“No? What was it, then?”
“A compulsion to create emotion through sound.” Reno snapped his mouth shut. He hadnotmeant to say that out loud. Now Tate would know that he hadn’t been just a geeky band kid; he was anadultband geek. Sure, his whole life revolved around music, but he was highly successful at it, and he did it without being on the paparazzi’s radar. Which was exactly how he wanted it. “I mean, I compose.”
“Compose? Like for orchestras?” Tate sounded genuinely interested.
Reno nodded as he warmed up to his favorite subject. “I’ve composed some symphonies for the Denver Symphony Orchestra and a few others, but these days I mostly compose film scores.”
“No way!” Tate leaned forward on his stool, obliviously sending another wave of his distracting spicy scent Reno’s way. “Which movies?”
Reno took a sip of his drink. “You know the new action flick with Chris Hemsworth?”
“No!”
“Yes.” Reno couldn’t help grinning back at Tate, who looked like a kid that had just been set loose in a candy store.
“He’s hot,” Tate said with a dreamy note to his voice as a smile tugged his mouth sideways.
Reno laughed and clinked his glass to Tate’s bottle. “Cheers to that.”
Surprisingly, the conversation flowed easier than Reno would have thought after all their time apart, and he was glad his dad had talked him into coming up here tonight. Even the anger he’d harbored for so long after Tate ditched him faded into the ether. Perhaps this was the closure he’d needed to finally move on.
He sucked up the last drops of his mocktail and glanced at the clock behind the bar. It was getting late. He pushed his empty glass away.
“Another?” Tate asked as he flagged the bartender down.
“No, thanks.” Reno shook his head and, with a reluctance that surprised him, said, “I need to get on the road before it gets much later.”
“I’m afraid you might be out of luck there,” the bartender said. His name tag readGrady, and he wore a revealing black tank top that showed off the amazing tattoos on his forearms and biceps. “Rumor has it there was an avalanche earlier, and the road is blocked.”
“What?” Reno burst out at the same time as Tate, and for a split second, his thoughts wandered to how well their voices harmonized. They could make music together.
Reno snorted at his stupid thoughts. He and Tate would not be making music together. Of any kind.
Grady paused a second and then nodded as he grabbed Reno’s empty glass. He dropped it in a soap-water-filled bucket behind the bar. “That’s why we have to wait here for Bryan, the manager, to let us know what’s going on.”
Reno slumped back in his seat, dismayed. “But I can’t stay here tonight.”
“Uhm . . .” Tate shifted around to face Reno head-on. His expression was hopeful. “I have a cabin. You’re welcome to stay with me if you can’t get out.”
Reno’s brain screeched to a halt.
Spend the night with Tate? All alone in a snowed-in cabin up on a mountain? Sounded like the stuff of romance novels, and as much as the teenage Reno would have jumped for joy at the idea, the adult Reno knew that would be the worst of all the worst ideas. But also . . .
“You have a cabin?” Reno said instead. “That’s . . . a bit presumptuous, no?”
Chuckling, Tate held his hands up in surrender. “It’s a rental. Kaylie booked it for me.”
Reno opened his mouth and closed it. Twice. Reno had never spent much time with Tate’s older sister. She’d always seemed like a cool girl who had it all together and didn’t take any crap from anyone, and Reno had admired her for that from afar.
“I’m not sure what to say to that,” he finally replied.
He flagged Grady with the tattooed arms over and ordered another tequila sunrise. This time with the tequila since it didn’t seem like he’d be driving anywhere soon.
A point proven when Clark called for everyone’s attention a little after midnight. He introduced Bryan, The Retreat’s manager, and turned the floor over to the slim, dark-haired man in a rumpled suit who looked just as frazzled. In his white-knuckled grip was a clipboard.
“Thank you for waiting here,” Bryan began.
After a few murmurs from the crowd, he continued. “So, here’s the long and short of it. An avalanche has blocked the road about half a mile from the hotel—”
