boots in his board. He clicked the buckles and pushed off with a grin. “You’ll have to catch me to yell at me.”
* * *
LINDSEY TOOK HER time getting her booted feet into her skis. The kiss from Carter... It had been nice and really not much of a surprise. His confession that he’d wanted to impress her hadn’t been, either. They’d been doing that since they’d met.
She’d counted on her own feelings of not wanting to let him see her freak out to get her down the mountain. She thought of all the runs she’d taken in her life, and this one wasn’t nearly the hardest or most dangerous but it was in her head.
She took a deep breath when she realized she’d been breathing in and out too quickly. She remembered New Year’s Eve when he’d sat at her table and she had felt that tingle of excitement. She wanted to be that woman again.
The one who could take on anything and beat it.
She closed her eyes and offered up her little prayer, and then pushed her sticks in the ground at the same moment as she opened her eyes. She froze and forgot to crouch and was kind of awkwardly bumbling along down the slope until everything sort of clicked together.
She felt the wind on her face, and the poles started to feel right in her hands as she adjusted her stance and leaned into her run. She was skiing. Oh. My. God. She was on skis again and taking a run.
She didn’t do anything fancy, just kept her wits about her and tried not to think of all the possibilities that were opening up to her after this. This was one of the major things keeping her in limbo, and she felt as if she’d just ripped off her last bandage and found that she didn’t have a scar.
She reached the bottom of the run and skied to a stop next to Carter, who was standing there with his goggles pushed up on his head. Then she pushed hers up, too, and launched herself at him.
She caught him off guard, and he fell back onto the snow as she kissed him. Heart thudding wildly in her chest, she feathered kisses all over his face and then lifted herself up to look down into that intense blue-gray gaze of his.
“I skied.”
“I saw you,” he said, his voice husky.
He hugged her close, and she realized without Carter she might not be here. She looked down at him again and saw the man she’d known for all of her adult life, but she also had the feeling she was seeing him for the first time.
She’d had sex with this man, but lying in the snow on top of him after taking a run that she’d never thought she’d be able to again, she finally realized that she’d had him pegged all wrong. This was intimacy. This sharing of something that went beyond the physical.
It scared her, but it also exhilarated her, and there was no way she was going to keep him at arm’s length after this. She wasn’t sure how long the magic of having Carter with her was going to last, but she intended to ride it for as long as she could.
She lowered her head and brushed her lips against his—a soft sort of thank-you to the man who’d pushed her and forced his way past all of her barriers until he got her to do the very thing that had been scaring her for way too long.
He smiled up at her, looking smug, as though he knew that he’d done something for her that she couldn’t have done for herself.
“Caught ya,” she said at last, reaching past him and scooping up a handful of snow.
“Dang it. Now I’m going to have to put up with more kisses,” he complained.
“Not just kisses, Carter. I’m afraid you stepped over the line. I did warn you,” she said, rolling over and shoving the handful of snow into the crook between his neck and shoulder.
He yelped and scooted back from her. He grabbed a handful of snow and lobbed it at her. She laughed as she unbuckled her skis and gathered more ammo to hurl at him. She kept throwing snowballs and ducking his until he rushed her. Scooping her up into his arms, he kissed her, and this time it felt real. Not a dare, not a thank-you, but that red-hot lust that always lurked beneath the surface whenever he was around.
“Enough, gorgeous,” he said, letting her slide down his body and lacing his fingers through hers. “I’m proud of you. I knew you could do it, and you proved yourself.”
She swallowed hard. “I didn’t know I could. Thank you, Carter. You always know just what to do to nudge me out of my comfort zone.”
“I intend to do a lot more nudging tonight when we are out with my friends,” he warned her softly. “I think you’ve been the Ice Queen for too long and you’re overdue for a thaw.”
She arched a brow. “I think you know that I’m not always icy.”
“I do, and I like it.”
They walked back to the rental building and Carter said goodbye to her. She watched him walk away, and this time he glanced back over his shoulder and winked at her before he disappeared around the corner.
THERE WAS ONE more week of the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, so the bars were crowded with some celebrities and a lot of film industry insiders. There were a few people she had met at the big winter games last year but Lindsey mostly avoided them. Instead she sat nestled on a high bar stool at a table jammed with people. Carter sat next to her with his arm casually draped over her shoulder.
She tried to be cool and casual, but this wasn’t her kind of place and she felt uncomfortable. Plus, Carter was different here. It was as if he was aware of an image he had to project, or maybe a person he had to be, and he wasn’t acting like himself.
If she’d been aware of that, she would have turned him down when he’d invited her to come along with him today.
Oh, who was she kidding? She would have been here anyway, because this afternoon after she’d skied she would have said yes to anything. There had been such a rush of adrenaline flooding through her, making her feel lighter than air.
That she could do anything.
“Another drink?” the cocktail waitress asked.
“Manhattan, please,” Lindsey said.
“Vodka and Thunderbolt,” Carter said. “A round for the table.”
The waitress nodded and moved away. She turned to look at Carter, who wore an Oxford shirt with some sort of graffiti-style art on the left side of a snowboarder doing a “crippler”—an inverted 540 spin. He hadn’t shaved, but that little bit of stubble on his jaw made him look roguish, and his hair was styled in that messy, casual way he always wore it.
“We have to show the sponsors some love,” he said.
“I’m not drinking an energy drink and vodka. That kind of thing makes me feel weird. I mean inside.”
He leaned in close to her. In his eyes she saw a hint of the guy who’d sat in her kitchen and played cards with her, but it was just a glimpse. “Don’t tell, but me, too. I just order them and then leave mine on the table.”
