by Helen Conrad
“Like a pro,” she replied.
“Knew there was something about this girl I liked. Bring her along, Rutledge,” he commanded, then went on to speak to someone else.
Nick grinned his approval. “Shane, you sound better and better by the minute.”
Shane went on eating, loving the way he looked at her.
Chapter Nine
Shane stayed in the game as long as she could but cashed her chips in at eleven. The men at her table grumbled good-naturedly about her quitting while she was ahead, but she begged off, saying that any second she was going to fall asleep in her seat. When Nick made a move to follow suit, she shook her head.
“No need for you to quit too,” she told him.
She had fully intended to wait up for him, but once her head hit the pillow, her eyes closed, and she remembered nothing further.
“Up and at ‘em, woman!”
Shane’s eyes flew open, then tried to bring the world into focus. The first thing that materialized was Nick, standing next to the bed, fully dressed and holding skis.
“Up and at who?” she asked, turning over on her side, away from him. Maybe if she shut her eyes really tight, he’d go away. She had absolutely no desire to attempt to learn to ski. High heels were the toughest thing she wanted to master as far as footwear went.
But Nick wouldn’t be put off. He came around the bed to face her once more. “At the slopes,” he said, answering her question. “Now’s the best time to hit them.”
“In the middle of the night?” She groaned.
“The sun’s up.”
“Good, go ski with the sun. I’ll join you later,” she muttered, burying her head under her pillow.
“You’ll join me now,” he insisted, unceremoniously pulling the covers down to her feet in one fluid motion.
Shane shivered as she sat up, a flimsy aqua nightgown wrapped haphazardly around her. One breast threatened to come out at any second.
“Of course,” Nick offered, sitting down on the bed, “the slopes right here are even more tempting than the ones out there. ...” His voice trailed off wickedly.
Shane ran her hands through her wayward hair. “No, I’ll be up in a minute.”
“So will I,” he told her.
Shane took a deep breath, feeling it safer to be out in the open with him. She couldn’t think straight when she was alone with him, and there was so much to be sorted out in the light of day, she told herself. She swung her long legs down onto the cold floor, completely missing the deep-pile scatter rug and hitting the icy floor. The sensation helped bring her to. She walked over to the closet to get something to wear and realized that she hadn’t even unpacked anything yet.
“Give me a minute,” she pleaded, taking a fresh pullover and a pair of ski pants out of her suitcase.
“Need any help changing?” he asked as she went toward the bathroom.
“I’ll manage,” she promised. Somehow, she muttered to herself, I’ve got to manage.
“If I break anything—“ Shane threatened, not at all happy about being mounted on skis. Dawn was just beginning to give light to a sleeping white world. The sun peeked over the mountains, which shimmered, silver-white, in the distance. The freshly fallen snow looked almost like newly whipped cream, with waves and peaks waiting to be touched by the first eager skier.
“I’ll carry you in my arms until you heal,” Nick promised as he handed her the poles. “Now, let’s get started.”
And so began a very long morning. He had her on the small, beginner’s slope. But to Shane the hill looked enormous. She spent most of the time brushing snow off her rear. Finally, after three hours of struggling to her feet, Shane gave up.
“I’m no egotist,” she said, taking the hand he offered her as she got up. “I’m not going to pretend I’m going to master this sport when I haven’t got a prayer.”
“That’s okay, Shane; there are some things you do that you’ve mastered very, very well.” He tried to lean over and kiss her, but the skis got in the way.
“See, I told you skiing wasn’t any good.” Shane laughed. “How about lunch?” she suggested. “Falling down makes me hungry.”
“You’re on,” Nick said. “Race you down the slope.”
She groaned. “I was planning on having lunch today,” she protested.
But Nick just laughed, goading her on. Reluctantly she pointed her skis toward the bottom of the hill and maneuvered them as best she could.
Mercifully, right after lunch, Bowman demanded a rematch and Nick was drawn into another poker game. This time Shane declined to sit in, saying she had to catch up on her work. She also had to find some liniment. Her whole body was beginning to ache. She dreaded thinking about what tomorrow would bring.
Tomorrow brought all the sharp pains she had feared it would. After a night of wondrous love-making, she awoke in Nick’s arms to find that her body felt as if rigor mortis had set in.
“Oh, Lord,” she groaned when nothing wanted to move right.
“What?” Nick asked, waking up. The sound of her troubled voice brought an alerted look into his eyes.
“I’m going to die. No, change that. I think I did die. Nothing’s working except my mouth. That’s the only part I didn’t fall on yesterday.” She tried to flex her fingers, which had spent three hours tightly clutched about her poles. Every movement brought a flash of agony through her thighs.
“Everything seemed to be working well last night,” Nick said teasingly, then changed his tone
when he saw that she truly was miserable. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Notify my parents where the funeral will be held,” she said, closing her eyes. Muscles were aching that she hadn’t even known she had.
“What you need is a good massage,” he told her, getting out of bed. She watched him throw a short robe over his nude body.
