and had turned her holiday affair into happily-ever-after. If anyone could help her win Carter back, it was Penny.
CARTER HAD BEEN avoiding Lindsey, but being a coward wasn’t his style so he’d decided to show up for her late-afternoon ski class. He liked the fact that he rattled her. He could tell by the way she kept losing her concentration with the kids. It wouldn’t have been obvious to anyone who didn’t know her as well as he did.
He was at the end of the line with two twin boys who looked like trouble and were barely old enough to be in school. They had freckles and matching bright red hair. Standing precariously on their skis, as though they were learning how to walk for the first time, they kept slipping back and forth and shoving each other whenever Lindsey’s back was turned.
“Hello, boys,” Carter said, stepping between the two of them to keep them from shoving each other. “I’m Carter.”
“I’m Benji and this is Russ.”
“Do you like skiing?” he asked, crouching to their level.
“No. I might if Russ would stop talking all the time. I can’t hear what she’s saying.”
At this level Carter noticed that Benji had a hearing aid in one ear. “She’s saying that you have to remember the skis are an extension of your leg. And that when you have them on you are gliding over the snow.”
“How do you know?” Benji asked suspiciously.
“I’ve taken her class before.”
“She mustn’t be very good if you’re back here again,” Russ pointed out.
“She’s very good,” Carter said with a wink. “I like coming back because of her.”
Russ scrunched up his face. “Girls are gross.”
“Sometimes they are,” Carter agreed. “Why do you keep shoving your brother?”
“He pushed me first,” Russ said, looking up at him with wide blue eyes.
“Fair enough. But how about you two stop fighting and we learn how to ski?”
“I’m done pushing him now,” Russ said.
Benji nodded in agreement. “Me, too.”
Lindsey demonstrated a basic move. The kids slowly took turns doing it, going to the front of the group where Lindsey would watch them and give individual feedback. Carter moved around so he could go last. When he got up there she looked at him.
God, he’d missed her. She seemed tired, but happy. That made sense to him because he knew she was taking a lot of runs down the mountain to get ready to go back into training. He wasn’t too proud to admit he’d asked Elizabeth about her.
“So you’re going back to the team after the winter season is over,” he said.
“I am. I figured out what I wanted for the rest of the year,” she said.
“You did?”
“Yes.”
“Care to tell me?” he asked softly. “I kind of have a vested interest since I started this year with you.”
She looked at the kids who were watching them, waiting for Carter to take his practice time. “Not right now.”
“And not later, either,” he said, one corner of his mouth quirking up. “We both know that we’re avoiding each other.”
“We were until you showed up,” she reminded him. “I can’t talk right now.”
It went against his nature to back down, so when the class went to the bunny slope he left, turned his skis in and went up to the lodge looking for a distraction. Something that would help him understand why he wanted that woman and why she kept freezing him out.
Granted, he knew that he hadn’t shared his feelings with her and that it was hard to admit to falling in love. She acted as though it was a bad thing, but he knew she might find it hard to believe in him, especially since he hadn’t admitted his feelings out loud.
“Hey, Carter! How’s it going?”
He was surprised to see Will Spalding back at the resort. The dude had come over Christmastime and fallen in love with one of the other resort guests. They’d both been groomsmen in Elizabeth and Bradley’s wedding.
“Not bad. What you are doing here?” he asked, shaking the other man’s hand and sitting next to him at one of the lobby conversation areas.
“Penny wanted to spend our first Valentine’s Day here and Elizabeth asked her to help plan the after-party for the charity event tomorrow.”
“It’s not too late for you to get in on it if you want to,” Carter said.
“Get in on what?” Will asked.
Lindsey entered the lobby and walked over to the concierge desk with one of her young students.
Carter stared at her. That woman made him crazy. He wanted her—loved her—but he was hopeless at how to tell her. In his entire life there had never been anything he’d encountered that frustrated him more.
“You seem preoccupied,” Will said.
“I’m just... Dude, I’m a mess. That woman is driving me nuts,” Carter muttered. His snowboarding friends didn’t get it. Had never had someone like Lindsey in their lives or they were still young and new to the sport so women weren’t important to them. But Carter had moved on.
When he’d moved from amateur sports last year he’d signaled that he was ready to start his life after sports. And he was just now realizing it. He needed Lindsey in ways he’d never thought possible before, because it wasn’t until he saw her standing by that kid in the lobby that he was struck with an image of her with their kid.
And that was precisely why he’d been running scared. It was time to stop running.
He started to get up to go over to her, but she was gone. She’d left the lobby. He looked around for her.
“Where’d she go?”
“I wasn’t paying attention,” Will said. “But I think she’s having dinner with Penny and Elizabeth tonight. You could crash that.”
Carter shook his head. He’d had enough of doing things with an audience.
* * *
DINNER WITH THE girls had seemed like a good idea when Elizabeth had first suggested it, but as she entered Elizabeth’s house and noticed that Bradley and Will were nowhere in sight, she wasn’t sure. The last time she’d been here had been when Elizabeth had tried on wedding dresses sent from California by Lindsey’s dress designer cousin.
It was funny that her cousin had gotten all the
