The Man Most Likely Read online

  Angela nodded.

  “You said yes, right?”

  “I said no.”

  “You said no?” Tanya’s voice rose.

  “I couldn’t face the possibility of things not working out between us.”

  “Are you telling me you’re planning the end of the relationship before there’s a beginning?”

  “I know it sounds silly. It is silly. But the fear is real, even if the basis for it isn’t.”

  “You do like him, don’t you?”

  “Yes. That’s part of the problem. I think it would be really easy for me to fall hard for him.” She was halfway there already and they hadn’t even dated.

  “Would that be so bad?”

  “But what happens if he leaves? I don’t know if I could go through that again.”

  Tanya refilled their glasses. “So that’s what this is really about—Troy.”

  “You’ve been through a big breakup. You know how much it hurts.”

  Tanya nodded. “I know.”

  “And it wasn’t just that Troy left me, it was the way he did it.”

  Tanya nodded again. “I know.” She sipped her wine and looked thoughtful. “But Bryan isn’t Troy.”

  “He’s enough like him that it makes me uneasy. They’re both really good looking, used to dating only the best-looking women, always the life of the party. And let’s face it—sooner or later someone he knows is going to make some remark like ‘what are you doing with her?’ and he’ll start to second guess the attraction. That’s what happened with Troy.”

  “Maybe Bryan is stronger than Troy. Maybe he doesn’t care what other people think. Besides, you know they’re wrong. You’re a gorgeous, sexy woman. Bryan sees that. Who cares about a number on a scale?”

  “Some people care. Maybe down inside, Bryan cares.”

  “That’s a big maybe,” Tanya said. “I hate to see you lose out on a chance to be happy because of something that may never happen.”

  Angela nodded. “I want to be strong. To be a risk taker. But I don’t know if I can do it.”

  Tanya looked thoughtful. “What if it were a role onstage?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How would you act the part if it were a role onstage?”

  “I’d be strong and confident.”

  “And you’d go out with Bryan.”

  “Yes. But onstage there wouldn’t be any consequences of making the wrong decision. At least, no real ones.”

  “But in real life you’ll have a good time with a great guy. You might even end up living happily ever after.”

  “That’s a big might.”

  Tanya smiled. “Give it a try. Go after it like a role onstage.”

  “Sort of fake it till you make it?”

  “Right. Pretend you’re that strong, confident woman you want to be. Give Bryan a chance to prove what kind of man he really is.”

  “And if things don’t work out?”

  “Then come cry on my shoulder and we’ll drink some more wine and figure out a new plan.” She leaned over and put her hand on Angela’s. “I know how tempting it is when you’ve had a bad experience to draw into yourself and give up on love. But we can’t do that. Not unless we want to spend the rest of our lives alone.”

  “Maybe alone wouldn’t be so bad.”

  “I know you don’t mean that.”

  “You’re right. I don’t.” Angela took a deep breath and imagined herself strong, confident and in charge. “I am woman, hear me roar,” she said.

  “You don’t have to roar,” Tanya said. “Just give him an I-want-you smile and the poor man won’t know what hit him.”

  BRYAN SAT AT HIS DESK, staring into space and hoping anyone who passed would think he was contemplating business. In less than two weeks the lifts would shut down for the season and the hotel would lock its doors for a week of deep-cleaning and maintenance. He had a lot to do to get ready for this, but his mind wasn’t on work. A spring snow had dumped six inches of fresh powder on the slopes over the weekend. Today the sun was shining and a lot of his friends were out there having a good time while he was stuck behind this desk reviewing occupancy figures and compiling a list of maintenance issues.

  Last year at this time, he and Zephyr had spent whole days in the terrain park and on the steeps, reveling in the spring snow and sparse crowds. They’d flirted with pretty girls, planned a trip out of town for April mud season and looked forward to a summer of hiking, biking and having fun. Bryan’s job as a night auditor at the hotel hadn’t paid much, but it had allowed plenty of free time to do whatever he wanted.

