Chapter Seven
Austin awoke to a world turned white, a perfect layer clinging to the trees. As soon as he opened the back door, Chloe went charging, rolling around in the fluff. It clung to her black and copper fur, stinging her nose as she tried to lick it off. He checked her paws to wipe ice from the pads and set her loose in the woods.
It must have stopped snowing shortly after dawn, but the clouds were low. Cloudy days in the winter were always warmer than clear, and he sweat as he jogged, Chloe nipping at his heels. When they came in, he fed her and changed into his ski clothes. The phone rang when he was halfway out the door and he tensed, expecting it to be the Kane offices again. But they didn’t leave a message. Probably a telemarketer.
Austin had the first shift of ski patrol. Usually he liked to arrive early to get in a few warm-up runs. But he found himself taking the long route to the Cascade and parking at the lift closest to the hotel. He looked around the lobby, the base lodge, the bottom of the lift. He checked his cell phone. Of course he’d remembered it today. He’d even turned the ringer up and slept with it on his nightstand. It was a terrible idea—he’d probably wind up no longer interested as soon as Sam started to get close. But he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
Why hadn’t she called? Didn’t she need her car? It was possible she wasn’t awake, but that seemed less and less likely as the morning wore on. He kept his eyes peeled for her as he combed the mountain, checking to make sure people were skiing and riding safely, answering any calls that came in over the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt.
But in the end it was she who found him, rushing up so fast she nearly crashed into him at the base of the lift as he was about to get back on.
“I can’t keep up with you,” she panted.
Austin lifted his goggles to see her better. Her eyes were bright, cheeks red from the wind.
“I mean, hi,” she said. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Austin laughed. “You were following me?”
Sam gestured up the slope. “I tried to catch you on the last two runs.”
“You should’ve called! I was looking for you, too.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.” He cocked his head. “Why didn’t you call if you wanted to find me?”
“I didn’t think you’d actually have your phone on you.”
He pulled off a glove and unzipped his jacket pocket. “Ta-da.” He pulled out his old flip phone, cracked across the top.
“I haven’t seen one of those in—”
“Six years?” he offered. “Seven? Eight?”
“More like a century.”
“Well, I brought it.”
“Just for me?”
“What if you needed a ride to your car?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be working now?” She nodded toward his jacket, red with a white cross on the breast. “You couldn’t leave even if I was desperate to make my escape.”
“It’s a quiet morning. No one’s managed to crack their coconut yet. And you don’t look very desperate.”
“I just bombed down a double black diamond at the speed of light,” she said. “Do with that what you will.”
“Oh, shit, I came down Double Trouble, didn’t I?”
“At the speed of light,” she reminded him.
“Had I known I had a tail—”
“You might have made more than two turns on the entire run?”
“Are you telling me you can’t keep up?”
He was rewarded by a flash of determination in her eyes, the same look Amelia got when he issued a challenge on a trail.
“I caught you, didn’t I?” she said triumphantly.
He had to admit that yes, she hadn’t let him stay ahead for long. It impressed him, actually. He’d been skiing fast, trying to outrun the feeling that had been building up inside him ever since he’d watched her walk out of the lodge with her hot cocoa and kicked himself for letting the moment go. It was even worse after he’d felt her lips and the press of her body against his, and then sat there as she slammed the door to his truck and went into the hotel alone.
It was a feeling like he couldn’t stand to be inside his own skin, knowing there was something he wanted but couldn’t seem to have. He longed to grab her and pull her close, something animal inside him that needed to hold her, kiss her, know her body against his. For a moment he could be whole.
The feeling was dangerous. It made him go too fast, push too long, lose himself on the trail. There was always a backlash, a price to pay. He could fall in too deep, get too close to the flame, and then there’d be no option but to save himself and run.
Sam cocked her head at him, eyeing him intently. “What’s going through that head of yours?” she asked.
“I’m thinking that I don’t usually get to ask a beautiful woman if she’d like to ride in a chairlift with me. It’s a whole new kind of nervous.” He realized as he said it that, in a way, that was exactly what he’d been thinking. How to be next to her without getting too close.
“I’m here, aren’t I?” she said. “Don’t tell me I risked life and limb on Double Death—”
“Double Trouble,” he laughed.
“Just to walk away empty-handed.”
Austin transferred his poles to one hand and extended the other, elbow bent, as though he were a gentleman in a topcoat inviting her in to a ball. “Shall we?” he asked.
Sam slipped her arm through his. They half skated, half hobbled to the lift, laughing at how impossible it was to ski that way, their strides mismatched, checking each other in the hip any time they tried to move. The lift operator stared at them, but that just made them laugh harder, joking about taking their show on the road. It was hard to believe he could feel this comfortable, even as a voice inside warned him not to get caught up.
And if he needed to remind himself why, here was the evidence. They’d barely gotten airborne before Sam looked over and commented, “That’s some pair of gloves. Are those holes under that duct tape, or is that a style thing?”
“These?” He turned the palms over so the worst parts were hidden. “I’ve had them forever. Why throw them out?”
“I’m going to take that to mean holes,” Sam said.
He shrugged. “They’re comfortable, keep my hands warm, I don’t have to worry about losing them—”
“And you definitely don’t have to worry about them being stolen.”
“All part of my signature look.” He laughed, making it into a joke. How could he explain to someone he barely knew how much a ratty pair of ski gloves meant to him? The attachment was silly, he knew. And yet he couldn’t let it go.
