Let them look. She had more important things to concern her.
An older man about her stepfather’s age and with hair as white rose from the table as they approached. He was a little taller than Winston, but narrower, as if life had worn him thin. His face was carved in lines and hollows.
“Mr. Winston?” he asked, brown gaze darting from her stepfather to her and back again.
“Yes,” Winston acknowledged. “You must be Waldo Vance.”
Around them, voices rose, glasses clinked. One of the gang had recognized them. They were accepted.
For now.
Vance nodded to her stepfather. “That’s right. This is Nathan Hardee. I believe you knew his father.”
Hardee showed not the least welcome as he swiveled in his chair just enough to meet her stepfather’s gaze. The son of a prominent family, her stepfather had said. She’d met dozens over the years. He didn’t resemble any of them.
Society men strived for the same golden tan on their skin, but his was likely more an artifact of his work guiding people into the wilderness than the time he’d spent at lawn tennis. Society men often wore beards and mustaches, some quite prominent, but his was just thick enough to hide behind. Society men had the same assessing look, but few had so deep a green to their eyes, like the cool shadows of a forest. Society men dressed in plaid coats during the day or deepest black at night, not brown wool and poorly spun cotton. When she approached, society men bowed and flattered. He had to notice her standing at Winston’s side, yet he didn’t rise as propriety demanded.
“Afraid you’ve wasted your time,” he said in a deep voice that reverberated inside her. “I’m not looking to act as a guide.”
He hadn’t even given her a chance to explain, make an offer. Frustration pushed the words out of her mouth.
“A shame. We pay handsomely, and there’s not many who can say that right now.”
His gaze drifted over her. “I hear you can’t pay either.”
Winston’s ivory cheeks flushed crimson. “Now, see here,” he blustered. “You have no call to impugn my reputation. I am the director of the Puget Sound Bank of Commerce.”
“Which is about to close its doors, according to the News,” Mr. Hardee reminded him, voice like a bell tolling her stepfather’s doom.
So, he read the paper. One of them, anyway. The precarious position of her stepfather’s bank had been covered in all of them. When most of the remaining businesses in the City of Destiny relied on you for capital to grow, sometimes to even pay employees for a month or two, you were important enough to be watched. Closely.
Winston was the only one who denied it. “Not in the slightest,” he insisted, puffing out a chest singularly less impressive than that of the man in front of him. “We are solvent, well managed, secure as the mountain itself.”
“A mountain I won’t help you climb,” Mr. Hardee said, turning to face the wall again as if that would be enough to dismiss them.
There had to be something she could say to persuade him. Money didn’t seem to matter—oddly enough. Neither did prestige. And forget the need to posture and prove himself a gentleman. How could she get through to a man who apparently needed nothing?
“This is not what we were promised,” her stepfather fumed. “I wrote you specifically, Mr. Vance. I understood you had the authority to arrange matters.”
Vance shrugged. “You can lead a horse to water . . .”
“But apparently you can’t make him drink,” Cora concluded. “Unless it’s the questionable drink of this fine establishment.” She turned to her stepfather. “We might as well go. We have no need to link ourselves with wastrels.”
Hardee rose. Goodness, how he rose. He dwarfed her stepfather, Mr. Vance. He likely dwarfed every man in the room. The top of her head reached only to the broad bone of his chest.
“Just because I won’t do your bidding,” he said, gazing down at her, “doesn’t make me a wastrel.”
“But it does make you a fool,” Cora said, grasping any opening he would give her. “Lumber barons are digging ditches to keep a roof over their heads; shipping heiresses are cleaning toilets to make ends meet. We’re offering good money, just to guide us up Mount Rainier.”
“Why,” he asked, eyes narrowing, “would a woman like you want to climb Mount Rainier? I won’t risk my life on a whim.”
She raised her chin, met his assessing stare with one of her own. Fear and anger and frustration fought for supremacy. A whim, he called it. Saving her stepfather’s business—a whim. Refusing the advances of a tyrant—a whim. Securing her future, making herself beholden to no man—a whim.
“I don’t need to justify my reasons to anyone,” she told him. “I’m offering generous pay for your skills. We need a guide to see me safely to the summit and back to Longmire’s Medical Springs within the next two weeks. Are you that man?”
He didn’t answer, gaze on hers as if he could see deep inside her for the truth. She’d been in society too long not to know how to hide her secrets. If sweet looks didn’t suffice, bravado generally did.
“He is,” the older man insisted, head bobbing. “No one knows the mountain better than Nathan Hardee. He’s guided business leaders and government agents up that mountain. You couldn’t be in better hands.”
As if he disagreed, Mr. Hardee flexed the fingers on his large hands, hands industry and government trusted. Did that mean she could trust them? Did that mean she could trust him?
He didn’t trust her.
“Not interested,” he said, and he returned to his seat once more.
There. He couldn’t state it more baldly. He wasn’t taking a spoiled, high-society sweetheart into the wild. He still couldn’t believe Waldo had suggested it.
“Just hear them out,” his mentor had urged as they’d ridden into Tacoma with the pack mules for