“What I need,” she said, “is a bullet to bite on—and never to see another ski as long as I live.” A cold wave of air tickled every part of her as Nick threw aside the covers. She heard him rubbing his hands, working liniment into them. Then she felt him lift her nightgown up to her shoulders.
The feel of his hands upon her back brought a bittersweet agony to her. “Relax,” he told her, “relax.” After a few minutes- of kneading, Shane’s moans of anguish subsided. “All better?” Nick asked.
“Well, it’s actually my legs that are unbearably sore.” She immediately realized her mistake.
Nick poured additional liniment all over her upper thighs and began to rub it in. He gently spread her legs apart.
“What are you doing?” she cried.
“You want me to be able to massage your entire leg and get you moving again, don’t you?” she heard him ask innocently
“Now I know why you like to give skiing lessons. It’s the day after you’re really interested in.”
“Not true,” Nick replied. “Let’s just say it’s the scenery I like,” he quipped. It took Shane a few seconds to catch his meaning, and then Nick had to duck a flying pillow. Shane moaned in pain.
“Serves you right,” he chided, getting back to his task.
While his hands worked away her soreness, Shane’s mind drifted off. The man was wonderful. How could she hope to maintain a relationship, much less a marriage, with a man who was even better than hearsay purported him to be? No, she’d be much better off not allowing herself the luxury of making plans for the future. If she just thought of this as a romantic interlude, maybe someday she could handle the emptiness that would surely come.
“Hey, are you falling asleep?”
Nick’s voice drifted into her stream of consciousness, and she shook her head, or tried to. “Oh,” she cried.
“What’s the matter?”
“My neck. ...”
“I’ll get to it,” he promised. “There’re just so many lovely details to keep me occupied below your neck,” he told her brightly, his fingers fanning out from the region just below her should
er blades. His palms pressed on either side of her spine as his fingers reached out farther and farther, getting closer to the tender flesh of her breasts.
And then all she was aware of was the delicious sensation of his touch on her breasts. “It doesn’t hurt there,” she murmured, smiling.
“I want to keep everything in absolute tip-top shape,” he replied, “especially something I value so highly.”
Shane tried to draw herself up on her elbow and failed. Nick pushed her head back down.
“I’m not finished.”
“Would you have paid any attention to me if I were flat-chested?” Shane asked, disturbed by his comment.
His hands slipped beneath her breasts, cupping each one as he bent over and kissed the nape of her neck. “Lady, I would have paid attention to you if you were flat-chested, toothless, and losing your hair. It just would have taken me a little longer, that’s all. After all,” he said, turning her over to look at her face—and other parts. She saw the look of desire in his eyes as they slid over her body. Her nightgown was still tucked beneath her arms. “After all, visual aids do count for something. Look at me,” he ordered, sitting down next to her. “I know that if it weren’t for this face, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I’m not overly talented, just very, very lucky. If I looked like this,” he said, twisting his lips and pushing his nose over to one side with his forefinger, “I might be on the docks somewhere, unloading freight—and no one would know how wonderful I was inside,” and he grinned, then stretched out next to Shane.
“Oh, they’d know,” she assured him, raising her arms to him. He enveloped her in a warm embrace, his body resting familiarly next to hers. “Somehow that magic that’s you would come through—you’d earn enough money to have plastic surgery and wind up looking just the way you do now, the fantasy of millions of women.”
“I don’t care about millions of women,” he said, his eyes not quite as merry as they’d been a moment ago. “They’re just attracted to the cosmetic part, the part I have no control over. I care about a woman of judgment—someone who can see beyond that,” he explained, kissing her neck, bringing about a new surge of excitement to her. “I want to be part of her fantasies.” The kisses trailed up Shane’s chin, coming to a climax on her lips. The remaining aches her body felt melted away in the heat of her rising passion.
“Nick, I’m too sore to go on the slopes today,” Shane protested as Nick drew her out of bed nearly an hour later.
“I just checked out everything,” he informed her, pushing her toward the shower stall, “and it’s all in working order, lubed, and ready to go,” he added with a chuckle.
As soon as he withdrew his hand from the small of her back, Shane stopped moving, digging her toes in the throw rug to keep steadfast. “Yesterday was a disaster,” she reminded him.
“So,” he said, patting her rear, propelling her two steps on her way, “today’s got to be better.”
“Want to bet?” she asked, crossing her arms before her and turning defiantly in his direction.
Nick walked in ahead of her and turned on the water in the blue-tiled bathroom. He tested the temperature, then took hold of Shane’s hand and pulled her toward him.
“Talk about stubborn women,” he muttered playfully, stripping the nightgown off her. It floated like a cloud down to her feet. “When you fall off a horse, you’re supposed to climb right back up.”
“Fine,” she said. “Find me a horse and I’ll do it.”
There was no arguing with him, so she gave up and went into the shower. The cold water made her yap in surprise. “You’re trying to kill me,” she accused, above the sound of the running water.
“Just trying to revitalize you,” Nick said.
She looked back at his shimmering form, separated from her by the frosted glass of the shower stall. That, she thought, he had done very well only minutes ago. Silently she quickly scrubbed her body, trying not to think of the pains that were returning.
