The Complete Series Boxed Set (14 page)

Too bad.

“You’re more qualified than any of the applicants, and it’s easier to get a good administrative assistant than it is to find an
o
perations
m
anager who can
r
un this place smoothly.”

She snorted. “You think finding a good admin is ‘easy’?” She brushed a piece of her overgrown red hair out of her eyes. He wondered if she was growing it out. There was a scraggly look to it. Appraising her, he realized she was looking thin and stressed. She was twenty now. No one should be stressed at twenty.

“You want the job or not?” Truth be told, he didn’t want to make liability insurance decisions, or deal with finding cooks who could be retrained to deal with food al
l
ergies. All of those issues were important to the ski resort, of course.

But did
he
have to be the one in charge of making those decisions?

No. Hell no. Time to delegate.

“Uh, yes!” She reached for a file on Mike’s desk and pulled it out. “The job description,” she said, waving a piece of paper in his face. “You realize the salary is…I’d get a sixty percent raise.”

He smiled wide. “You deserve it.”

“You are fucking kidding me.” Her eyebrow cocked up. “What kind of CEO are you, throwing jobs around like candy and hiring someone who doesn’t meet the qualif
i
cations on paper?”

He looked out at the fresh powder on the double black diamond trail, the tip of th
e
mountain calling his name.

“The kind of CEO who needs to do quality control on his own m
ou
ntain.”

“Mike!”

He shrugged into his coat, ignoring the messages and paperwork that would keep him here for ten hours. “You can take over a lot of this,” he said, gesturing at the pile. “Leave the things I need to do. And start your raise and promotion immediately.”

“But—”

“I think that you’re struggling to find the right words, Shelly.”

“The right words?” She looked at him like he was crazy.

“Thank you. Just say ‘thank you.’”

He heard the words in a faint shout as he made his way to the outer doors, texting Laura and Dylan.

* * *

“
I am going to die,” Laura said in a low, shaking voice.
 

“It’s skiing. Not BASE jumping. You aren’t cage fighting. You’re riding down a tiny slope on skis.” Mike sighed. People let their fear get in the way of the exhilarating push down a mountain. The control, the easy glide, the heart-pumping challenge of the slopes—nothing was better.

Well, sex was better. And fatherhood. And love. But aside from those…

“Death on sticks,” she grumbled.

Try as he might, he couldn’t get her off the bunny slope. This was a source of endless teasing from his staff. When Mike had been “just” a ski instructor here for all those years, he’d had a reputation for being the only instructor who could teach
anyone
, and have them up on the lower trails within hours.

Fear? Fear had no place in skiing.
Yet Laura was the hardest student he’d ever faced in well over a decade of teaching on the slopes.
 

“Laura,” he whispered in her ear, “there’s no reason to be afraid. Worst case, you fall. And we’ve practiced falling.”

“
You’ve
practiced falling. I’ve just
actually
fallen. Over and over.” She eyed the bunny slope with trepidation. Someone had put small barrels out to help new skiers to handle turns.
 

He couldn’t help but laugh. That just made her scowl.
She looked adorable with her ski goggles, white jacket, and tight white pants. Her golden hair peeked out from under a knit hat, and a white helmet with purple stripes topped her head.
 

A pink nose
poked
out
from under her goggles
. It wasn’t cold enough for a balaclava, and the new powder made this a perfect day to spend hours out here instead of chained to a desk. Dylan was in the lodge, playing with Jillian in the new Kid’s Korner they’d installed sho
r
tly after she was born. The added playroom pulled in a lot of parents of small children, and by letting one couple share a single ski lift pass, he’d gained a huge following among parents of little kids.

And why not? He, Dylan, and Laura knew how hard it was. Firsthand. When Mike watched the parents of two little ones come in, he always smiled. A bit wistfully. Jillian was pulling up now, and that meant she would walk soon, babyhood fading.

Maybe she needed a sibling.

