I take a walk to the bottom of the first piste and sit on a wooden bench, watching a group of kids, no more than five or six years old, move across the flat snow on tiny skis. Their ski instructor makes them follow him in a single line so that he looks like a mother duck and they his ducklings. Then he stops and gets them to line up in a row in front of him. He looks in my direction and waves. I press my finger into my chest and he laughs, pulling his ski hat and goggles off. It’s Pierre.

“Hey, Pierre,” I call, waving back. I watch him as he looks down at all the kids and pulls a face. They all laugh like he’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen.

“He is so goddamn cute, isn’t he?” I turn to see Shawna walk towards me, a huge grin plastered over her face. She sits down next to me on the bench. “So, what happened last night? You went downstairs with Luke, then when I tried to find you later you’d gone. When I asked around after you some really fit guy with the greenest eyes and the sexiest smile I’ve ever seen said you’d left.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. I was a bit knackered. Decided to head back early.”

“Sure, no sweat. That fit guy though, he was smoking hot. He was with two other men. The bearded guy was all over one of the dancers. I heard he asked her back to his place after her shift had finished.”

“He did. She left not long ago.”

“What?” Shawna says, her mouth dropping open in a delighted laugh. She claps her mitten-covered hands together. “You mean your family are those three hotties. Did any of them come with a girlfriend?”

“Nope. I basically think they’re here to fuck,” I say, remembering Hudson’s hand on my stomach.

“Ah, it all makes sense now,” Shawna says, her face lighting up.

“What makes sense?”

“They are the brothers Freed.”

“Freed? That’s their surname?” I laugh at the ridiculousness of it. “I suppose they like to be free to get into women’s knickers.”

Shawna giggles, shuffling up next to me on the bench. “Apparently, they’re not really brothers. That’s just what they tell everyone. Rumour has it they all grew up in some care home and that all of them had shitty mothers.”

My head snaps around to look at Shawna. “Who told you that?”

“Luke told me about them, or rather he warned me about the brothers Freed when I first started here.”

“Is that so?”

“He said there were these three brothers who come here every year for the whole skiing season. That they are wealthy, love to party, and love women. According to Luke, they shag their way through the holidaymakers, resort staff, chalet girls, locals. A different girl every night. They’re a bunch of lotharios and are amazing in bed by all accounts, but emotionally fucked-up. Like, big time.”

“Yep, I reckon that just about sums them up,” I say, feeling angrier by the minute at Hudson’s advances. What a total prick.

“Well, shit. If I were you I’d be offering myself up on a platter. They are ridiculously gorgeous.” She looks at me and I can’t help but laugh at the face she pulls, even though there’s no way I am going there. Nope, the brothers Freed were off limits.

“I’m telling you, Louisa, there isn’t a hot-blooded woman on this planet who wouldn’t get her clothes off for one of those three hunks.”

“Well, there’s me,” I say, trying to forget the moment by the sink with Hudson a few minutes ago. That had been a complete lapse in judgment.

“I don’t believe it. You can’t tell me you wouldn’t jump in bed with one of them, given half the chance?”

“They love themselves a bit too much for my liking,” I mumble.

Shawna narrows her eyes at me. “What aren’t you saying? Please tell me you shagged one of them?”

“No, I haven’t shagged one of them, and I don’t intend to either. The brothers Freed are not for me. I don’t do damaged goods,” I say, mostly because my own damaged soul is enough to contend with. There isn’t room in my life for any more.

“Hudson, how are you doing, mate?” a man says as he’s skiing towards us. Shawna and I both flip our heads around and find ourselves staring at the brothers Freed. All three are looking at me. All of them look pissed as hell. Fuck.

* * *

For the rest of the day, I avoid going back to the chalet. I don’t want another confrontation with the brothers, so I take a trip up the mountain instead to observe the skiers as they speed down the slope. Despite it being cold enough for snow, the sun still feels warm on my face, and I understand now why so many people have a tan. The view from the café is incredible. When I sit in the outside seating area I feel as though I am on the top of the world, and that all my troubles back home are just tiny specks of dust like the skiers at the bottom of the piste. But my feelings of freedom and peace are short lived when I realise I must go back to the chalet to prepare the evening meal and face the brothers once more. I pay for my drinks and food at the bar then take the lift back down the slope. Half an hour later I am back at the chalet.

“Well, if it isn’t our very own Ice Queen,” Max slurs as I enter.

The place is heaving, full of people I don’t recognise and some that I do. Clara, the bitch from this morning, is draped around Bryce’s shoulders, her cherry lips pulling on his earlobes. For some ridiculous reason, it pisses me off. Clara whispers something in his ear, and he turns to look at me, his eyes narrowing. When Clara kisses him, he pulls her close, all the while looking directly at me. My heart drums way too loudly in my chest and I turn away just as Max stumbles forward. This time I’m the one to catch him. He can barely stand up straight. I take the can of beer out of his hand and manoeuvre him through the throng of people.

“I think you should go lie down before you pass out,” I say. He really must have knocked back a lot of booze, considering a well-stacked guy like him could be so thoroughly drunk. He is almost at the stage of oblivion. I recognise the signs, I’ve seen it often enough with my own mother. When I look about the room, most of the people are in a no better state than he is. I guess this is the partying Freed brothers Luke had told Shawna so much about.