  He’d realized taking a full-time job would mean giving all that up, but he hadn’t anticipated how hard that would be on days like today.

  Rachel leaned into his doorway. “Hey, Bry, I was wondering if we should start cleaning out the lost and found closet?”

  “We have a lost and found closet?” He set aside the folder of paperwork and stood, glad to stretch his legs and clear the fog from his brain. “What’s in it?”

  “Come on and I’ll show you.” He followed her to the end of the hall, where she opened a door to reveal a space stuffed floor to ceiling with miscellaneous items. “It’s all stuff people leave behind in their rooms,” Rachel said. She reached in and began pulling out random items. “Pillows, clothes, books. And we have a bunch of hats and gloves and some jackets that get left at the restaurant and bar. We stick everything in the closet in case anyone comes looking for it and we clean it out at the end of the season.”

  Bryan picked up a pair of fur-lined leather men’s gloves. They looked expensive. “What do you do with it all?”

  “When this was Club Med, we’d divvy everything up among the staff.” She held up a women’s sweater and studied it critically. “I got a great leather jacket that way.”

  “I don’t see why we can’t do that now.” Maybe he’d take these gloves.

  “Cool.” Rachel draped the sweater over her arm and leaned in to sort through the rest of the contents of the closet. Bryan squeezed in beside her. He was amazed at some of what he found—everything from paperback novels to baby pacifiers. Lots of clothes and toiletries. Several pairs of shoes.

  “The housekeeping staff has found sex toys and porn before,” Rachel said as she tossed aside an empty canvas duffle bag. “Those go straight into the trash. And anything really valuable like jewelry goes into the safe in the manager’s office and he contacts the last occupant of the room about it.”

  “I can’t believe people forget this stuff.” He held up a pair of ski goggles. Too small for him.

  “Bryan, there you are. I’ve been looking for you.” Bryan and Rachel backed out of the closet and turned to greet Carl. “What are you two doing?” Carl asked.

  Scoring booty guests left behind didn’t sound like something Carl would appreciate. “We’re inventorying the lost and found closet,” Bryan said.

  Carl glanced into the closet and made a face. “Never mind that. Just box everything up and ship it to the homeless mission in Gunnison.”

  “Sure thing,” Bryan said. “I’ll let the staff go through it first and see if there’s anything they can use.”

  “Absolutely not.” Carl looked offended by the suggestion.

  “Why not? There are some really nice things in here.”

  “Corporate policy prohibits staff members from retaining any item left behind by guests.”

  More ridiculously rigid company policy. “That doesn’t make any sense,” Bryan said. “Why shouldn’t the staff get some use out of the items?”

  “It makes perfect sense if you think about it,” Carl said. “What if you were a guest who misplaced, say, this nice pair of leather gloves.” He took the gloves Bryan had been holding. “You don’t remember where you left them and you’ve written them off. Then one day, several months later, you return to the Elevation Hotel, where you enjoyed your last stay, and the bellman is wearing gloves exactly like the pair you lost. You might, not unreasonably
, suspect that the gloves had been stolen on your last visit. Even if the guest never said anything to us, it would be unlikely we would have his business again.”

  “I see what you mean,” Bryan admitted. “But how likely is that to happen, really?”

  “The possibility is enough to warrant the policy.” Carl turned to Rachel. “Box everything up and see that it’s delivered to the homeless mission with our compliments.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Bryan, you come with me.”

  Reluctantly, Bryan followed his boss to his office. He was beginning to think of the warren of windowless rooms as cells. Though being able to look out at the bright sun on the snow would probably only make him feel worse.

  “I understand there’s another local festival soon,” Phelps said as he settled behind his desk. “Something called Flauschink?”

  Bryan sat in a chair across from his boss. “It’s a big party to celebrate the closing of the lifts and the flushing out of winter. There’s a parade and a costume party. The final weekend here at the resort a lot of people dress in costume, and the king and queen of Flauschink make an appearance at the Ice Bar on Sunday afternoon.”

