style="font-size:15px;"> Like always, Tate appreciated Viktor’s optimism. Tate knew he needed to make a lot of changes for Lucas’s sake. It was difficult to even know where to start.
“Yes, we will.” Tate adjusted the lights, making sure they hung evenly. He knew Lucas was asleep in his room upstairs but still he lowered his voice as he asked, “Was I as troubled as Lucas when you took me in?”
Viktor halted his ministrations, his hands twinkling with color, and thought for a long minute. “I am not sure how to answer. It is difficult to know the mind of a child—the damage that is done. It comes out over time. I believe as part of healing process. You were unsettled also, like Lukie, tentative and even quieter. But your dedication to snowboarding saved you as much as I did.”
Tate smiled at the man who had managed to wrest him away from Penny at the age of seven—purchased him essentially after dating her during a brief stint of sobriety. She’d been waitressing at the ski resort where Viktor worked. He’d been kind to Tate, introducing him to snowboarding. Tate had been a progeny and Viktor, seeing his potential, had offered to coach him, eventually striking a deal with Penny that allowed him to raise Tate as long as she kept receiving financial help.
Viktor always downplayed the role he’d assumed in Tate’s life, but they both knew very well that he wouldn’t be where he was if it wasn’t for Viktor—not anywhere even close.
“Let’s hope that works for Lucas, too.”
“Yes, we will hope. And if not, we will find what does.”
But Tate wanted this to work. It had to because he didn’t know anything besides snowboarding. He was counting on using the sport to forge a bond with his nephew. Just as it had between him and Viktor.
Viktor added, “He is two nights now without nightmare.”
“Yes, he is,” Tate said with a relieved sigh. “He loves that crocodile night-light you got him. Told me it keeps the darkness away. The actual darkness and the scary kind he has bad dreams about.”
Viktor’s lips curved up into a grin. “You had night-light, too. It was tooth. You remember this one? You get from dentist.”
He did remember. He still had it, tucked in a box in his condo back in Colorado.
“I wonder if Lucas has ever been to the dentist?”
“We will check on that. Before toothache comes.”
“Good idea,” Tate replied. “As far as Snowy Sky goes, I don’t have any choice. I’ll have to take my recommendations to the board. Now that we’re investors we need to think about the bottom line, as well.”
“Does Ms. James know how much of resort you own?”
He grimaced. “Not exactly.” He joined another string of lights to Viktor’s.
“Does she know you own any shares of Snowy Sky?” Viktor asked, adjusting the strings as he slowly descended the stairs.
“Uh...no.”
“How do you think that will go over when she finds out?”
He shrugged helplessly and tried to squelch a surprising, annoying niggle of guilt as the tiny bulbs flashed on, as bright as Hannah’s smile. He couldn’t think about her smile or those amber-colored eyes that seemed to dance with a kind of mischief.
Cricket had mentioned the James family of course. He had even met a few people he now realized would be Hannah’s brothers or cousins. Park had also filled him in about the status and reputation her family enjoyed in Rankins. Undoubtedly she’d had a storybook upbringing as a member of the esteemed James family. It was certainly easy to deduce from her demeanor that the woman hadn’t known much hardship in her life.
But Tate had, and so had Lucas—which was why he needed to stay focused on the endgame.
“I didn’t want that knowledge to influence anything she told me. I wanted her to think she was talking with an objective observer. And, I didn’t want her to think she had to impress me.”
Viktor slowly descended the last few stairs, admiring their handiwork as he went. When he reached the bottom, he turned a hesitant look on Tate.
“Hmm,” he finally said.
“Hmm, what?”
“How are you objective?”
“In my capacity as a consultant I’m objective.”
“But what about your capacity as snowboarder? How does that make you any more objective than Ms. James with her background in skiing?”
Tate conceded that Viktor had a point. But he didn’t harbor any prejudice against skiing like she so obviously did against snowboarding. If only she would make a few simple—okay, maybe not-quite-so-simple—adjustments, equality could be achieved. Then harmony between the two sports would naturally follow at Snowy Sky.
* * *
CLOSING HER EYES, Hannah forced herself to do one more set. The doctors and her physical therapist had told her that the better shape she remained in, the less the trauma her body had suffered would prevent her from doing what she wanted to do in life.
Which made perfect sense, but this was heavy; she’d added more weight to her routine this morning. She focused on pushing the bar up as her muscles began to quiver.
Uh-oh, she realized, barbell now definitely heading in the wrong direction. She was going to have to roll out from under it somehow.
Her eyes snapped open as the bar was suddenly snatched out of her hands. The clinking sound it made as it was dropped on the rack seemed to echo through the empty weight room of the community center.
Cricket scowled down at her. “Are you trying to kill yourself?”
Hannah grinned up at him, wiping her brow with the sleeve of her shirt. “No, but I admit I may have pushed it a little too far. Thank you.”
He leaned over so his upside-down face was only inches above hers. “You should know better than to lift this much weight without a spotter. It’s weight lifting 101.”
She shifted her gaze one way and then the other. She tried to sound casual even as the danger of her actions began to sink in. “Well, there’s no one else here.”
“That’s because no one else in their right mind gets up at four in the morning to work out.”
“You do,” she spouted with a laugh.
“Yeah, so next time wait for me, okay?”
She sat up and mumbled a “fine” as she did so, because she knew he was right. That had kind of scared her.
He took a seat on the bench beside her. “How are you feeling anyway?” He motioned in the general direction of her left leg.
She nodded, but didn’t make eye contact. “Good.”
He kept staring. He always watched her close and for some reason she didn’t
