Gold Fire Read Free Page A

along, the patronizing jerk.
    He was a lazy slob, too, if he could sit there and nap while his saloon needed cleaning. She’d spent some time hanging out with people like him and recognized the type. Party all night, sleep all day, and never do a bit of work you don’t have to. She’d narrowly escaped getting sucked into that mire herself, and would prefer to stay away from it. People in Barringer’s Pass had long memories.
    Jase Garrett obviously didn’t know her—she wasn’t a quitter. She was going to do some homework on him, and hope like hell he was too lazy to do any on her. Next time she went to the Rusty Wire, she’d know everything there was to know about both Jase and his saloon, including what might tempt him to sell.
    Reaching the landscaped streets of the luxury resort community eased her irritation. In contrast to the Rusty Wire, everything about the Alpine Sky screamed class and dignity—the stone-and-timber theme of the main lodge and its related condos, the cute gift shops and ski stores across from the lodge, even the quaint stone bridge over the rushing gorge of Elkhorn Creek. Their narrow valley didn’t allow them to spread out like Aspen or Vail, but they had the best ski slopes around, and their little community was charming as all get-out.
    For service, accommodations, and grandeur, theplace was perfection. All except for the manager, her boss. If she was lucky, she could slip inside without encountering him.
    It wasn’t going to happen. Crossing the marble floor of the lobby, she saw David behind the admissions desk. Their new clerk appeared to be hanging on his every instruction, already captivated by her boss’s handsome face and air of authority. It didn’t matter that David was twenty years older than the desk clerk, with hair gone prematurely silver-gray. It never did. They always fell for his sophisticated look and charm, and the cool way he passed all the problems on to Zoe, as if they were no more than minor blips on his radar screen. If James Bond had gone into hotel management and been merely passably good at his job, he would have been David Brand.
    Zoe seemed to be the only one who found him condescending and arrogant. His feelings for her weren’t any warmer.
    They both knew she’d be a better manager than David. Buck Flemming, the original owner of the Alpine Sky, preferred keeping women where he insisted they belonged—beneath men—so David had skated by while she did all the work. Then Buck had died. Ruth Ann took a couple of minutes to play the grieving widow before freeing up her social calendar by making her son, Matt, the new general manager. Zoe hadn’t met him, but David had. He didn’t give her the details of the meeting, but his irritation made it obvious; finally, someone else had not been charmed by David Brand.
    Matt had given her the golf course deal without even meeting her. She and David both knew hersuccess might result in a shake-up in management.
    Gloves off, game on. David wanted nothing more than for her to fail. Hearing him gloat had zero appeal, so she tried to sneak past the front desk. He looked up and caught her eye with a cool smile. “Excuse me, Victoria,” he told the starry-eyed clerk. “I need to talk to Zoe, but I’m confident you can handle things on your own. You’re doing beautifully.” She beamed, but he didn’t see it as he intercepted Zoe at the back hallway.
    “I’m just here to pick up my laptop,” she told him.
    His smile almost looked sincere. “Let’s take a minute to chat in my office, shall we?”
    She tried not to roll her eyes. “Let’s chat” meant Let me find something to criticize about the way you handled things so I can enjoy how bad you’ll look when Mrs. Flemming hears about it . It killed her that she was about to make his day.
    He closed his office door and sat behind the desk before giving her an expectant look. “I heard your car was at the Rusty Wire.”
    Crap, he had snitches. “I stopped by to