Busy not helping his customers, not flipping the delicious-smelling burgers on the grill, and not even considering the french fries that currently had River drooling.
“You’re not the mayor, are you?” she asked suspiciously.
“Of course not. That’s way too much work for a guy like me.”
River felt her eyes narrow. That had rolled off his tongue far too easily. “So…if I were to say I was going to film wherever I wanted, that wouldn’t be your problem, right?”
A flinch. Ha! She had him.
“You owe me a permit.”
“Sorry, darlin’. I’m fresh out.” He gave her a charming smile. “You should ask Ashtyn Lockett. She might be able to help.”
Right. River snorted as she watched Graham completely ignoring the next person in line. “How do you even stay in business?” This man’s customer service skills were the absolute worst.
“Not without a lack of trying for the opposite. Your food’s there on the counter.”
Jessie looked horrified. “That’s ours? Dude, why didn’t you say anything?” He grabbed the tray and hustled off to the table Bree had saved for them.
Food served, Graham turned his full attention back to Zoey. The pair were adorable in their inability to focus on anything but each other. Which gave Easton a clear third wheel type of presence.
Drinking his beer with the occasional measured swig, Easton was studiously avoiding interrupting the love story happening three feet away. River was still starving, and her burger was calling her from the table, but she lingered.
“So, that reporter…”
“I’ll make a call,” Easton offered. “But my gut says Tasha’s not going to write a very nice article about you.”
“Yeah, well, she wrote a not-very-nice article about you. I couldn’t give two craps about what she says about me. So, the reporter. Tasha. How long were you two together?”
Easton raised one eyebrow of his own.
“You’re a really tall, very strong man. Men like you do this thing with their shoulders when they talk to someone they’re attracted to. They kind of drop them, a subconscious effort to make themselves less large, less intimidating.”
The eyebrows furrowed together, giving him a confused, cuddly bearlike appearance. “I’m not seeing her,” he finally said.
“I wasn’t worried,” River replied. “You were only dropping one shoulder. You didn’t go both shoulders, so I figured you weren’t totally on board.”
Easton’s voice was a warm, low rumble, like rocks snuggling up to each other. “No, both feet are firmly in the ocean and swimming for shore.”
“To smoother waters.” River tilted her glass to him. Easton clinked his beer to her Growly Bear, then they both took a sip. “Yikes. What does he put in these?”
“Enough sugar to mask the consequences.”
“Don’t worry. I can hold my liquor.” Licking the sweetness off her lips, River added, “This isn’t actually a date, you know. I hate to disappoint you, but I don’t date people who might leave me on a mountain summit if they get their feelings hurt.”
“Are my feelings going to get hurt?” His eyes crinkled.
That voice. She could wrap herself up in that voice and cuddle on the couch all day in it.
“Let’s say that I don’t have a track record of happy exes in my past. They always expect one thing, and when they realize I’m nothing like what they imagined, it always goes downhill. Really, really fast.”
Now, why did she say that? Talking about her exes was not the best way to…whatever it was they were doing right now.
Easton leaned into the counter, taking a fry and popping it into his mouth. “I have a hard time seeing that.”
“You can take the girl out of Wyoming, but you can’t take the Wyoming out of the girl. If I can outdrink you, outride you, and outshoot you, that’s fine. But if I can change a tire faster than you without calling roadside assistance, then you and I aren’t going to last long.”
Easton took a sip of his beer, then asked, “Is this you trying to warn me or warn me off?”
“I suppose that’s up to you.”
He gazed at her.
“What?”
“I was thinking I’m not sure I want to go up a mountain with you.”
“Oh really? Why’s that?”
Leaning in, he let his eyes drop to her lips, but only for the briefest moment. “Because I’m not sure I could leave you up there.”
Damn, that man could heat up a room with a single sentence. The tension between them wasn’t thick enough to cut with a knife.…it was melted chocolate. Warm and gooey and impossible to get off her skin. Dragging her closer as it threatened to solidify into something as sweet but dangerously real.
A little too real. River inhaled a deep, steadying breath.
“I should probably go eat my food,” she murmured.
The low, deep rumble was even better when his voice softened. “I should stay right here.”
River lifted her drink, trying not to look as giddy as she felt. It was the drink. Graham had poisoned her and made her flirt to the point of giddiness. Definitely the diner owner’s fault.
As she walked away, River could hear Graham mutter to Easton, “Hey, buddy. You were going both shoulders there. Just sayin’.”
“Shut up.”
Unable to keep her lips from curving, River stole one more appreciative look at Easton as she joined her crew.
Yeah. She’d noticed the shoulder thing too.
Chapter 6
The evening had been fun—as fun as it could be listening to people screeching into the karaoke machine. By the time they left, Graham’s expression had turned pained. River might’ve felt bad for him if he hadn’t been such a brat.
“It won’t last forever,” Easton promised, clapping a sympathetic hand on Graham’s shoulder.
Groaning into his hands, Graham wasn’t convinced. “Yeah, buddy. I think it will.”
When they left the diner, River drove, having been careful to set her drink aside after a couple of sips. Bree had drunk deep on her Growly Bear, and Jessie had been talking to the gummy bears at the bottom of his glass by the time they left for Easton’s place.
She’d expected a cabin in the woods, with a borderline serial killer vibe. Following Easton along a narrow gravel lane through his family’s property had done nothing to dissuade her of the notion. But when they arrived, she’d found a nice—okay, adorable—house, complete with flower boxes on the windows and a rocking chair on the porch. Inside, everything was clean and organized, from the books in alphabetical order on hand-carved cedar bookshelves to the dishes angled perfectly so on the drying rack.