.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “There needs to be romance in everyone’s life. How can you survive without romance?”

  He shrugged. “I seem to have managed okay so far.”

  “I’m sure there’s been some romance in your life. Most people need romance like they need air.” She tried not to sound like she was prying as she asked. Of course, she was trying to get as much information from him as possible. He was…interesting.

  “Not me. I haven’t dated much.” He’d always been the nerd. The editor of the school paper. The boy that tutored English. He was one hundred fifty pounds and six-four when he started college. He’d learned to eat a little more and exercise, so he wasn’t the string bean he once was, but he was still not anyone’s dream man.

  “Are you kidding me? A handsome man like you?”

  He shook his head at her. “Handsome? You have me confused with someone else. I’m good at one thing and one thing only. And that’s writing. Handsome is not a word used to describe me.”

  She pulled back for a moment, looking up at him. “Then you have spent your life around some really blind women. Trust me. Handsome fits perfectly.” She smiled up at him, enjoying their little dance. “You should ask me out. That’s something else every man should have on his bucket list. Going out with the owner of half a B&B.”

  He laughed out loud. “Oh really? Every man should have that on his bucket list?”

  “If the world were a perfect place…”

  “And if I asked you out, where would we go?”

  Bekah thought for a moment. “Would you want a formal date, a casual sit down date, or a wild fun date?”

  “You might need to describe each to me. This is becoming intriguing.” She made him smile and laugh more than anyone he’d met in a very long time. She was special, and he wanted to get to know her better. He just hoped he wasn’t too reclusive for someone as gregarious as she seemed to be.

  “A formal date would be you wearing a suit and me in a nice dress, and we’d go to the River House, the nicest restaurant here in Silver Springs. You’d pick me up at my door, and I’d hold your arm, and we’d sit there and feel all fancy and stuff.”

  “I didn’t bring a suit!”

  “Good, because I don’t think a formal date would suit you anyway. Moving on… A casual sit down date would include dinner at the Italian Bistro. Good food, not quite as expensive, and we can dress up or be casual. But if we do that, then we have to follow it up with a movie to have the most fun possible on a first date.”

  “That could be fun. Do you like Italian food?”

  She shrugged. “Who doesn’t? The Italian Bistro does a great pizza for carry out as well.”

  “And the wild fun date? I have to say the name is intriguing…”

  “The wild fun date, since it’s summer, would be renting four-wheelers. We’d go on a path my brother recommends up into the mountains and maybe have a picnic by one of the lakes up there. Or we could hire him as a guide for a more adventurous route, but then we’d have my brother tagging along on our first date…”

  Hunter raised an eyebrow. She seemed like an outdoorsy kind of girl. “And of the three, which would you choose?”

  “Oh, I’d love to do the four-wheeler thing. We could go into the mountains, or I know this great area to go mudding in.”

  “Mudding?”

  “You know…we’d ride our four-wheelers through the mud until we were covered from head to toe. Lots of fun, but most guys assume girls don’t like that kind of thing and don’t want to take them. This girl loves to go mudding.”

  Hunter laughed out loud. “How ’bout you go out with me on your next day off, and we do four-wheelers, but we go into the mountains and have a picnic by a lake? I can’t imagine trying to go mudding, and then how do we wash our hands so we can eat?”

  “I can handle that. Good answer!” She sighed contentedly, resting her forehead on his shoulder for a moment. “Okay. I have to be up early to train someone in cleaning rooms. I’d better go. My next day off is Tuesday by the way.”

  It was Wednesday evening. That gave him time to write the words he should write before then. “I will get ahead on my work then.”

  “I’m glad our little town is helping your writers’ block.” She stood on tiptoe and brushed her lips across his cheek. “See you tomorrow.”

  Hunter watched as she ran toward the house. It wasn’t a run like an athlete, but more of a free-spirited run, like a gazelle. Bekah Roberts was something else. He should probably do everything he could to avoid her, but he didn’t see that happening.

  He sat back down on the swing, picking up his notebook. He carefully jotted down what had just happened there, describing everything in detail from the look on her face to the way she’d felt in his arms. Someday he’d use it in a book. It was his goal in life to write about the human condition. And his sweet Bekah was definitely part of the human experience.

  Hunter blinked twice as he realized he’d written ‘his Bekah.’ What was he thinking? He was only in town for th
ree weeks and he’d met her mere hours earlier. She didn’t belong to him. She didn’t begin to belong to him. She was practically a stranger to him. No, she was no one’s Bekah but her own—at least as far as he knew. Surely she’d had boyfriends along the way. She was too beautiful not to.

  He got to his feet and walked back toward the house, trying to find a way to put the sweet woman into the book he was writing. Everyone he met ended up in a book at some time…but he wasn’t usually looking for a way he could write them in—It just happened. Bekah though…she was special. She needed to be part of his current work in progress. If she wasn’t…he’d be doing her and himself a disservice.

  When he got to his room, he shut and locked the door, sinking down into the chair in front of his laptop. He’d only thought he was done writing for the day. No, his detective needed to meet a sweet girl who said whatever was on her mind. He’d call her Bekah. She’d help him solve the mystery, and she’d become a recurring character.

  As Bekah said, everyone needed romance in their lives. Even random detectives who were only in mystery novels. It didn’t matter if they were fictional…love was love. And Wally Waldorf, the hero of the Merrimac Murder Mysteries was about to find the love of his life.

  Hunter sighed. Was it really possible to be jealous of a man you made up in your head and wrote books about? If it was…he was there.

  Now he knew he’d truly lost his mind. It had been coming for a while, but Bekah had tipped him over the edge.

  Chapter Three

  First thing Thursday morning, before Bekah had even had a chance to shower, there was a pounding on her bedroom door. Guests weren’t allowed onto the third floor of the B&B, so she assumed it was Bri. “Don’t get your panties in a wad! I’m getting a shower.”

  “You don’t have to be so rude!” Jennifer flounced into her room. “And exactly what am I supposed to do while you shower? Sit here and file my nails?” Her voice was exasperated as she sat down on the edge of Bekah’s bed.