came to an ice-cream parlor and stopped to pat a shaggy brown-and-white dog waiting patiently out front. Crested Butte was definitely a dog lover’s town. Dogs looked out of windows and greeted her from backyards, and half the cars that passed seemed to have four-legged passengers.
A coffee shop beckoned on the corner and Casey quickened her step. A steaming mocha sounded good right now. But her steps slowed as she reached the walkway leading up to the shop. Two men in snowboarding pants, parkas and knit caps were building a moose snow sculpture in the space between the building’s front porch and the sidewalk. “What do you think?” one of them asked her. Blond dreadlocks stuck out from beneath his bright green hat. “Are the antlers too small?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never seen a real moose.”
“They’re too small.” His friend, wearing a red cap over his black hair, frowned at the sculpture. “But we’re having a hard time getting them big enough without them falling off.”
“Maybe you could use a stick or something as a kind of framework,” Casey suggested.
The blonde slapped his friend on the back. “Why didn’t you think of that?”
“Why didn’t you think of it?” the other man asked.
“Because you’re supposed to be the brains of this outfit.” He grinned at Casey. “I’m the beauty.”
“I’m sure you’ve both impressed her with your looks and intelligence.” A woman wearing a bright-pink ski jacket came out of the building and walked down the steps to meet Casey. “I’m Trish Sanders,” she said, offering her hand.
“Casey Jernigan. I just moved to town.”
“We saw your car pass by a little while ago,” the man in the red cap said. He stuck out his hand. “I’m Bryan Perry and my friend here is Zephyr.”
She shook hands with both men. “Zephyr?” she asked.
“I’m a musician,” Zephyr said, as if that explained everything.
“Welcome to C.B.,” Trish said. “What brings you here? Are you into skiing or boarding?”
“Not really. It sounded like an interesting place.” Did that strike them as a pretty flimsy reason to move halfway across the country? She pushed the thought away. She’d vowed to leave worrying about what others thought of her behind in Chicago. But lifelong habits were harder to shake than she’d anticipated.
Trish laughed. “It can be pretty interesting. Have you met your landlord yet?”
The question caught Casey off guard. They must have seen her go into the snowboard shop. “Max? Yeah. He helped me move my things upstairs.” Though judging by how much everyone already knew about her, she’d bet they knew that, too.
“Be careful around him, girl,” Trish said. “Mad Max is the original party boy. Lots of fun, but he’s broken a lot of hearts.”
Her own heart beat a little faster, remembering Max’s killer smile. “Mad Max?”
“Long story.” Trish’s grin widened. “Nothing to worry about, though. He’s a great guy. Just don’t make any plans to take him home and show him off to the folks.”
The idea almost made Casey laugh. Any man who didn’t wear a designer suit and come with a mile-long pedigree was unlikely to meet with her parents’ approval. That was only one of the reasons she was glad to be so far away from home. As for Max, well, if she were in the market for a boyfriend, she would definitely find him tempting.
She eyed Trish a little more closely. With her long blond hair, blue eyes and high cheekbones, Trish looked like a Scandinavian princess. The kind of woman who’d get a second look from any man. “Do you speak from experience?” she asked.
Trish laughed again. “Nah. I already had a boyfriend when I came here. But I know the type. Ski towns are full of them.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Zephyr said. “She thinks all men are scum.”
“Not all of them,” Trish said. “But let’s face it, most men come to a ski town because they’d rather play than work.”
“Then why do most women come here?” Bryan asked.
“Maybe the same thing.” She winked at Casey.
“I’m going to go see if I can find some wood or something for the moose antlers,” Bryan said. “It was good meeting you, Casey.”
“It was nice meeting you, too,” she said. “All of you.” Her feet were freezing standing here. She stamped them and nodded toward the coffee shop. “Is the coffee any good here?”
“The best in town,” Trish said. “Come on in and I’ll pour you a cup on the house.”
“She only says that because she runs the place,” Zephyr said. But he followed the women up the steps and into a small front room that barely had space for three small tables, a combination deli case/front counter and a huge gleaming brass-and-silver espresso machine.
“What’ll you have?” Trish said, moving behind the counter.
“A mocha, please,” Casey said.
“Whipped cream?” Trish asked, already turning levers on the coffee machine.
“Of course.”
“I’ll have one of those, too,” Zephyr said.
“You have to pay,” Trish said.
He grinned. “Put it on my tab.”
Trish rolled her eyes, but pulled a second cup from the stack by the machine. “So where are you from, Casey?” she asked.
“Illinois.”
“Where in Illinois?” Zephyr asked.
“Um…Chicago.” She watched his face carefully. Would her name ring a bell?
“No kidding.” He shook his head. “Never been there.”
She relaxed a little. She didn’t know why she was worried. People out here probably didn’t care about the society pages in the Chicago paper. And she wasn’t going to care about them anymore, either. “I’m going to be working at the chamber of commerce,” she said. “But I bet you already knew that.”
“You probably think we’re nosy, but C.B. is still a small town,” Trish said. “A new person moving in is big news.”
“Especially a new, single female.” Zephyr removed the top from a glass jar of biscotti and helped himself, dodging Trish’s hand slap.
“Oh?” Casey asked. “Why is that?”
Trish’s eyes widened. “You didn’t know? I thought maybe that was one reason you came out here.”
“Know what?”
“Single