He hadn’t said those words to anyone. Those were words that were very, very dangerous. Yet he knew they needed to be said one day.

Jus
t
not yet.

“
I am going to snap a knee and it will be your fault,” Laura said in a tight voice as she looked down the puny hill. Before she could say anything else, Mike took the little bunny slope in ten seconds and cut at the bottom, sending an intentional spray of snow out like a giant fan.
 

“Showoff!” she called from
above
.

He couldn’t argue. “That’s right! And
you
’ll get to my level soon enough.” A lie. A complete lie, but he said it anyway because he knew that half the battle with becoming a competent skier was in the mind.

“LIAR!” she screamed down the hill. A four year old whizzed past her and gave her a thumbs up, doing a credible imita
t
ion of Mike’s maneuver
and
filling Mike’s mouth with snow.

Deep, loud laughter came out of him, the feeling coming from the bottom of his lungs, a release his body needed. “Awes
ome
! High five!” The little kid shimmied over to him and jumped up on the skis to land a high five, then skittered off, bent over in that crouched way kids with lower centers of gravi
ty
had. No poles, either; Mike taught the young ones that way. Made them less dependent on the poles and—more pragmatically—less likely to poke themselves or anyone else.

“You’re both showoffs!” Laura called down.

“Quit stalling!”

She planted her hands on her hips and shook her head, then put the poles down. Her legs went into snowplow position—like an inverted V—and he groaned. She was still stuck at that level.

And then she pushed off, and to his surprise she pulled out a bit from the V, ke
e
ping the skis parallel as she slow
ly
descended, her calves turning enough, tigh
t
muscles working to get around the first barrel. Good! Then she managed the second and third like a pro, gaining speed.

“Good speed!” he called out. The shout unnerved her, he could see, and
he
regretted it instantly. No longer in control of her legs, her core muscles and arms didn’t give her enough balance, and he could predict, with pinpoint precision, what would happen next.

Once you let fear take over, the muscles freak out and aim for what they know. When you’re in a situation so unfamiliar, and gliding on snow on wooden sticks in a body that’s only done it a handful of times, there is no easy “normal,” so the m
u
scles go crazy and the brain can only see one option.

Get on safe ground.

Except you can’t, because falling on skis has its own set of dangers.

And so panic hits, control abates, and you just—crash.

Laura made it to the bottom of the hill and Mike skied quickly to her, to try to break her fall, but she crashed smack into the orange construction netting his staff had placed there to stop kids (and adults) from sliding off into the abyss and snowballing down into a culvert.

Suppressing a smile, he stood over her and said quietly, “You did a great job until the end.”

“
Oh,” she groaned. The same word she used sometimes during sex sounded nothing like its aroused form. “I think I broke something.”
 

Alarm shot through him and he looked up for a medical responder. “Leg? Wrist?”

“Ego.”

Adrenaline burst through him as he
r
self-deprecating laughter clued him in that she was safe and unhurt. “Don’t joke like that!” He bent down and began untangling her ski from the orange mesh. “How did you manage to get the ski through three separate holes?”

“I’m talented that way,” she grumbled, settling on her back, right leg twisted in a suspicious manner as Mike worked on the left leg. Seeing her in repose, eyes hidden by amber goggles but lips spreading in a sheepish grin, made him love her even more.

Trying. She was trying to join him in his
worl
d, his love of skiing, and he loved her for it.
His gloves were in the way of unraveling the mesh, so he pulled them off and she reached out to hold them.
 

“I think we need to pop off your skis and figure out the rest.”

“Good.”
S
he laughed. “You do that and I’ll hobble over to the l
o
dge for a latte.”

“No way,” he said firmly. “You need to own this hill before I let you take a break.”

“I will dominate the bunny slope! I have the power!” she shouted, tipping her head back as he stood and reached down to pull her up.

“You can’t handle the bunny slope?” a kid with a snowboard said, pushing past. Twelve or thirteen, Mike guessed, a light sprinkling of pimples on the part of the face not covered by goggles or helmet. His voice dripped with condescension.

