1
Janna sat with her friends at the best table the gorgeous mountain lodge had to offer. It was on the upper floor overlooking the main hall and provided a great view of both the front door and the majestic, white-tipped mountains rising up around the isolated lodge.
In the small tourist town of Bearstone Park, there wasn’t a lot to do other than mingle with (or avoid) tourists. But the Bearstone lodge had become a fun place for the women to go once a week to catch up on their lives.
When Janna had first moved and found herself alone in a new place with no way to leave and nowhere to go, she’d found kindred spirits in Leslie and Kylie, and the three had been fast friends ever since.
“Oh my gosh,” Leslie murmured, setting down her mug and letting her jaw hang open as she stared at the front door. Janna turned to see what her friend was looking at.
“Wow,” Kylie said. “And doesn’t the one in the middle look familiar?”
“They all look vaguely familiar,” Janna said, narrowing her eyes on the three tall—no—enormous men entering the room and silencing it with their beauty.
The first was the most intimidating.
Dark hair curling around his face and collar in rough waves, a sharp face with dark eyes that were a clear, sparkling deep blue, even from a distance.
Janna felt her heart skip a beat when the man looked up into her eyes. A slow grin spread over his face. She blushed and pulled her chair back a bit, making herself less visible as she looked at the other men.
“Oh, the one on the end,” Kylie said, pointing at a tall man with golden-blond hair, ice-blue eyes, and a muscular, toned build. He wore a ski jacket and had his hands in his pockets, looking over the place like he was already bored.
“I recognize him. He was just in the X Games last year, wasn’t he? Didn’t he take gold in the half-pipe?”
“I think you’re right,” Leslie said. “Ryan… something?”
“Hart,” Kylie said, biting her lip and squirming a little in her chair.
Janna grinned at her friend’s overt attraction to the man below. Kylie was such a shy, bookish type but always tended to go for the athletes. Janna didn’t watch the X Games, so she couldn’t say she recognized the tall man, but she had to admit his only rival in beauty were the two other men standing with him.
Janna did, however, recognize the third man, who was standing between the other two.
His hair was a medium brown, slightly waved, with golden highlights strewn throughout, and he had tanned skin and hazel eyes. He was handsome, no doubt about it. But he also had a face that almost anyone in the world knew.
“Holy crap, that’s…”
“I know… Riley Hart.”
Kylie shook her head. “Do you think they’re all related?”
Janna didn’t answer. Her gaze had wandered, as if pulled by a magnet, back to the man who was leading the trio forward. Did she recognize him from anywhere? She must. What else would make it so hard to peel her eyes away? Her whole body felt melted into liquid want the longer she looked at him.
He and his brothers towered over everyone in the room, at around 6’7”, and he was clearly the leader, with his dark looks and sharp eyes. And when they reached the front of the room and talked to the front desk, she swallowed, trying to tear her gaze from his perfect, taut ass.
“I recognize him, too,” Leslie said, nudging Janna.
“What?”
“The one you’re slobbering over. That’s Ryder Hart. The tech mogul.”
Janna’s throat tensed and her heart stuttered. “I’ve heard of him. I didn’t know he looked like that.”
“Honestly, Janna, it’s like you’ve been living in a box.”
Janna shrugged, knowing they were right. Ever since she’d moved here and been so utterly disappointed, she’d not been very interested in men in general, preferring to simply work and keep her mind off the thought of any kind of future that involved males. And she had Leslie and Kylie to keep things interesting and to talk to if she got lonely.
Judging by the looks on her friends’ faces, however, neither of them suffered from any of the same hang-ups. “You want to go talk to them, don’t you?” Janna asked.
Leslie nodded. “Let’s go.”
Kylie fidgeted. “Are you sure? I mean, they could talk to anyone in the room.”
Leslie grinned, eyes sparkling, and tossed her soft, dark curls back over her shoulder. “That’s the thing, though. We’re women, and men like that will probably prefer our company to that of the hunters and hikers down there.”
“Oh,” Kylie said quietly, blushing as her eyes targeted in on Ryan’s ass again.