Ken suppressed an automatic protest. “Tomorrow morning?” he tried. “Same time?”
She nodded. “That should work.”
“I’ll overnight out here, so just meet me…” He glanced around. “That rock looks like a good spot, don’t you think? Nice architecture, good ventilation, free parking.”
That got him a look that was—well, probably more bemused than amused, but Ken felt like he was making progress. “All right.”
And she turned and started back along the trail. Ken allowed himself one minute of watching her generous curves as she hiked, and then looked away.
After all, he had work to do.
***
“So I hear the new environmental scientist is extremely handsome.”
Lynn startled, and dropped the pile of papers she’d been sorting through—mock-ups of different possible brochure designs for the guide business. Murphy’s Law dictated that they had to end up all over the office somehow, and indeed they did, with several drifting under the desk, and one—how?—ending up behind the radiator.
Lynn surveyed the paper blizzard. “Thanks.”
Nina’s hand was over her mouth. “I’m so sorry!” she said, but the laugh was escaping even as she apologized. “No, don’t, I’ll clean them up.” She hustled over to the radiator first.
Lynn sighed and gathered together the papers in the desk area. Maybe Nina would forget what she’d been saying in the flurry of brochure search-and-rescue.
But there was no such luck. Standing up with a pile of brochure pages tucked neatly together in her hands, Nina said, “So, he must be really handsome if this is what happens when I bring it up.”
“Where on earth did you hear anything about the relative handsomeness of the environmental scientist?” Lynn asked. “As far as I know, he’s only talked to me and Cal, and you’re not going to convince me that Cal’s been gossiping about handsome men.”
“Aha!” Nina pointed a finger at her. “So you admit he’s handsome.”
Lynn raised an eyebrow and waited.
Nina deflated after a minute, and admitted, “From my mother. She met all of Cal’s old Marine buddies back at the wedding, and she remembered Ken. Although she said they were all very handsome.”
“Good for them,” Lynn said flatly.
“She said that Wilson says that he commanded all of them in combat, overseas, and they were all good Marines,” Nina added.
Nina’s mother Mavis was married to a former Marine Colonel, Wilson Hanes. Wilson had commanded Cal back in the day—and apparently Ken, too.
Well, good for him. Them. Whatever. It was no skin off her nose how good of a Marine Ken had been.
Although it did add a kind of an…extra dimension to him. She’d been thinking of him as a wisecracking, womanizing type of man. But knowing that he’d served in combat—well, he had to have a certain strength of character to have done that, and come back alive.
She pictured him in fatigues, somewhere in the desert sand. It was easier than she would’ve thought.
Something else occurred to her. “So he must be a shifter.” Cal and Wilson were both shifters, and Lynn vaguely remembered something about top-secret all-shifter units in the military. “Right?”
There was a little smile on Nina’s face. Lynn didn’t want to think too hard about what it might mean. “Yep. Mom said she didn’t know what type he was. I doubt Wilson would just go around telling people. But he’s definitely a shifter.”
That added even more. No wonder he was so comfortable hiking through the wilderness. Normally, Lynn had to make sure she kept her pace slow and easy for regular humans. Even athletic men wouldn’t have the speed and power a shifter did. But Ken had kept up with her no problem, and she’d even felt like he could’ve outstripped her without too much trouble, if he’d wanted to.
There were plenty of shifters living around Glacier Park—an unusually large amount, compared to other places. So it wasn’t strange to be spending time with another one. But for some reason, she’d just been assuming that Ken was a regular human man.
If he was a shifter, she could tell him a lot more about how she knew the history of the forests around Glacier. He’d understand things like why she’d chosen the job she did…
She pulled herself sternly to a halt. She didn’t want to get too caught up in personal feelings for Ken, after all. Because that would be too close to thinking about that date he’d asked for, and dating wasn’t for her. Too old, too used to being alone, too set in her ways…
Too unwilling to watch anyone else walk away.