See Jane Fall by Katy Regnery Page B

which, frankly,
grossed Lars out. There used to be Tessie at the Blue Moon, but
even Tess had found someone and moved away to Billings. And sure,
there were a few other girls in Gardiner who he knew and a few
divorcees, who were always on the lookout for their next “Mr.,” but
none of them exactly got his heart beating faster; none of them was
the next Mrs. Lindstrom.
    That left the Park Girls. But the Park Girls
were transient, weekenders even, and he didn’t imagine Gardiner out
of season was enough to induce many of them to stay. To stay in
Gardiner, you’d have to be looking for a small town—a small town on
the outskirts of a very large park—and who was looking for that? A
botanist? A naturalist? Maybe an artsy type like an author or a
painter, but Lars imagined they’d be transient too, because the
artistic types always went back to the big cities for the galleries
and museums.
    The bottom line? Women were scarce.
    Second, Lars wanted to see some changes in
his work life before he settled down. It was time for a change, a
promotion of some kind. It was time for Lars to be treated like the
man he was, like thirty-three percent of Lindstrom & Sons, not
less. Heck, he knew Yellowstone better than most seasoned vets of
the tourism trade, definitely better than Nils, and possibly better
than his Pop. He had studied his facts, explored on his own and
spent thousands of hours learning about the park firsthand. He
didn’t want to be relegated to the odd jobs and annoying errands,
although he had to admit that once in a while they had their
perks.
    Jane.
    She was something.
    Aw, she wasn’t the prettiest girl Lars had
ever seen, but she was cute enough. She was just your average cute
girl who might live next door, whose bedroom window you’d want to
slip into if she’d let you. She surprised the heck out of him,
saying unexpected things, making him laugh and shake his head with
her unpredictable comments. He’d loved watched her taking pictures
and by the looks of that camera, he suspected photography was more
than just a hobby for her, which intrigued him. And yesterday, when
she finally thawed out, it was like the sun had come out after a
day of gray gloom, and Lars realized again how much he liked
spending time with her.
    There was something else he was starting to
understand about Jane: her relationship with her cousin was
complicated. She’d tried to give him that speech yesterday about
how she was only friend material, implying that Samara was the
girlfriend material. Lars wasn’t buying that. Sure, Samara was
pretty. He’d seen the same pictures everyone else had. But, how
pretty could she be in real life? Weren’t all of those pictures air
brushed and edited before they hit the magazines, anyway?
    He understood the issue at the crux of
Jane’s situation: she was a normal-looking person who was first
cousins with a supermodel, and that had to be difficult for her.
But it didn’t matter to Lars. He liked Jane and that’s all there
was to it.
    And to Lars’s thinking, it wasn’t all that
different from any other complicated family relationship, like
being a thirty-year-old man who was still treated like some untried
teenage kid by his older brother and father. Huh. Jane and I
have more in common than she knows. We’re both working for family
members who think they’re more important than we are.
    Lars checked his watch. In the past hour
he’d finally made some headway on the mystery of the mama bear and
her cubs, and he was pretty sure he’d figured out the reason for
her gradual migration. Lars would warn Nils and Pop not to hike out
too far anymore in this particular area.
    Lars hitched his pack further up on his back
and headed to his truck. He’d need a shower and shave before
tonight, and he was planning to pack a blanket and some wine too.
He smiled, thinking of Jane’s reaction to the small herd of bison
from yesterday morning. Man, he’d love to see her face when a mama
grizzly and her