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“Yeah. Thanks for this.” Parker nodded, as he handed me his plate, too. He then turned his attention to Damon before he went on. “Hey, Damon?”
“Yeah?”
“Want to join me outside for a post-dinner beer? For old time’s sake?” Parker playfully winked.
And Damon smirked as he got up from the table. “Sure, but it’s going to have to be wine instead of beer. Let me go grab a bottle out of the fridge.”
“Got it. I’ll be waiting out back.” Parker saluted Damon before he offered me a wave, too. “It was nice meeting you, Sam.”
“Nice meeting you, too, Parker.” I flashed him a smile as I headed in the same direction as Damon, both of us making our way toward the kitchen. Damon got there first, quickly grabbing a bottle of wine out of the fridge before disappearing back out into the hall. He was gone so fast I didn’t get a chance to say a word to him…
Huh.
Maybe that was the point.
If he was trying to keep our relationship from Parker, he wouldn’t have wanted to give him even the slightest chance to notice that there was something going on between us. Which meant that not talking to me, at all, after dinner would’ve been a pretty safe bet.
Still, it didn’t feel great, being Damon’s little secret, especially after all we’d said to each other, all those promises about trying to make this work…
I gently slipped the plates into the sink before I grabbed for the dish soap, just as a sinking feeling started to roll around in my stomach.
Like I needed to brace myself for bad, bad news.
Like something was pulling all the way back before it punched me right in the gut.
18
DAMON
“Do you want to know what I’m calling my next wilderness course?” Parker started as we stood outside the cabin, a bottle of Moscato in his hands.
I was nervous beyond belief as I leaned against the cabin’s woods, trying to quietly channel all that energy through my fingers and toes. I hadn’t thought about the full consequences of Parker finding out about me and Sam, what could happen if news ever got back to Jacob. Of course, I wanted to be with Sam, and I wasn’t willing to give him up for the world…
But I wasn’t sure if I was ready to hear Parker’s opinion about me sleeping with a client, either.
It may not have been in the rulebook, exactly, but it was like an unwritten expectation to keep things professional when it came to our guests. There was no good way for me to explain how things had turned romantic with Sam, and how I really hadn’t tried to stop them, how being with him was the happiest I’d felt in a relationship in years—
“Are you even listening to me?” Parker sighed, waving a hand in front of my face. “Did you hear me? About the wilderness course?”
“Uh, yeah. You were talking about what you’re going to name it?”
“Right.” Parker beamed. “I think I’m going to call it, ‘Every Mushroom is Edible Once: A Guide To Not Eating Nature’s Poison’.”
“That’s a pretty good title.” I faked a smile. “Not exactly the kind of thing that might fit on a brochure—”
“We can work on the word count later. Or maybe just use a smaller font.” Parker chuckled before he took a sip of wine out of the bottle. “It’s another one of Jacob’s initiatives. Getting us to offer more classes, things like that on the side.”
“It’s a good idea. I bet a lot of people would take wilderness courses at Wild Woods. Probably even some locals.”
“Sure, but why do Jacob’s good ideas always have to cut into my free time?”
“If I’m not mistaken, you have quite a bit of free time, Parker,” I joked. “Unless there’s something you need to tell me? A new hobby come into your life?”
Parker playfully rolled his eyes. “No, no new hobbies. Unfortunately. I think if I could find something else to do, Jacob wouldn’t be so comfy putting me on groundhog duty so often.”
“Groundhog duty?”
“Watching out for their holes,” he explained. “You know how they can get. We don’t want guests falling through to the underworld on Wild Woods property. It might be a little bad for business.”
