Page 81 of Snowed Inn

He glances at me briefly, then rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I nod, fully in work mode now. “And you need to start promoting it like yesterday.”

His eyes narrow. “But it doesn’t exist yet.”

I give him a huge smile. “Totally doesn’t matter. The more people are excited to see it open, the better. Do you have social media accounts yet?”

“Oh, yeah.” He snaps his fingers. “I meant to show you.”

This time he pulls his phone from his back pocket, and I swear it’s like a Big Foot sighting because I’ve only seen it once before, during the goat debacle. I was beginning to think he didn’t always carry it with him.

He scrolls through his phone and then steps toward me. “Look.”

I lean in front of him, trying real hard not to sniff his soapy, familiar scent. His account looks good. He’s got a decent-looking graphic at the top of the page and an on-point username. “So, you’re really doing this?” I ask, peering at him from beneath my lashes. I am not staring at his lips.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m doing this. Your faith in me, in this project, really inspired me, Maria.”

I gulp and refocus on his social page because I can’t even reply to that right now. “There aren’t any posts yet,” I point out.

“I know.” He looks a little bashful. “I was hoping you’d take the first picture of me to post.”

“What? Really? Me?” I point at myself. My smile is huge.

“Yeah. It was your idea, wasn’t it?”

I hold out my hand. “Give me your phone.”

He hands it to me. I click the camera icon and then start looking around for the perfect backdrop. “There,” I say, pointing. “Get in front of the bar. This can be your before picture, and opening night, you can take the after.”

“Great idea,” he agrees.

“Yeah, I have a ton of them. I’ll send you my social media best practices document.”

“Oh, wow. That’s nice of you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

He strides over to the bar, where he turns around and splays out both arms, resting his hands on either side of the bar top.

“Smile!” I call.

His teeth flash and my knees wobble, but I manage to take a handful of pictures. They all look good. How could they not? The man is ridiculously handsome.

He steps away from the bar, and I hand him back his phone. He fiddles with it for a minute, obviously posting.

“I’ll follow you right now.” I go searching through my apps to find the new username. Then I go into my document storage app and find my best practices list. “What’s your email address?” I ask.

He tells me and I type it in and hit send. I include the list of ideas I’d already come up with too. Can’t hurt.

“There,” he says, sliding his phone back into his pocket. “Official first post done. If all goes according to plan, opening night will be Fourth of July weekend.”

“How does it feel?” I ask, searching his face.

“Honestly? A little scary.”

“And?” I prod.

“And pretty great. Thank you, Maria. I don’t know if I would have had the courage to do this if it wasn’t for you.”