  New lines furrowed Carl’s brow. “Will it be a rowdy crowd?”

  “Not rowdy in a bad way. It used to be a lot wilder, with people skiing naked and stuff like that, but that doesn’t really happen anymore.”

  “Naked skiing? Isn’t that terribly cold?”

  “Not if you’ve ingested enough, um, antifreeze.” Bryan forced back a grin. He didn’t have any personal experience, but he knew a few people…

  “That sounds like a rowdy crowd to me,” Carl said.

  “Yeah, but like I said, it doesn’t happen anymore. The resort usually has a few cops around to issue tickets to anyone who gets out of hand. Mostly it’s about having fun and ending the season in style.”

  Carl nodded. “You say there’s a parade?”

  “Yes, down Elk Avenue. Nothing fancy—some floats and people in costume.”

  “We should have a float. Can you pull something together?”

  “Uh, sure.” Working on the float sounded better than being stuck in an office. “I’ve got some friends who can help.”

  “Do it then. Something to show we’re a part of the community. But nothing too outlandish. We want to keep our reputation as a first-class lodging facility.”

  “Right.” He silently vowed that if he ever started referring to the hotel as a lodging facility, he’d ask someone to hit him over the head to knock the pretension right out of him.

  Carl nodded in dismissal, and Bryan drifted back to his own desk. Now to come up with a float that fit into Flauschink’s reputation for wackiness without offending Carl’s sensibilities. Zephyr and Max would help with construction and logistics, but if Bryan turned those two loose on the design he’d end up with a giant psychedelic toilet or a bunch of clowns wielding plungers—both past entries in Flauschink parades. He needed help from someone with a sense of humor, but also a reputation for class. Someone with a flair for drama and experience putting on a production.

  After a moment’s thought, he picked up the phone and punched in a number. “Angela, it’s Bryan. I know you’re busy with the play right now, but I really need your help with a project.”

  ANGELA AGREED to help Bryan with the float for the Flauschink parade because she was flattered he’d asked her, and because she reasoned it would be a safe way to gradually get used to the possibility of going out with him and becoming something more than friends. They’d be working together, but around other people.

  Then she began worrying about the other people. Would Rhiannon be one of those people? Or some other gorgeous young woman who would make Angela look like an Amazon?

  Get over it! she scolded herself. Maybe the best thing for her would be for Bryan to see her right alongside the type of women he usually dated. It would either snap him out of whatever fog of attraction he was in, or prove that maybe there was something to the heat they generated whenever they were together.

  If nothing else, the float project would add one more thing to her to-do list and keep her too busy to brood over romance. The float group agreed to meet Wednesday, before dress rehearsals for I Hate Hamlet on Thursday and the play’s opening on Friday. They’d spend several nights the following week putting the float together before the Flauschink parade that Saturday.

  Wednesday evening when Angela arrived at the Last Steep, she wasn’t surprised to see Zephyr and Max, along with Casey and Trish, seated around a long table with three pizzas and several pitchers of beer in front of them. “You’re just in time for chow,” Zephyr said, passing her a plate. “Who can come up with good ideas on an empty stomach?”

  “Thanks.” She took the only empty chair, next to Bryan.

  “Is beer okay?” he asked. “I can get you a soda or something.”

  “Beer is fine.” She accepted the glass he poured and tried not to let her eyes linger too long on him. Had it really been more than a week since she’d last seen him? He was dressed casually in jeans and a fleece pullover. If possible, she thought he looked even more handsome than he had in his suit.

  “What kind of budget do we have for this float?” Casey asked after they’d all helped themselves to pizza.

  “The hotel is paying, but not a lot,” Bryan said.

  “So, are we talking crepe paper on a pickup truck or ten chorus girls on a flatbed trailer?” Zephyr asked.

  “I think we can spring for the trailer,” Bryan said. “Minus the chorus girls.”

  “Too bad,” Zephyr said, dodging a blow from Trish.