“What?” Laura joked back, not letting him get to her. Mike admired that. “I
own
the bunny slope. Watch out! Bunny slope today, Chuck E. Cheese climbing structure tomorrow. I will dominate!”
T
he kid shook his head and glided off, one foot hooked into the snowboard
b
indings, the other pushing himself to the ski lift.

“Double black diamond for me!” he shouted back.

“You can have it!” Laura responded, then looked at Mike. Without thinking, he reached down to kiss her, their goggles clanking against each other, pain shooting through his brow and ears.

“Ow!” she said, giggling. Both pulled their respective goggles up over their helmets and the kiss was awkward. Heartfelt, but awkward.

“What was that for?” she asked.

“For joining my world.”

“Well, then, thank you,” she replied.

“
F
or what?”

“For rocking mine.”

The text simply read:
You ever been on a plane before?
 

Darla.

Yes. You haven’t?
she texted back.

Josie could easily imagine that Darla hadn’t, because it wasn’t like Aunt Kathy was a platinum club member of any frequent-flyer club. Living in a trailer in a tiny town in Ohio on the Pennsylvania border hadn’t given her niece Darla a life of luxury.

When the hell would I? Between my cha
m
pagne and lobster buffets when I worked midnights at the gas station and my caviar dreams when I slept in the trailer with the pipes all frozen?
Darla texted back.

That was about what Josie expected.

What’s up with planes? The guys ask you to go somewhere special?
Josie responded, ignoring the sarcasm. Darla was in a permanent, loving threesome relationship with Joe Ross and Trevor Connor, members of the band Random Acts of Crazy. She worked now as the operations assistant for Good Things Come in Threes, where Josie was the…hell, they didn’t have a name for what Josie did.

She ran the place.

A dating service for women who want two men and want the triad to work out forever was one hell of an anomaly in today’s world, but then again, Josie was, too.
Assembling a family of her own out of
good friends who were all living a little (or a lot) off the beaten path was about all she could manage, aside from the incredibly normal boyfriend she’d stumbled into finding eight months ago, at her best friend’s birth.
 

H
ow did she snag
normal
? Thinking about Alex came as easily as breathing or masturbating. You just did.

Aren’t you working right now?
Josie asked.
She needed to get her mind off Alex and masturbating, because she was going to get that hot, tingly flush that would dog her for hours, making her clit scream for attention and driving her to rub one off in a bathroom if she didn’t divert now.
 

Ye
p. New lead! A chick named Callie. That makes six new signups from women and three from men this week,
Darla replied.
 

You coming home for dinner?
Josie asked.
Mundane details. Ask about mundane details and make the rising swell inside her go away. Was this what it was like for guys who thought about baseball statistics to keep from prematurely ejaculating during sex?
 

She would have to ask Alex later.

And…there she was, back at thinking about Alex. That tight,
inviting
body. The smattering of dark hairs over a chest with muscles that swelled, his cobra back hot and chiseled. How his muscles curved in at the hips, making her drool just to imagine him.
His fevered breath hissing her name as he thrust into her…
 

Damn it.

She was at an office supply store, picking out a printer stand, the most mundane task on the planet short of choosing curtain rods. Who gets horny in an office supply store? Maybe Steve Carell. Who knows. But for Josie, just the fact that thinking about Alex could get her into this kind of throbbing state was a huge warning bell and source of tremendous joy.

Both. Warning and
j
oy. Because Josie was that fucked up on the inside.

Nope. Back to planes. Help?
Darla texted.
 

D
idn’t Trevor and Joe give you advice?
Josie responded.
 

No, the guys didn’t. Just asking. What do I need to know?
Darla replied. Something about that sentence did not make sense, but Josie didn’t feel like prying when she had a big old red clit like a button that, if pressed, would scream out something other than, “Yeah, we got that.”