CHAPTER 19
Sierra
Advanced yoga should be torture. Instead, I’m standing here getting verbally abused by a deceptively sweet-looking old lady and somehow enjoying it.
Sure, it’s intense, and Nadia, the yogi, looks like someone’s kindly grandmother, but looks can be deceiving, and in reality, she has the attitude and language of a tattooed deckhand on a South Seas container ship. She’s not shy about call-outs either and immediately dubs my form that of a stiff noodle.
And that’s nothing compared to poor old Luke, who she describes as having the grace of a rhinoceros crossed with a drunk giraffe.
To be fair, she can take it as well as she gives it. When I flip her off, she just laughs, and when another guest calls her a wicked old hag, she fires back, “Old hag I may be, but I’m not the one whose Raised Tiger ought to be renamed Constipated Beaver.”
That sends all of us, including the poor victim, collapsing into laughter before she barks us back into position. Bertha, meanwhile, moves through the poses with surprising ease, completely focused, like she’s done this a hundred times before. It’s… unsettling.
I end up enjoying it way more than the meditation class. It feels grounded and real, not all spiritual woo-woo. The exertion helps. Nothing clears your head quite like trying to hold a scorpion pose without face-planting. It’s damn near impossible to think about anything else.
After that, the yoga group and a few others head out for the nature walk, although I notice Amanda doesn’t join us, instead scurrying away as soon as the class is finished. Probably gone to find Reid. She can’t seem to manage for too long without him.
Luke and I join the walking group. For my own part, I think it might be a great chance to get to know some of the guests. Luke just seems happy whatever he’s doing. Relaxed, joking and chatting with the guests. He really does have a way about him. “Charming” is the word that springs to mind. Like an old fashioned, silver-screen movie star, but in full glorious color.
Bertha walks ahead of us with one of the other women she seems to know. The two of them are relaxed, chatting, occasionally laughing, completely at ease with themselves and their surroundings. Quite a contrast to the serious, almost austere businesswoman I used to see in my physio room. On the face of it, a change for the better—if only I could truly believe in it.
For a while I end up walking alongside of Holly—a stay-at-home mom recovering from a miscarriage—and Key, who introduces himself as a “social media star trying to unplug for a week”.
He looks genuinely offended when I don’t recognize him.
“How come,” Luke cuts in, “considering you run a YouTube channel?”
“You have a YouTube channel?” Key jumps on that before I can answer, immediately demanding my subscriber count. When I tell him it’s only around twenty thousand, he looksdistinctly unimpressed and tells me I need Instagram, then casually offers a collab like he’s doing me a favor.
The walk winds gently up the mountainside, stretching on longer than I expect, the trail eventually opening out into a clearing where we stop for lunch. The views are amazing from up here, and Luke comes over to join me. He points out a patch of shimmering green in the far distance. “That’s Emerald Lake,” he says. “In my opinion, it’s the most beautiful spot in the whole of Rocky Mountain National Park, but it gets fewer visitors than Bear Lake, which we can’t quite see from here because it’s hidden behind that line of trees.”
“Why does it get fewer visitors?”
“Because it’s a little further out, a little more isolated, most people go to Bear Lake instead. Actually, the two lakes make a great day out, because you can hike between them.”
“Is it safe?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well… bears, I guess. I assume with a name like Bear Lake there must be bears around.”
Luke laughs, and when I glance up at his face it’s very hard not to melt into those crystal-clear blue eyes smiling back at me.
“There are a few black bears around, but they tend not to bother humans if you stick to the trails, though it’s advisable to keep your distance if you do see one. Especially cubs, because Momma Bear can get a little protective if you’re not careful.”
We pack up our lunch and start back down the mountain along a different trail, and for a moment… yes, perhaps I’m beginning to see a little of whatever it is that’s captivated Bertha so much. It’s hard to stay skeptical on a day like this—sunlight, mountains, good company.
I shake my head. I mustn’t go native. I came here for a reason, and I’m not about to forget it, but I have to admit, these dangerously attractive men who own the place are graduallywinning me over. Luke had even got me a satellite internet connection this morning, so I can do my work, but I had to promise not to disappear into my laptop all day. I’m grateful for that—and for a lot of things he does.
He really is a great guy.
Which makes it a lot harder not to constantly think about jumping his bones.
I manage it. Barely. Mostly because I don’t want to make things weird, now everything is going so well.
One of the things I haven’t tried is Reiki. That still feels like a step too far. From everything I’ve read, it’s basically pseudoscience, and I’m not interested in pretending otherwise.
Also, the Reiki practice is Reid’s bag, and I’m not risking a session with Reid.