As much as she wanted to protect herself from hurt, she refused to be the kind of person who assumed the worst about everyone. Wordlessly, she laid her palm on his and wrapped her fingers around the back of his hand.

He tightened his grip, leading her down the short embankment to a place where the copse of pine trees opened up, revealing a new view of the creek. Water sluiced down a rocky incline so fast a mist rose above the falls. Glossy dark boulders jutted from either side. The sound of the surge filled the clearing.

“It’s so pretty.” She still held his hand, remembering the last time they’d stood on an embankment overlooking crashing water. “Montana’s answer to Big Sur.”

His gaze flicked away from the view and over to her, the shared memory hanging between them. They’d been so incandescently happy that trip up the Pacific Coast Highway, drunk on new love and letting it carry them away. How naive she’d been to think that could last.

She would bet his thoughts were veering down that same dark path, because his expression clouded. He gave a clipped nod of acknowledgment before he turned around to retrace their steps.

“I have a meeting with the other owners this afternoon,” he said as he started up the steep path, tugging her with him. “We should get back.”

Retracing her steps up the cliff path beside him, Elena told herself to count it as a victory that she’d weathered the afternoon without letting the old heat between them burn her. But seeing how much the memories affected him, too, didn’t feel like a win. Hollowness yawned inside her. She wanted answers to the Alonzo mystery soon so she could leave Montana—and Gage—behind her for good.

Gage half expected Elena to follow him into the private library outside his home office, where he was holding the owners’ meeting. She’d made no secret of being in town only for her story.

But she was nowhere in sight as he keyed in the code for the door, a security necessity given his work in investment banking and his access to extremely sensitive financial information. Could Elena be rethinking her decision to stay here with him? Their walk back from the waterfall had been silent and awkward, as though their shared past was riding shotgun in the utility vehicle with them on the way home.

She’d made it clear she wouldn’t revisit that time any more than he wanted to. Yet no matter how much they pummeled back the past, it seemed determined to weigh into every conversation. Her casual mention of that day at Big Sur shouldn’t have the power to set fire to his nerve endings, but he’d still ended up standing under a freezing-cold shower stream as soon as they’d returned from the tour.