“Good morning,” I said in my most enthusiastic voice.
“Nope.” He held out his hand stopping me in my tracks. “Rule number one. Don’t talk until my coffee cup is empty.” His Irish accent was almost endearing enough to think he was joking, but his face told a much more serious story.
“Okay”
“Not a word. And stop smilin’ so big, it’s hurtin’ my eyes.” He motioned to the truck. “Get in.”
I loaded my bag into the back seat and took my spot as passenger. I only made it two minutes before the urge to speak started bubbling up inside me like a shaken bottle of root beer.
I shifted in my seat. How could he be so quiet? Just sitting there slowly sipping his coffee, driving down the road.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
“I joined Tinder last night.”
Seriously? That’s the first thing to come out of my mouth?
Seamus moved his glasses down his nose and looked at me over them, his deep blue eyes both terrifying and mysterious. “Three minutes.” His mouth widened into a grin. “Benny was right. Yeh are a talker.”
I let out a nervous laugh as he retrained his gaze onto the road in front of us.
“Tinder, huh? Is that what the cool kids do these days?”
“I guess so. Sorry, I didn’t mean to blurt that out.”
“Yeh can’t take it back now, Blondie.” He laughed like the adorable leprechaun on the cereal commercials. “Why would a gal like you need to go on such a site?”
I didn’t even know this guy’s brand of coffee, and we were already talking about my love life. Good one, Rylie. “I guess it’s hard to find someone at my age.”
“At yer age? What are yeh, a whole twenty-two?”
“Twenty-eight, thank you very much. And I don’t mean because I’m old. I mean because I’m young. Apparently, everyone my age is on Tinder.”
“That’s because yer generation’s full of wussy men.”
It was my turn to laugh. He had a point.
“Since when do these men not know how to pick up a girl at a bar like the rest of us?” He turned off the main road and drove down a sidewalk expertly dodging the bollard installed to prevent that sort of action.
“That’s what I said too, but Shayla said”
“Shayla, huh? How many men has Shayla met on this Tinder thingy?” Man, for someone who didn’t want me to talk until his coffee was gone, he sure was chatty.
“I don’t know, some.”
He shrugged. “I guess it’s worth a shot. Let me know how that goes for yeh.”
Yeah, no. I’d be perfectly happy leaving my personal dating life out of our future conversations. “So where are we going?”
“I’m going to give yeh a brief overview of the trail system in the city. We obviously can’t hit everything in one day, but this’ll give yeh an idea of what a trail ranger does.”
“How often do the park rangers go on trail patrol?”
“Not often enough. There’s only two of us for all these trails. The most common time is in the winter when the parks are slow.” He took a left at a Y in the trail and headed underneath an overpass. “I wouldn’t recommend coming here alone when the sun’s down especially since yeh summies don’t have the Kevlar.” He knocked on his chest where a bulletproof vest rested beneath his uniform shirt. “As yeh can see, there are some hooligans who hang out down in these parts.”
Several homeless tents were set up under the bridge.
“Do we do anything with them?”
“We can put notices on their tents and tell them to leave. We can even take their belongings if they don’t heed our warnings. But if they’re not hurtin’ anything, I like to leave ‘em be. Dusty, on the other hand, thinks it’s his personal mission to rid the world of homelessness.”
“So he takes their things?”
“After he makes sure they have a place to stay and a hot meal. He’s a big softie behind his body builder look.”
Though Seamus himself wasn’t terrible to look at, Dusty was even more handsome. Where Seamus was shorter and scruffier, Dusty was tall and built with smooth chocolate skin.
I nodded.
“He’s got a girl, in case yeh was wonderin’.”
“I don’t date guys I work with.”
Seamus let out another cheerful laugh. “That’s what they all say. Yeh’ve met Antonio, right?”
“Antonio is married.” And Italian and gorgeous.
“Marriage is more of a suggestion in Antonio’s world.”
“Well, I think marriage should be a serious commitment.”
“Sounds like yeh should have joined eHarmony instead.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “It sounds like you know more about these dating sites than you let on.”
He shrugged. “Gotta keep up with the times there, Blondie.” He took a sip of his coffee. “But I have to say, I find it rather presumptive to describe yerself as badass and super hot.”
“How do you know that’s what my profile says?”
“Don’t worry. I swiped left.” His voice was completely nonchalant as if it wasn’t weird we’d been matched in the first place.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t attractive, he just wasn’t my type. I liked guys to be at least a few inches taller than me.
“Over there yeh’ll see one of our intercity ponds, Golden Rock.” A pond almost as large as a football field lay below what promised to be a breathtaking sunrise breaking over the distant mountains. “Here take these,” he produced a pair of binoculars from his bag in the back seat of the truck, “and tell me what yeh see. Describe everything.”
I adjusted the lenses carefully to fit my eyes. “I see three fishermen standing shoulder to shoulder on the west bank. They look to be in their sixties. Next to the one furthest to the right are a cooler, a Thermos, and a fold-up chair that looks to
