It had been a week since the two of them had set out on that hike, and four days since they’d come back. Drake hadn’t heard from Celeste since then. The first night might have been strained, but the next two were something like magic. He hadn’t been lying or blowing smoke up her ass when he’d confessed to her that there hadn’t been anyone in his life since he’d divorced Vanessa. He’d said he was done with women then and there when he signed the divorce papers. She’d been his high school sweetheart and moving on from there just seemed like something he didn’t have the heart to do. He’d gone and put all his eggs in one basket the way his grandmother had always warned him not to. He’d figured all his eggs were broken now, and he was pretty much useless for any woman. Drake had settled into his life at the ranch and at the brewery and put everything he had into it. That had been part of the reason he’d been so successful. There hadn’t been any distractions to keep him from doing whatever his business needed to be successful.

Then Celeste had walked into his life. At first, he thought she was just like Vanessa — gorgeous, ambitious, and bound to leave. That was why he’d pushed her away, why he’d written her off to the same page with all the other people he’d left behind in the city. Then the camping trip had happened.

He hadn’t expected any of that. He didn’t take women out into the wilderness only to lead them onto some goose chase that wound up with him sleeping with them. He’d only intended to give Celeste a hard enough time that she would go ahead and make the decision to leave and go back to Los Angeles sooner rather than later. Now, Drake was a goner. He was attached more than he would have ever expected out of someone he’d met only a week before.

Drake had tried to call her three or four times, but every time it went to voicemail. He had the pretense that there were some contracts he needed to sign to get into contact with her, but she hadn’t called him back. Instead, she’d had the secretary up at the law firm call him and say she’d have the contracts couriered out to the ranch for his signature.

He’d cursed under his breath when he heard that. She was sure as hell avoiding him now. He kept telling himself that it was better that she just went ahead and left now instead of waiting until he did something stupid like fall in love with his lawyer before she pulled the rug out from under him. Maybe she’d go back to Los Angeles and start up some kind of club with his ex-wife where they could commiserate about what kind a miserable bastard he was. She could figure out she’d narrowly escaped having a sorry son of a bitch in love with her and then they could go out and get manicures and spray tans or whatever the hell they all did with their free time back in the city.

Drake decided to give up trying to contact her after that point. If she wanted him, Celeste knew where to find him. She had his phone number, his email address and she could drive out the ranch if the urge hit her. If she just wanted to avoid him, then he wasn’t going to push her. He was just going to let her be.

Drake had taken to spending his evenings alone anyway with just a dog curled up around his feet while he watched whatever television had struck his fancy in front of the fireplace. It was the way he liked it. At least, that’s what he told himself. Tonight, he didn’t even bother with the television. He just sat in the recliner in front of the fireplace, studying the patterns in the flames while he downed one of the beers he kept the fridge stocked with. He thought he was clearing his mind of all the bullshit that had been going through it since they’d gotten back from the camping trip. Instead he just filled it with a bunch of what ifs.

What if he got of his sorry ass and went into Denver to find her? He knew where her office was and what her office hours were. He had every kind of excuse to go in to his own attorney’s office to ask questions about progress on his own damned contracts and job. It was getting to the critical point in this job, anyway. The two of them needed to make sure that all the paperwork went through perfectly to make sure that everything was going to work out perfectly. He had himself half convinced to do just that in the morning when the next round of what ifs hit him.

What if she didn’t ever want to talk to him again? What if she was just biding her time while she found someone to take over his contracts so she didn’t have to see him again? That would be just his luck. The first time he managed to open up to someone since Vanessa, and she was going to running off and leaving him too. That was just his luck.

Maybe there was something wrong with him. He had to be fundamentally flawed if he couldn’t manage this most basic of human functions with any kind of sense. It had been too long since he’d even tried to talk to a woman on that level, much less anything else. Of course he was going to screw it up. He’d talked himself back into leaving her alone and just letting Celeste live her life without him like she clearly wanted to do when his mind swung back the other way.

What if she was the perfect one for him? Maybe it didn’t matter that she was younger than him that she thought she’d rather spend the rest of her life in the city. Maybe this weekend had changed her mind about all of that. She could be looking for someone else to take over his contracts so that there wasn’t any kind of conflict of interest and she could just go into this without any worries. But if that were the case she might have just called or texted or emailed or even used the pony express to make sure he knew what she was up to. And there went his brain swinging back the other way.

He didn’t know how long he’d sat there in front of the fireplace swinging from one extreme to another, convincing himself that he needed to go into the city to go see her and then back to being sure that he ought to just leave her alone and not bother the woman any more than he already had. Drake was so caught up in his thoughts that he didn’t even hear the front door open or the sound of footsteps coming into the living room. He didn’t even register that there was someone else in the room until he heard a familiar voice behind him.

“The hell are you doing, Fulton?” It wasn’t the voice he thought he wanted to hear, but maybe it was one he needed. Sam Albertson might have been his attorney for all those years, but he was more than that. The two of them were friends. If he thought about it too much, Drake would have called him his best friend, but he tried not to think about things like that too much. That was how you got caught in one of these spirals he found himself in now. He needed not to think.

“What does it look like, Sam? I’m sitting here in the dark, drinking a beer, like any civilized man with too much on his mind. What are you doing here?” He stood up from the chair, moving to take the empty beer bottle in his hand to the kitchen.

