make sure of it.”
Cade nodded and opened the door, glancing at me before he went through it. “Night ladies.”
CHAPTER 24
“When you said ‘take you to breakfast,’ I was thinking more along the lines of a diner, preferably one with a fireplace,” I said.
Cade inhaled the cool mountain air and glanced around at the landscape surrounding us. “I can’t imagine a more beautiful place than this. Besides, you got your very own fire right there.”
He walked to the truck, lifted up the seat in the back, and pulled out a blanket. A minute later, it was wrapped around me.
“Don’t you live in Park City?” he said. “I thought you’d be used to this kind of weather.”
“I have no problem with winter. I just think it’s a season best experienced indoors.”
He shook his head.
“You know,” he said. “You’re just about the farthest thing from a country girl that I’ve ever met.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know what it is. You’re different.”
“Different good or different bad?”
Instead of answering, he stirred some eggs in a thick black pan with a wooden spatula. The more he mixed them around, the more little black flecks of what appeared to be pieces of the pan mingled with the eggs until it resembled pepper. I tried not to make a face and instead wrapped the blanket tighter around me.
“So, what did you want to talk to me about?” I said.
He placed a finger in front of his lips and pointed across the meadow. “Do you see it?” he said in a hushed voice.
I saw nothing but trees and various kinds of sagebrush. “See what?”
“Here, look through my binoculars,” he said, handing them to me.
I held them in front of my eyes. “I can’t see a thing out of these; it’s blurry.”
He reached over, messing around with a knob in the middle. “You gotta adjust them a bit. Turn this dial until you can see clearly.”
I tried what he suggested and gasped when I looked through the lenses again. The animal was far off, but viewing it through the binoculars made it seem closer. Too close. “That’s the biggest deer I’ve ever seen!”
Cade smacked the side of his pants and laughed so hard I thought he’d fall off the log we were sitting on.
“What’s so funny?” I said.
“That’s no deer, woman. It’s a bull elk.”
Woman?
I shrugged.
“Deer, elk, same difference,” I said.
“Actually, they’re not the same at all. Elk are about three times bigger than deer, and their hair is yellow. A deer has brown hair.”
The elk seemed to notice our presence, even though it didn’t seem likely given our distance. It glanced around and slanted its head upward, making a noise Cade later explained as “bugling.” Then it camouflaged itself inside a group of trees. I tried to find it again, but it was gone.
Cade scooted a little closer to me. “Would you look at that?”
The sunrise was among the prettiest I had ever seen and worth every moment I’d spent whining about the chilly temperatures. Just looking at it made me feel warmer.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
Cade scooped the eggs onto two paper plates and handed one of the plates to me along with some hash browns that he’d mixed with pieces of bacon. I took a bite. They were surprisingly good.
“What do you think?” he said. “Does it meet your standards for breakfast?”
I nodded. He tossed a couple pieces of wood, stoking up the fire.
“I, uh, wanted to apologize for getting angry with you the other night,” he said.
“You had every right. I would have done the same thing in your position.”
“I was frustrated and tired, but not just at you,” he said. “Coming back hasn’t been easy. The guys at the station make me feel like an outsider even though I grew up around here. And when the chief announced I’d be filling my father’s position, it didn’t go over well. I suppose I understand why, but I went to school with some of these guys, and they’re being completely ignorant.”
“Have you talked to them about it?”
“Tried to, but they haven’t been very receptive,” he said. “Chief Rollins and my dad go way back. They lived next door to each other when they was boys. Rollins is more like family to me than anything else. The other guys know it, think he’s playing favorites. And maybe he is, but they don’t know how qualified I am for the job or how many years I’ve been at it. They don’t care, neither.”
“In