Nick was still leaning against the sink when she emerged a few moments later. There was no mistaking the glow of approval in his eyes. “Here, let me,” he said, taking the fluffy blue bath towel from her hands. With long, deliberate strokes, he dried her glistening body, rounding each curve slowly.
She tried to stand perfectly still, knowing he was teasing her. And she tried her best not to respond. She had more of a chance of becoming an Olympic skier overnight, she decided, wrapping her fingers in his thick dark hair as he bent his head. The strokes on her thighs felt more like caresses.
“You’re driving me crazy,” she said between gritted teeth.
“Good”—he laughed—“because the feeling is mutual.” He rose off his knees. “Now, be a good girl and get dressed,” he ordered, “before I change my mind and decide to keep you prisoner here all day.”
That, Shane thought, struggling to raise her aching legs in order to get into her clothes, would be far preferable to facing another skiing lesson.
In the dining area, Shane and Nick were surrounded by several of the crew members. “What say we have that tournament, Nick?” one of the men suggested.
Shane was all for that. Anything to forgo having to mount skis again. She knew that since everyone wanted to win, no one would chose her for his side, and she’d be safe. At least, that was what she thought.
“But I can’t ski,” she protested vigorously when Nick chose her for his team.
“It’s not going to be just skiing,” Nick assured her.
“Terrific,” she muttered into her coffee. “Just how many ways are there to break your bones up here?”
“That’s what I like about you,” Nick said, patting her hand. “You’re so game to try everything.”
“It’s not that,” Shane complained as he took her by the arm and pulled her along after the departing crowd. A sea of ski jackets marched before them. “I just thought I’d reach the end of the month in one piece, ending this assignment with all the parts I had when I came into it.”
But that wasn’t strictly true either, she thought as Nick turned for a moment and gave her a strange, warm look. She didn’t have all the parts she’d started out with. She didn’t have her heart.
“I don’t know how to toboggan either,” Shane informed Nick as he stood at the crest of a small hill, pointing to the people he’d chosen for the first event. Shane eyed the toboggan skeptically.
“You know how to sit, don’t you?” he asked.
“Yes, but—“
“That’s all you have to do,” he told her. “The toboggan does the rest.”
She had her doubts that it was all that simple, but found it useless to argue. She allowed herself to be plunked down on the oversized sled, sitting right behind Nick.
“Wrap your legs on either side of me,” he instructed, turning his head slightly so that she might hear above the noise.
“So that’s why you chose me,” she said, enlightened.
“Never miss a chance,” he told her. “Everybody ready?” he called over his shoulder.
A cheer went up to tell him that they were.
“Okay, Benny, push!” he ordered, and Shane felt the toboggan tilt slightly, bending into the wind.
The rush of cold air licked greedily at her face, and she buried it against Nick’s back, wrapping her arms around him tightly and holding on for dear life. She had to admit that she liked the roller-coaster effect the ride had on the pit of her stomach. It felt strangely like the plummeting feeling she experienced when she and Nick made love.
The other team won.
“Rematch!” Nick hooted, cupping either side of his mouth with his black, fur-lined gloves. “I demand a rematch!” Amid groans and laughter, everyone trudged up the hill once more. Somehow, it looked a lot bigger this time than it had at first.
The process was repeated again.
And again.
“Enough!” cried the captain of the other team. “We win, and there’ll be no more rematches!” Cheers and muffled applau
se met his announcement. Some of it came from Nick’s side.
A skiing event was next, and this time Shane was allowed to stand on the sidelines and merely cheer her team on, which she did to the utmost of her ability. She found herself almost going hoarse as she watched Nick and the other team captain come barreling down the hill, masterfully maneuvering their skis past the obstacles that had been set up.
She held her breath as Nick took a near spill, but he recovered himself in time. He went on to win the event. Swept away by the mood of the crowd, Shane clapped wildly, despite her aching arms.
Nick skied over to her. Impulsively, she kissed him.
“Remind me to win more often,” he joked. He sounded slightly winded. “Help me off with these, please, I want to watch Pete,” he told her, referring to another member of his team.
“You’re going to be a hard act to follow,” Shane said, doing as he asked.
“I’m counting on it.” Shane looked up at him, not at all sure he was talking about the skiing competition. But his proud bronze head was turned from her. Shane kept her thoughts to herself as she rose to join him.
The small but boisterous ranks of The Lord High Protector cast dominated the slopes all morning and part of the afternoon. A large crowd of spectators gathered once word had spread that they were there. Tourists and serious skiers alike came to watch Nick Rutledge in action. Whenever his form wasn’t flying down the slopes, he was besieged by fans with requests for autographs and pictures. Shane watched quietly as she saw him comply with each request for an autograph, smiling genially. She wondered if the mob of fans realized how sharply it was cutting into his privacy.
The combined strain of competing and being mobbed by fans soon took its toll on Nick. She could see that he was growing tired. She turned to Scottie, who had joined her in Nick’s absence. “C’mon,” she told him, taking his hand, “I think your fearless leader needs rescuing.”
“What are you going to do?” he asked, allowing himself to be woven into the growing throng of people encircling Nick.