“Well, if I’m not mistaken we have a standing appointment to play cards with each other on Friday nights, but if you want to end that, then I’m sure my wife won’t mind me invading her at home spa session with being annoying as hell.” He laughed, and Drake shook his head. He’d forgotten what day it was, and the two of them had called things off last weekend so that he could go out on the hike with Celeste.

“Yeah, I’m getting older than I thought. I forgot, but no need for you to aggravate that poor woman any more than you already do, old man. Come on in the kitchen, and we can get this show on the road.” He finished his walk into the kitchen dropping the bottle he was holding into the trash before making his way over to the fridge to grab two more — one for him and one for his guest. Sam was already settling into a seat at the kitchen table and pulling a deck of cards from his jeans pocket.

Sam was older than Drake. He was already at the point of retiring while Drake wasn’t even close to thinking about it. It didn’t make much difference. He valued the older man’s opinion. He always had. There was a reason Sam was his attorney, and it hadn’t been because of the firm he worked for, even if they were one of the most respected law firms in Colorado. It had been because when he asked for the older man’s advice, he always got something he could use that made sense and that just seemed to work. Sam had a knack for always being right. It was simultaneously annoying and helpful. Drake wouldn’t have gotten his business as far as he had without Sam’s help, and he would have known better than to even try to move to Los Angeles if he’d listened the first time he got an opinion on the move. Maybe it was good luck that he’d showed up just now when Drake needed advice again.

Drake used the edge of the kitchen table to pry the metal top off the two bottles, setting one down in front of Sam and bringing the other one to his lips to take a long swig before putting it down on the table. Sam was shuffling and then dealing the cards when Drake looked up at him from the surface of the table.

“Alright Old Man, I’ve got something I needed to talk to you about any way, so I guess it’s kind of a good thing you showed up tonight.”

He could see the amusement in Sam’s eyes as he started talking. Sam made no secret that he enjoyed the younger man asking his advice. It made him feel a little superior to rub it in Drake’s face that he was always right, so he knew he was going to enjoy this particular session quite a bit.

“Let me guess. You did something stupid like go on a camping trip with a pretty little lawyer and got yourself attached.”

Drake rolled his eyes. Of course he already knew. Sam knew everything. He shouldn’t have underestimated his friend.

“How did you know?” Drake picked up his cards studying the hand he’d been dealt as his friend did the same, not hiding his amusement.

“I have my ways. Some of the old women at the office still like to hang out with my wife, and trust me when I say that you two are the talk of the office. They all knew you two took off for a camping trip, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, that poor girl has been wandering around the office distracted as all hell all week.” Sam glanced up at his cards at his friend across the table. “She put in her two week notice yesterday, actually. She’s leaving…”

Drake froze when Sam said the last two words. Leaving. It had been one of the myriad of possibilities that had gone through his head. She was leaving. She’d quit her job. He wasn’t certain what that meant, other than the fact that it meant she was leaving Colorado and probably headed back to Los Angeles as soon as she could manage to get her affairs in order here. Two weeks’ notice. That meant he had two weeks to figure out what the hell he was doing.

“So go ahead and tell me how bad you screwed this up, Fulton, because she was bound and determined to make enough of a go at this job to get a promotion when she got here, and now she’s quitting without any kind of a job prospect to replace it. So, I’m just going to assume that whatever happened on your little camping trip had something to do with that.”

“Hell if I know, Old Man. I just…”

Sam cut him off as soon as he started.

“Don’t feed me that line of bullshit. You know damned good and well. So do I. I may not know all the details of what went down, but something went down. I can see it written all over your face, and from what I hear it’s all over hers too. You two went and caught feelings for each other, and she’s running away.”

“Or maybe I went and did something stupid, and she hates me so much she’s willing to quit her job so she doesn’t have to see me ever again?”

“You’re so full of shit, Drake. I hope you know that.” Sam had stopped with the card hand before the two of them had ever really begun. He was being dead honest. Drake knew this tone of voice almost as well as he knew his mother’s voice when he’d screwed something up. “You screwed up alright, but only because you haven’t gone to see her, and yeah, I know you’re going to try to tell me you called or texted or some other such foolish nonsense. She’s scared, and she’s running. A phone call isn’t going to be enough. If you knew what was good for you, you’d get your ass in gear and go see her before it’s too late.”

Sam didn’t even bother starting the hand or even taking a swig from the beer bottle before he pushed up from the table and started to leave.

“Where are you going, Old Man? You just got here, and it’s card night.” Drake protested, but the older man waved him off.

“I lost my appetite for beer and cards, besides it smells too much like bullshit in here for my tastes.” He left without another word, grabbing his deck of cards and the hat he’d left on the hook by the entrance before he made his way out into the night. This wasn’t the first time Sam had walked out of card night without playing a single hand. It wasn’t the first time he’d told Drake he was full of shit either. It was just the type of relationship that the two of them had. Though tonight, there was an extra level of irritation in his friend’s behavior because of Celeste.

Drake still didn’t know what he was going to do, but whatever time he had left to manage it in was growing short. Celeste was quitting in two weeks. He didn’t know if she was planning to move back to California when that time was up or if she was sticking around. He didn’t know what her motivations were, but he knew that he had something to do with it. He felt a pang of guilt for that. It hadn’t been his intention to ruin her career. She was good at her job. He would have told anyone that, and it had been evident since she’d walked into his life that she knew what she was doing as far as law was concerned. And now she was leaving it all behind to do god only knows what thanks to him.

He at least owed her an apology for what had happened between the two of them, and if she wasn’t going to answer her phone, then he was just going to have to do it in person.