Winter at Mustang Ridge by Jesse Hayworth

all week. But he hadn’t expected to be charmed. He was, though. Not just by her enthusiasm for riding along with him or the way she and Michelle had connected, but also by the way she grinned up at him in challenge now.
    “Maybe I
am
asking you to go parking,” she teased. “Are you shocked?”
    “It’ll take a whole lot more than that to shock me, darlin’.” He leaned in, saw her expression change as she readied for the kiss he knew they were both anticipating . . . and then he reached past her and opened the truck door. “Shall we go?”
    Her face blanked for a second, and then she laughed, balled up a fist, and socked him in the arm. “Beast!”
    “And here I thought I was being a gentleman.” He offered his hand to help her up into the cab, and squeezed her fingers before letting go and shutting the door. When he climbed in on the other side, he added, “But if you want me to be a beast instead . . .”
    “Oh, just shut up and drive.”
    “Yes, ma’am!”
    Hunger got the best of them, and they ate their burgers and fries on the short drive out of town, chasing ketchup and special sauce with napkins and good humor. Jenny directed him along secondary roads that got progressively narrower as they went, with snow under their tires and packed in berms on either side. The only illumination came from the truck’s headlights and the sliver of moon overhead, intermittently visible through thick stands of pine.
    “The turnoff is up there.” She pointed to a gap in the trees. It proved to be a plowed one-lane road that wound through the trees for about a mile before ending in a wide turnaround. There, wind had scoured the ground nearly bare, revealing a rocky outcropping that speared out past the tree line. Beyond it, the world fell away.
    He rolled the truck to a stop. “Should I drive out there?”
    “We used to when we were kids, but let’s not risk it. I’d hate to see the Vetmobile go poof.”
    “The Vetmobile, eh? Do I get a cool theme song?”
    “We’ll see.” She lifted the last two takeout containers. “Want to take our desserts mobile?”
    “Absolutely. Let me grab a couple of flashlights.” He expected to freeze, even in his heavy coat and ski pants, but when they got out of the truck, he was pleasantly surprised. “Hey, it’s not so cold here.”
    She took a deep breath of the pine-laden air. “It has something to do with the trees and the air currents, though there’s supposed to be a hidden hot spring involved, too. Every few years, a group of kids—or adults who should really know better—gets in trouble trying to find the hidden springs, and Search and Rescue has to come in and pull them out of wherever they’ve gotten stuck, lost, or otherwise incapacitated.”
    “Think we could find it? I’m up for some spelunking, if you know where to start.”
    “I’d suggest waiting until summer for that one.”
    “We could use melt patterns and steam to find the hot spots.”
    She looked momentarily intrigued, but then shook her head. “Nah. Krista would kill me if either of us wound up out of commission.”
    Enjoying her mix of irreverence and family loyalty, he took the containers and offered her the crook of his arm. “Shall we?”
    They walked together along the point, not needing the lights because the moonlight amped as they broke out of the trees.
    For a make-out spot, it had a hell of a view.
    Nick gave a low whistle as he balanced himself and looked out over a sheer forty-foot drop. The cliff face was featureless save for a few ledges that offered far more sharp rocks than soft landing spots, and dark, jagged stones speared through the snow at the base. But beyond that ruggedness, the snowscape smoothed out, flowing away from them almost as far as he could see in the moonlight, until it butted up against the distant foothills.
    “The land down there isn’t part of Mustang Ridge, is it?” He thought they were still too far south, though he didn’t have the area