His uncle had given Austin the gloves when he was accepted onto the U.S. Ski Team. After everything that happened with his father, the hammer, and his busted knee, those gloves reminded him somebody cared. It was pretty pathetic, and he knew Sam would think he was sentimental and crazy if he told her. Hell, it was what he thought of himself sometimes.
But his effort to get her laughing worked. She pressed her leg close to his, their skis overlapping. “You have a signature look?”
“Isn’t that how you found me on the mountain? You said, ‘There goes that handsome devil with the duct tape on his gloves—I’d recognize him anywhere!’”
“Actually, I couldn’t see your gloves from up top. I was pretty far away when I first started chasing you down.”
He swiveled as best he could to face her. “How’d you know it was me?”
He thought he saw her blush, but maybe it was the flush from being outside. “It’s the way you ski. I could spot you from a mile away.”
“You haven’t even seen me ski,” he said, confused.
Now she was definitely blushing. “I saw you ski yesterday.”
“That was like two seconds, when we were coming down after Amelia’s run.”
Sam shook her head. “I watched you ski before that. Didn’t you think it was weird that I happened to be there right when Amelia fell?”
Austin thought it over. He hadn’t noticed her until she stopped to help Amelia, and even then, he didn’t give her any thought until she lifted her goggles and suddenly she was there, present, a force in his life in ways he still couldn’t understand.
“I just thought you were skiing down and happened to come over and help,” he said carefully.
“I did. But there’s a reason I was right behind you guys. I was watching your lesson.” She paused. “Actually I was afraid you were going to think I was annoying, hanging around and listening in.”
“I’m sorry, I get kind of focused during these things. I don’t really notice anyone else,” he admitted.
“I’m glad I wasn’t creepy stalker lady, then.”
“I hate to break it to you, but your creepiness needs some work, if that’s what you’re going for.”
She laughed. “That’s a relief. I saw you guys do a few runs, and the thing where you had them ski without poles?” She looked at him so intently that he wanted to turn away, except he couldn’t, because the brown in her eyes was flecked with gold just like her hair when it caught the sun. He wondered if it was possible to kiss someone when you were both wearing helmets, goggles up over your head, or whether you’d wind up mashing your faces together and wish you hadn’t tried.
“You were beautiful,” Sam was saying, and it shocked Austin out of his reverie. “When you skied, the way you turned, how you moved your arms—you looked like you were flying over the snow.”
“That’s what I wanted them to feel. When they’re racing, sometimes they forget the basic turns, the simple things to do with their weight. And they forget, too, what it feels like when they’re in it, when everything is exactly right and you just go.”
“I saw that. I still see it when you ski. When you were coming down Double Death—”
“Trouble.” Austin laughed.
“Death,” Sam insisted again. “You still looked like that. There’s something so distinctive about the way you move, I knew it was you right away. Too bad I started chasing after you before I saw the double black sign.”
“You must have done okay on it.”
“Sure, but I’m a little rusty. That whole over-three-years-since-I’ve-last-been-on-skis thing isn’t helping my game.”
“It’s just like riding a bike,” Austin offered.
“That’s what I told myself. Except it isn’t.” She paused. “It’s like walking. Like breathing. The kind of thing you instinctively know how to do.”
The top of the lift was coming up, but Austin wished it weren’t. He would have been perfectly happy to ride the lift all the way back down if it meant he got to keep talking to Sam, looking out at the trees covered in snow, the clouds lifting overhead to reveal the white peaks all around.
She might not have jumped to defend him against the Kanes, but she got it. She understood what mattered about being here. If he’d woken up that morning wondering what to do if and when Steven Park called again, being here with Sam only strengthened his resolve.
“So are you supposed to be doing patrol-type things?” she asked after they glided off the lift.
“I mostly just have to ski. Keep an eye on everything unless I get word I have to be somewhere.”
“Are you allowed to have someone following you, if she can keep up?”
“I was afraid you’d be too smart to ask.”
Sam leaned forward on her skis. “Am I about to regret this?”
“Come on.” He grinned. “Let’s fly.”
He took her down a single black first, a warm-up to get them used to each other. He skied first, then let her get ahead so he could watch. He knew she’d be decent—she carried herself with comfort even when they were standing around, and he’d seen her ski briefly with Amelia. But he couldn’t help smiling as they hit their stride, turning side by side, weaving together down the trail. It was a kind of dance, not simply to ski on the same slope as someone but to ski with them, aware of their body, their turns. She was good—really good. At the bottom she flashed a grin and said, “That’s all you’ve got?” so he opted for a steeper run, one that made a narrow chute through the trees that he always liked after it snowed, when the trees were heavy with snow and hanging low over the trail.
“Have you skied the Diamond Bowl?” he asked when they got to the bottom, breathless and windblown, Sam spraying snow over his skis as she pulled into a stop beside him.
She shook her head. “Too terrifying.”
“I don’t believe anything scares you.”
She pressed her shoulders into her poles, leaning her weight forward to stretch out her calves in her boots. “Trust me,” she said. “There’s plenty you don’t see.”
“Come on, let’s try it.”
“I’m not good at moguls.”
“You’re good at everything. I’ll teach you.”
“It’s going to be embarrassing.”
“For who? You?” Austin shook his head. “I’ve taught five-year-olds. Fifty-year-olds. I can teach anyone to ski.”
“I’m afraid I’m not nearly as bendy as a ski-wee. Or as close to the ground.”
“But you’re not fifty,” he pointed out.
“Not quite.”
“Something tells me that if I make it a challenge, you’ll be the first one bombing down.”
Sam stabbed the snow with a pole. “You’re not supposed to have me pegged this easily.”
“So we’re on?”
“Shit,” Sam said, shaking her head. “We’re on.”