lack of willingness to commit—a direct result of her bossy, demanding family. Love was a burden, Lily had long ago decided, and an unwelcome one. “Okay, listen. Let’s save my failings for another time. Maybe Thanksgiving, when everyone can join in on the fun. For now, we have jobs, good ones. We make extremely good livings just the way things are.”
“Yes.” Gwyneth dropped her gaze over Lily’s ski-patrol attire. “And I see you’re going to be earning yours screwing off all day.”
She’d already put in two hours at her desk, but hell if she’d defend herself. It didn’t seem to matter what she said to Gwyneth, or how often she said it—her sister just refused to see the hours Lily was spending chained to her desk, the paperwork she was shoveling her way through or the results. Fine. She was done arguing. “Ski patrol is hardly screwing off.”
“We have people for that.”
“Never enough. Safety first,” she said, imitating her grandma’s mantra with a smile, refusing to be baited into admitting that while she loved this resort, the day-to-day running of it had been infringing on her enjoyment of the mountain for some time. Actually, it was sucking the soul right out of her.
“If you’d only listen to reason,” Gwyneth said coolly.
“I don’t have normal reasoning, remember?”
With a frustrated growl, Gwyneth whirled on her heels. “I’ll be in my office.”
No doubt terrorizing Carrie, their shared assistant, as she micromanaged the lot of them.
God, Lily missed her grandma with a physical ache. She missed the simple understanding. Her grandfather had been gone much longer and she missed him, too. Her parents weren’t gone, just not around. Chin up, she pushed open the doors, sucked in the brisk twenty-degree air and stepped down the three wide stone steps to take in the glory around her.
Towering forests of pines heavy with snow, and steep, rocky valleys watched over by the awesome Sierras…it was an amazing celebration of contrasts, she thought, her breath crystallizing in front of her face. With a smile, she dropped her board to the snow and buckled a foot into her binding. The air was cold enough to burn her lungs as she inhaled.
She wasn’t on the schedule to patrol today, just on call. She’d only put on her ski-patrol jacket to get past any siblings, and—with the exception of that little run-in with Gwyneth just now—her plan had worked. She was free.
And free was just what the doctor ordered.
She pushed off and headed down a small incline directly toward Sierra Gulch, the quad lift that would take her to midmountain. From there, she’d get on Upper Way, yet another lift, to the top of the mountain this time. And from there, she’d take whichever run caught her fancy.
She checked in on her walkie-talkie to patrol base. Danny, a patroller, told her to have fun. Not a problem.
It was barely eight-fifteen, and the chairs officially didn’t run until eight-thirty, so there wasn’t much of a line yet. With her jacket, and the white cross on the back denoting her as ski patrol, she was entitled to move ahead of everyone else, but she didn’t. Unless there was an emergency, she didn’t mind waiting in the lines, visiting with the people on what she considered “her” mountain.
She moved in behind a couple and their two young children. Another skier came up on her right. Craning her head intending to say hello, she felt a sudden jolt right down to her toes.
The man who’d caused the jolt smiled at her. And whoa, baby, but the way he did caused a rush of blood through her veins more thrilling than any first run on the slopes could give her.
Before she could return the smile, she was jostled from behind, and might have fallen flat on her face but for the man with the brain-cell-melting smile on her right. His gloved hand settled on her arm, holding her steady. Grinning her thanks, she used the moment to take a good look at him, at the dark, wavy hair that called to a woman’s fingers, at the complexion that suggested both a tan and an Italian heritage and at the wide, firm mouth that immediately brought to mind a long night of hot sin.
She couldn’t see the eyes behind his mirrored Oakleys, darn it, but at her lengthy perusal, he arched a slow brow. His smile became just a little heated, and in his easy stance she detected an edge, an aura of danger, a delicious, spine-tingling shiver of attitude.
God, she loved a fellow rebel.
And then there was his physique—all hard length and sleek power. His lightweight black jacket fit snugly to his broad shoulders and chest, loosely at the waist. His cargo ski pants were loose, too, but in no way hid the effect of his long legs. Here was a man who kept his body in prime condition—possibly an athlete.
Yum.
“Single?” he asked as the line shifted closer to the lift.
She knew he was asking if she was single for the lift, but she answered for both that and her personal life. “Very.”
He smiled again, and together they moved to the front of the lift. The operator was Eric, a twenty-five-year-old ski bum who’d been running lifts for seven years now. He gave her the thumbs-up sign. “Drop Off, dudette.”
“That’s where I’m heading now.” She couldn’t wait to have the icy wind in her face, the feel of the slope beneath her.
“Drop Off?” the magnificent male specimen next to her asked as they sat on their chair, swinging into the air over a popular intermediate run called Calamity Alley.
The snow looked like endless yards of corduroy, thanks to the grooming crew working nights on the snowcats. “Drop Off is a run on the back side, off the north cornice,” she said.
“Sounds like a good place to start.”
“Oh, no,” she said with a laugh. “It’s a horrible place to start. It’s a double-diamond run, expert only.”
And the Sierras had been dumped on last night, making it all the more challenging. A blanket of fresh white powder lay as far as the eye could see, coating the trees on either side of the runs below like stoically swaying hundred-foot-high ghosts. Lily’s adrenaline began to pump. She lived for powder days. Lived to huck herself off Drop Off, a two-and-a-half-mile run with a wicked three-thousand-foot vertical drop.
The man next to her pushed up his sunglasses, showing his eyes for the first time. Melting chocolate, was her first thought, and good Lord, but she was suddenly starving for some. “Double diamond?” he repeated.
“Yes. Have you been here before?”
He shifted his broad shoulders forward to adjust his narrow backpack to be more comfortable between his spine and the chair. “No.”
“But you have skied before,” she guessed, as evidenced by his ease getting on the lift.
“I do all right.”
He certainly looked all right. More than. And yet, just because he did, didn’t mean he was a good skier. She’d actually discovered that the more good-looking someone was, the less skill they required to get through life, skiing included.
Far too many times she’d been pulled in by a pretty face only to discover that all the expensive gear was merely a front.