“I’ll help you get him upstairs,” Hudson says, approaching us. He places an empty glass on a side table nearby and wraps Max’s arm around his shoulder. There is a woman watching us. She looks older, more sophisticated than most of the other revellers in the room, with long blonde hair a few shades darker than mine and the prettiest steel-grey eyes. She is stunning.

“Hudson, do you need me to help?” she asks.

He turns to her. “No, Louisa and I can manage. I won’t be long, Sacha.”

“He’s had too much to drink,” I say, stating the obvious. I can feel Sacha’s eyes on me. She’s taking the opportunity to look me up and down as though I am a threat. I give her a smile, one that says there’s no need to worry about me, but she just raises a haughty eyebrow. I dislike her immediately.

Hudson nods his head. “Max tends to knock the drink back when he’s hurting.”

Hurting? Why would he be hurting? I don’t ask, not sure I want to get into a conversation about some girl Max might be pining after.

Together we manage to get him upstairs and into his bedroom. I haven’t been in it before now and I am surprised by the sheer size of it. In the centre of the room is a huge king-sized bed covered in soft cream blankets, complementing the warm wood of the walls. We lay Max down. Hudson takes his shoes off and pulls an eiderdown over him, and then he does something completely unexpected and extraordinarily tender. He leans down and kisses Max on the forehead. It’s not at all sexual, more like a father kissing his son at bedtime, but it surprises me nonetheless. Hudson turns to face me and, noticing the look on my face, sighs.

“Despite what you might think, I’m not a complete arsehole. None of us are.”

I don’t say anything, we just stand and stare at each other. I can tell he has more to say, so I wait.

“The rumours you heard are true. We are not blood-related, although in every other way Max and Bryce are my brothers. I have looked out for them since we ended up in the same care home together. I left at eighteen, worked hard, got a place. As soon as they were old enough to leave a couple years later, we moved in together. We’ve been inseparable ever since. We work together, we live together still. I don’t think that will ever change. We’ve achieved a lot in the past eleven years after leaving the care home.”

I nod my head. “And the women? Sacha?” I say, waving my hand around, hoping he understands what I mean. What I really want to know is why he set his sights on me this morning. Why it had been so important for him to make me want him. Wait? Did I want him? I shake the thought aside, not willing to go there. Besides, he’s clearly moved on already. Or rather switched his sights to someone else.

“They are a symptom of a fucked-up issue we all have…” He sits on the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb the now sleeping Max, and looks up at me, his green eyes flecked with pain. “We were all abandoned by our mothers. Not all in the same way, but abandoned nonetheless. I guess we find comfort in the arms of women. Fuck, I don’t know. Sacha is someone I’ve known for some years. We’re fuck buddies, that’s all.” Hudson pulls a shaking hand through his hair. For whatever reason, he feels the need to share this information with me. I’m about to ask why when he gets up off the bed and walks towards me, standing just inside what is a comfortable distance. Remembering the way he made me feel earlier, I step back, needing space between us. A strange riot of emotions clamour for my attention but I push them down.

He looks at me wide-eyed. “Christ, I have no idea why I feel the need to share any of this with you. I don’t know what it is but there’s something about you, something I recognise…” His voice trails off at the look of horror on my face. Am I that emotionally scarred by my mother that everyone can spot the deadness inside me?

“What did I say?” Hudson raises his hand to my face as a rebellious tear falls from my eyes. I am stronger than this. For so many years I have kept this well of pain within me, and for some reason amongst these men it is trying to escape.

“You are not the only ones to have suffered a cruel childhood, Hudson. Although my mother is still in my life, she abandoned me a long time ago for the oblivion she could find at the bottom of a bottle. So, I get what it’s like. I understand, truly.”

Hudson moves towards me, surprise, guilt, then sorrow tracking across his features. I take another step away. “Perhaps Max is right, perhaps I am the Ice Queen. I don’t have room in me for more lost souls, my own is more than enough to deal with. Besides, I wouldn’t give away something so precious to a person who uses women so carelessly. I’ve seen my mother do that time and time again. That isn’t me,” I say, my voice cracking with emotion. I turn away from Hudson and walk towards the door.

“Louisa,” he says, staring at me. He looks so lost, so vulnerable that I almost, almost, go back into the room.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry, for earlier. That was the fucked-up me, the one that needs to make every woman he meets want him. You don’t want me, or any of us it would seem, and it made me mad. I guess I wanted to prove to myself that I could have you if I wished. I was an arsehole. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’ll back off.”

I look up at him, at the tiny beauty spot that sits just under his eye, at his full pink mouth. I look at Max sleeping peacefully on the bed, I remember the look in Bryce’s eyes as I ignored his attempts at making me jealous this morning, and sigh.

“You’re all beautiful, any woman would be mad not to be flattered by your advances. But I can’t give you what you want. I’m too broken already to allow any more people in to break what’s left of my heart. I can’t just have sex without it meaning something. I won’t be used like that, and none of you can have meaningful relationships. That’s pretty clear.”

“Louisa…” he starts, but I hold my hand up.

“Hudson, I am not like other women. I won’t be a part of any games, yours or your brothers’. I’m going to go to my room now. Tomorrow, when Max has recovered and you guys are alone together, I would appreciate it if you can make clear to them both what my position is. I am here to work, that is it. There is nothing beyond that. Fuck whoever you want, just don’t try to fuck me over. If you don’t think you can do that, then I will happily swap with another chalet girl.”

With that I turn on my heel and head to my room, passing a scowling Sacha on the way down. I don’t care if she heard what I said, I am no threat to her. It’s all the other available women she needs to watch out for.