“Feeling pretty good today, honey. Thanks.”

Serving himself up a plate of the eggs and sausage Easton had made for breakfast, Joshua joined them at the table.

He eyed the chair, then Easton. The critical look wasn’t what made Easton nervous. That was normal. It was the mischief in Joshua’s eye that Easton didn’t trust.

“What’s this I heard about you being in some movie?”

Easton dropped his head back. “I’m not in a movie. I’ll be standing next to some people taking footage of the mountains. At most, they might get a shot of my feet.”

Ash snorted. “You’re totally getting a major role. Dad, do you think he’ll remember us when he’s famous?”

Joshua took a bite of eggs. “Probably not.”

“Do you have to tell him everything?” Easton asked his twin. “Just once, it would be nice if you two weren’t in cahoots.”

“Makes up for all those years when you two kids were the ones in cahoots.” With a playful wink at Ash, Joshua took a sip of coffee. “So what role are you playing? First man to fall off a mountain on film?”

“He might be playing sexy mountaineer number two,” she added helpfully. “How have your ab workouts been?”

Ignoring their comments, Easton rose to his feet and went to the sink, washing off his plate before sticking it in the dishwasher. To take away their ammunition, he rolled up the newspaper and stuffed it into his back pocket. “This is me leaving to go to work.”

“Tell Spielberg we said hi, Son.”

Ash was still snickering as the door closed behind him.

The old Ford truck started when he turned the key. Not every day was he lucky enough to experience that pleasure. Equipment check day was sometimes a long and frustrating process, and showing up late never helped get things off to a good start.

Equipment check day was all about going through River and her crew’s equipment with a fine-tooth comb. Assuming even an experienced alpine climber had the right gear for a climb was risky. All it took was one thing to derail a trip. Mount Veil might not be a monster like Denali, but fifteen thousand feet was plenty tall enough to run into trouble.

Providing his clients with a detailed packing list was part of his guide service and the one they tended to go off course on the easiest. He hoped she’d had time to get together everything they needed. Easton had long since learned that a well-packed crew made a happy guide, and a happy guide got his clients to summit on time.

He had an hour before he was supposed to meet River and her team. Which meant he might have time to get a real, palatable cup of coffee before the equipment check.

As he turned off the single lane gravel access road leading from their property and onto the main highway into Moose Springs, Easton’s phone rang. This time, he didn’t ignore it.

“Easton, it’s Tasha.”

“Yep.”

Yep, meaning she totally screwed him. Dad and Ash might give him a ribbing, but there were plenty in Moose Springs who would take the article seriously. Increased tourism was a bane to everyone’s existence. This was the first time Easton had ever been accused of aiding and abetting, which stuck in his craw something fierce.

Easton had spent his life protecting this town, and he didn’t like being on the defensive about his decisions.

As always, Tasha cheerfully ignored his flat tone. “Hey, if you’re not too busy, I was wondering if we could get together. I’d love a few comments about the climb you’re about to take.”

The woman was ballsy, which he’d always liked. Well, until her enjoyment of a takedown had left him at her mercy in front of the entire town. “Really, Tash? After gutting me like a fish on the front page?”

With a cluck of her tongue, she corrected him, “Technically, the gutting was on page two. And I did try to contact you. Not my fault you stopped taking my calls.”

Easton grunted. He’d stopped taking her calls because those calls were only for one thing. Call him old-fashioned, but Easton preferred an actual relationship with his…relationships.

“Come on. I’ll buy you a drink, and we can talk about it.”

Tasha was complicated. To say they’d dated would have been an overstatement. To say they didn’t was to leave out some very important details. But he liked her enough to keep getting tugged into her vicinity.

“I’m busy now,” he told her, annoyed at his own lingering regret. “I have a gear check with my team.”

“I’d love to see what—”

“Nope.”

“What about one question on—”

Easton barked out a laugh. The woman was relentless in the pursuit of a story, and he had to respect her ability to get the information she wanted. Which made it even more fun to tell her that he legally couldn’t say squat.

“I’ll meet you for coffee at Dirty Joe’s, but it’ll have to be quick. The climb is off the record because I signed an NDA yesterday.”

The silence over the phone told him she was spinning that bit of information over in her mind.

“What are they doing that requires an NDA?”

“It’s par for the course. There’s no story here, only some people taking photos of animals on Mount Veil because they can’t film in town. That’s it, Natasha.”

“Okay, fine. We’ll figure out a way to get around the NDA.” A pause, then she added in a low purr, “You know I love it when you say my full name.”

Yep. Which was why he always told himself not to say it.

• • •

Coffee with Tasha wasn’t safe. Neither was the location where she wanted to meet, but Dirty Joe’s Coffee Woes was adjacent to the park where he’d scheduled River and her team to meet him. Easton didn’t have a home office. A website—grudgingly done by Ash—was the limit to his advertising. He wasn’t interested in expanding, and he received far more requests for climbs than he could ever accommodate.

Most of his climbs were Denali, but Easton was one of only a couple of guides in the state who would take clients up Mount Veil. And if he could, Easton always accepted the climbs for Mount Veil every time.

He loved that mountain. Tasha knew it too.

The coffee shop was a tiny place, constantly busy with only a few bistro tables and mismatched chairs to share between the customers. Usually Easton got his coffee and drank it in the park, but Tasha had either the luck to get the table in the corner or had bribed—or driven—someone to vacate their seat. Normally, he would have offered to buy her a coffee, because coffee generally turned into lunch, then dinner, then his place. This time, he bought his own coffee, only felt a little guilty about not offering to buy hers, and then sat down with her.