  “I know a guy I can call about a truck and trailer,” Max said. “So I can take care of that.”

  “Did your boss give you any idea what he wants on this float?” Casey asked.

  “Nope.” Bryan picked a slice of pepperoni off a piece of pizza and popped it in his mouth. “He wants to show the hotel is a part of the community. But we can’t get too wild.”

  “Where’s the fun in that?” Zephyr asked.

  “Maybe we should start by looking at what other groups are doing with their floats,” Trish said. “That might give us some ideas for a theme or something.”

  “The Chamber is handling all the parade reservations, so I know some of them.” Casey wiped her hand on a paper napkin. “There’s the usual float with all the former Flauschink kings and queens,” she said. “And a convertible with the reigning royalty. There’s a float in protest of plans to mine molybdenum on Red Lady.”

  “I heard about that one,” Max said. “They’re making a big papier mâché toilet and flushing a mining executive down it.”

  “No toilets,” Trish said. “That’s so overdone.”

  “Flauschink is about flushing winter,” Zephyr said.

  “Do you have any ideas, Angela?” Bryan turned toward her, his knee brushing against her thigh.

  She shrugged. “Since it’s a commercially sponsored float, why not promote the hotel?”

  “That sounds boring,” Zephyr said.

  “What would we do? Construct a model of the hotel or something?” Casey asked.

  “I don’t know,” Angela said. “What do you think of when you think of the hotel? Or any hotel?”

  “Beds,” Max said.

  “What?” Casey stared at him.

  “Beds.” Max helped himself to another slice of pizza. “You rent a hotel room for the bed. It’s a place to spend the night.”

  “So we have a float with a bed?” Trish looked doubtful.

  “It could work,” Angela said. “You could have a couple in old-fashioned night clothes and a big brass bed.”

  “Ooh, I know!” Casey held up her hand. “We could have a banner that says Wake up from your long winter’s nap at the Elevation Hotel.”

  “And the guy could chase the woman around the bed!” Zephyr said. “I like it.”

  “I like it, too,” Bryan said. “It’s funny.”

  “So, who
should we get to dress up in nightclothes and chase each other around the float?” Trish asked. “Bryan, you’re the only person here from the hotel. Maybe you should do it.”

  Bryan shook his head. “No way. Besides, who would I chase?”

  “I can think of a few girls who would let you chase them,” Zephyr said. “Some of them might even let you catch them. There’s Rhiannon and Rachel and—Ouch! Casey, why did you kick me?”

  “Why don’t we have Casey and Max be the couple?” Angela said, anxious to steer the conversation in a safer direction. Not that she’d be caught dead in a voluminous nightgown and frilly cap on a float in broad daylight, but she had no intention of watching Bryan chase anyone else around in her place.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Zephyr said. “They’re married and all, so nobody can complain we’re being immoral.”

  “We don’t plan on doing anything immoral,” Casey protested.

  “At least not when anyone’s around to see,” Max added.

  “The prop department at the theater might have a bed we can use,” Angela said.

  “I’ll ask around about costumes,” Casey said.

  “I’m not wearing a nightshirt,” Max said. “I’d look ridiculous.”

  “What are you going to wear?” Bryan asked.

  “I’ve got a pair of old-fashioned, long-handle underwear,” he said. “I’ll wear those and some wild socks and maybe a stocking cap.”

  “Be still my heart,” Casey said.

  “Ah, you know you’ll love it.”

  “Only because I love you.”

  “Now that we’ve got that out of the way—” Zephyr rubbed his hands together “—what’s everybody doing for mud season?”

  After the lifts closed, the piles of snow around town began to melt, turning the streets into muddy quagmires. The winter tourists departed and the summer tourists hadn’t yet arrived, so business was slow. Those who could afford to do so left town for warmer, drier climes.

  “Casey and I are headed back east to visit my folks,” Max said.

  “I’m going to Broomfield to see my mom for a week,” Angela said. She would have preferred a week in Hawaii, but her budget and family duty dictated a week in the Denver suburb instead.