The Perfect Lie (Hope Falls Universe)
Mallory Crowe
Chapter One
Stephanie pulled her car into the small lot and put it in park. She stayed put for a few minutes and just looked out at the majestic spread of pines in front of her. This was good. She needed this.
She stepped out of the car and took a deep breath of the fresh mountain air. Damn, she wished she could bottle this up. Back home in Chicago, there didn’t seem to be fresh air anywhere. Even the parks were always in sight of skyscrapers and the highways packed with millions of cars pumping their exhaust into the air.
It would be a lie if she said she didn’t enjoy the city. That manic energy and frantic pace was what she fed on most days. But lately it had all felt more suffocating than energizing.
After taking a few deep breaths, Steph reached above her to stretch out her arms and then bent forward to give her stiff quads some movement. Maybe she could look into finding a yoga studio nearby or something. In this day and age, yoga studios were as popular as Starbucks, right?
She tried to remember what the sign had said as she’d driven toward the scenic spot. Hope Falls. Pretty name for a pretty place. During her drive across the country, she had seen hundreds of idyllic towns. As soon as she stopped, she’d always felt the pressing need to keep moving. Every time one of the locals would look her way, she felt as if she were about to be found out. As if they’d know she didn’t belong. She wasn’t one of them. Imposter.
Steph shook her head and rubbed her neck. No, all these thoughts were just in her head. No one thought she was out of place but her.
The bright summer sun shone down on her and she was happy to feel the rays but had to wonder where her sun block was. Her fair complexion didn’t do well with the sun unless she was completely coated in SPF 50. Ugh. She was such a mess she couldn’t even go out in the sun. Great.
She had no idea where her sun block was. She’d been driving for about two weeks now, zigzagging around the states, and all her careful packing had turned into a jumbled mess in her backseat. But she did have a loose, airy long-sleeved top that she could throw on that would keep her arms and shoulders safe from the sun. That should be enough to let her walk around the nearby trails and enjoy Hope Falls for the hour or so she was going to be here.
She pulled off the bright-orange blouse she’d worn on the drive and threw it in the backseat, leaving her in her black yoga pants that almost felt like pajamas and a white tank top. She was just about to open the trunk to her black Subaru to find the cover-up she was looking for when she heard the crunching gravel that signaled someone else was pulling into her secluded parking lot.
So much for a nice private walk. Hopefully, they’d be city-minded like her and not want to talk. She rolled her eyes at her train of thought. No wonder she would never fit in in a perfect town like Hope Falls. With that close-minded attitude, she wouldn’t make friends anywhere. She forced herself to look to the faded red of the old pickup truck and wave at whoever was driving up. The sun glinted off the windshield, keeping her from seeing who was inside, so fingers crossed it wasn’t a creeper.
Satisfied at her successful social interaction, she was more than ready to go back to ignoring whoever it was. But as soon as the car pulled into the spot one over from her and the door opened, she forgot what she was about to do. Hell, she forgot what planet she was on as she saw the man step out.
Man? That had to be an understatement. This was a god. An Adonis. Someone completely out of the league of everyone on this mere mortal plane. He was tall, probably at least six foot three, and his muscles pushed at the thin fabric of the gray t-shirt that had probably been worn and washed thousands of times from the looks of it. And those muscles were lean and defined in a way that didn’t come from the meatheads who spent every waking hour at the gym. This guy got strong by working with his hands and outside. And he probably didn’t need to be coated in SPF 50 to survive, either.
And then the Adonis spoke. “Gwen?”
So, Steph said the only word she could think of at the moment. “Yep.”
~~~~~
Josh Dooley looked the new hire up and down. He bet she wouldn’t last the week, but at least he’d have a nice view for the time being. Amanda Barnes told him that Gwen was going to be driving a black sedan and would meet him that morning, but he’d figured she’d head up to the main resort. He was stopping by to get some of the morning chores done and when he saw the black Subaru, he figured he’d give her an early welcome and make sure she hadn’t gotten lost or anything.
From the way she looked at him as if he were a space alien, he wasn’t going to rule out the lost theory. “I’m your official buddy for the week. You’re going to shadow me for a while and once we get a feel for what part of the property will suit you best, you’ll get a more permanent position. Permanent temporary position,” he clarified. “You’re just here for the summer season, right?”
Her eyes widened a bit and he tried to figure out what was confusing about the question.
She tentatively nodded. “Yeah, temporary,” she half mumbled.
Maybe she was just a bit slow. Amanda hadn’t told him much about the new hire, but he knew Justin and Amanda, the two owners of Mountain Ridge Outdoor Adventures, were more than willing to take a chance on some questionable people, him being a prime example. Sometimes it bit them in the ass, but for the most part they were such great bosses that the employees would bend over backward to make sure Mountain Ridge ran like a well-oiled machine. So if he had to babysit the newest project for a week until she got on her feet, he’d grin and bear it. If Amanda thought this girl was worth taking a chance on, so did he.