Suddenly on edge, she looked around, but her eyes hadn’t had time to adjust from being in the sun to the shadowy interior. She hated feeling trapped, wished she’d get over it.
“Ranger Echo Rose,” a rumbling voice said.
Willing herself not to start, she turned in the direction the words came from.
Rey Bowen was looking at her, or rather looking down at her. He wasn’t a giant of a man, just a shade over six feet, but that didn’t stop her from reminding she was at least seven inches shorter than him and only one hundred twenty pounds. For reasons she’d been careful not to examine too closely, she’d decided that the breadth of his chest and width of this man's shoulders were responsible for her unsettling reaction to him.
Until she’d done in her ankle, she’d spent much of her time around physical people, most of them men. She still was around more men than women. Unfortunately in recent months she'd mostly rubbed shoulders with office personnel whose bodies looked as if they spent their days behind desks.
Despite how she'd been forced to live since last summer, she believed she understood the physical male. When he was around women, he had a tendency to carry himself as if he was a bull elk, strutting a bit, hard muscles pushing against too-tight T-shirts, and gazes giving out bedroom vibes.
Rey did none of those things. Instead it was as if he’d built an emotional wall around himself. As long as the conversation was about resort remodeling, he was relatively easy to carry on a conversation with. From what she'd heard, he never brought up a personal life and didn’t encourage others to do so in his presence. Rumor was he was divorced and didn’t have children.
Today he needed a shave. His shaggy hair was going every direction except straight, and his T-shirt was overdue for a washing machine. His jeans, faded but well-fitting, had a layer of sawdust on it. Before she could get a handle on the thought and shove it into a dark corner, she pondered what she’d encounter if she brushed his shoulders.
“Did you get my message?” she asked. “I’d said I hoped to get out here today.”
He tapped his front right pocket where she now noticed he carried his phone. “You didn’t say what time.”
“Because I wasn’t sure how long I’d be at the Ponderosa campground. This is the host's first year and he's still learning his way around."
Rey didn't respond. She couldn't tell whether he cared, prompting her to decide to get right to the point. "You heard that the fire danger’s been increased to extreme don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
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