“How’d you find this?”
“I’m good at getting information out of people. More than I need, usually.”
He certainly got a lot out of me last weekend. It seems all he had to do was bat those long lashes my way, and now the man knows all my dirty laundry, my biggest vulnerabilities.
But I’ve seen another side to him, too, one he works hard to hide from everyone else.
I scroll through the pictures, scanning the quick and quippy captions. I assume Rachel has taken most of these pictures, save for the ones she’s posing in with Beau, looking nothing like the sobbing, frightened kid in my clinic and everything like a confident, sensual woman. “Wow, she even has merchandise.” T-shirts and beanies with caricatures of Beau.
“She’s smart.”
“I don’t understand any of this world.” Sure, I opened accounts, but I’m never on them. I don’t even remember my passwords. “Jonah’s wife is all over this sort of thing. She’d be impressed.” Calla not only manages the plane charter business—all the marketing and administrative paperwork, and a website she designed and built herself—and the cabin rental, which is booked well into next year, but she’s also establishing herself as a marketing expert around the area. What started out as volunteering for the Winter Carnival and local farmers’ market is turning into a marketing side hustle that she’s now charging for.
On top of all that, she still keeps a personal blog alive, posting regularly about her life in Alaska with her yeti. The girl has more balls in the air than I could ever manage, and she hasn’t dropped one yet.
Tyler nods toward the phone. “Did you see Rachel’s latest post?”
“No.” I scroll back up to the top. Huh. “She’s set up a GoFundMe page for him.” That has already earned enough to cover the surgery fees plus recovery appointments and therapy. I curse under my breath. “She wasn’t kidding when she said she’d find the money.”
“I wish I could cover all my vet bills like that.”
“You can. It’s called sponsorship.”
“So I have to answer to someone else about my dogs? No fucking thanks.” He sucks back a gulp of his beer, his gaze drifting over the meadow between my place and my parents’。
I skim through the post to read Rachel’s description of Beau’s tragic accident and her plea for help. “‘Thanks to the heroic efforts of Park Ranger Tyler Brady, who went above and beyond by not only releasing a distressed Beau from the trap but carrying all one hundred pounds of our favorite bear to his truck and driving us to the veterinarian he swears by twenty minutes away. If not for him, I fear Beau might not have survived,’” I read out loud. “‘He is a true hero.’”
“As if I had any other choice. The dog weighs more than she does.” He studies the can in his grip with intense interest.
“Something tells me you would have done it no matter what.”
To that, he says nothing, taking another sip.
“And in brackets, ‘P.S. Why can’t all park rangers look like him?’”
He groans, but the little smile says he’s not bothered.
“‘If I weren’t so distraught, I would’ve gotten his number. Maybe I still can.’ Man, this girl has guts.” Something sharp pricks at my chest at the idea of another female chasing after Tyler … and of one catching him. It’s bound to happen, eventually. “She is pretty,” I tease.
“I’m old enough to be her father,” he mutters through a sip.
“Well, yeah, but then she could call you da—”
“No.”
I chuckle.
“I haven’t been interested in girls her age since I was sixteen.”
“Sixteen?”
He grins slyly. “I’ve always liked older women. More experienced.”
“Especially in parking lots?”
Tyler, mid sip, chokes on his beer.
My cheeks heat. I don’t know what compelled me to say that just now. Perhaps it’s the fact that we both seem to be dancing around that night as if it didn’t happen. “Make sure you let Rachel down gently.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose as if in pain, and I laugh. It feels so good to sit out here with someone and laugh. I’m often alone on my porch. “You know this is going to be on the local news, especially when they make the connection.” I click on the comments. “Oh look, someone already has. ‘Is this the same Tyler Brady who won the Iditarod?’”