by Leslie North
Chase’s mouth dropped open. What could he say to that? He’d already let Tana leave. His grandmother stood up and kissed the top of his head.
“All else aside, what happened between the two of you, Chase? I wasn’t at the meeting earlier, but I’ve been apprised of the situation. The staff at the front desk heard the two of you talking.”
“We had an argument. She probably went to her parents to get away from here,” he said woodenly.
“And how are you handling that?”
He rubbed the back of his head. “I’m not. Because you’re right, I love her.” He hadn’t meant to admit it out loud. “I’ve fallen for her, and I didn’t go after her because I thought she might not want me to.”
“Of course she does.” His grandmother patted his leg. “And if you love her, you’ll find a way to make it right. I believe in you, Chase. Now take some time and figure out your next course of action.”
“I will.” He rose to hug her, and then she made her way to the door.
“Call if you need anything,” she said before she departed, leaving him alone with his thoughts. It was too late. Or maybe it wasn’t. He could still go after Tana, but going after her wouldn’t solve the problem of the stupid accusation against her.
You’re still my fierce and determined grandson. His grandmother’s words jogged something in his memory. Don’t grab anything with Emily’s name on it. Chase had gone in search for Tana after leaving his grandmother’s office and found her in the lost and found room, just in time to hear the secretary’s warning.
Emily. The girl who’d lost the tennis bracelet.
What if she’d just lost it on the slopes and panicked when her father asked where it was? It would be the kind of lie that would seem harmless to a child—or at least a better option than admitting she’d lost something expensive. Judging by her father’s reaction, Emily wouldn’t have wanted to admit to losing the bracelet.
Chase had the feeling that his brother had made a terrible mistake. He put on his coat and was out the door before he had time to second-guess his plan. Within fifteen minutes, he was standing at the bottom of the ski hill where Tana had had her private lesson with Emily.
The last rays of the sunset were long gone, and stars sparkled in the sky above him. It was an ideal night to spend in the hot tub. Oh, it would feel great on his leg, too. Later, when he’d found the bracelet, he’d reward himself with a long soak. And he would find the bracelet. He had to, no matter how impossible it seemed.
But in order to do that, he’d have to ski.
His heart thudded in his chest on the way to the ski shed. Ski boots felt strange and clunky on his feet, too heavy, but he clicked them into place and stuck his poles into the snow. His body remembered the movements, but his legs struggled to keep up. You can’t give up. Do this for Tana.
It took him ten full minutes to get to the chairlift on the bunny slope. The ride up jostled his leg, but it wasn’t so bad he couldn’t stand it. It was a good thing nighttime skiing had fewer people and they had huge lights to illuminate the slopes.
Going down? That would be the tough part.
He made a few wide, slow turns, his leg protesting every movement. From this vantage point, the hill seemed huge. How was he ever going to find the bracelet? Chase gritted his teeth and kept going.
One run. Then another. Chase focused on the trees at the edges of the hill, but it was hard to see something as small as a bracelet in the snow. It could be buried deep by now, but at least it hadn’t snowed today.
By his fifth run, his legs were killing him. Avoiding the skiers took him all over the hill and searching at a slow pace was agony. The slopes were beginning to clear out and soon the lifts would close for the night. He had time for one more trip down.
His leg disagreed. A bolt of pain shot through it halfway down, and he sat down hard in the snow next to one of the trees on the side—a big fir tree, the branches poking against the sky. Chase hustled himself in next to the tree. It would be best if nobody saw him like this…breathing fast, crumpled on the ground, in pain.
That was when he saw it.
A glint in the snow from the lights on the hill, a glint that looked almost like the snow itself—but it wasn’t.
The bracelet.
He could hardly believe his eyes.
But he could believe his hands, and he scooped it up into his glove as a cramp seized both legs. It laid him out flat, it was so intense, but Chase held on tight to the bracelet. This was his proof.
Proof he’d do anything for her. Proof that he loved her. And proof that she belonged here, too.
The only problem was that Chase couldn’t stand up, the pain in his leg unbearable. It began to dawn on him as surely as the moon rose in the sky. He was going to have to let himself be discovered this way. Might as well do it now.
He eased himself up into a sitting position and pulled out his phone. Dead. Just great. And he was too far away from the lodge buildings to be able to make it back in his condition. He’d have to wait for the last run of the ski patrol when they checked the slopes for wayward guests.
Chase felt himself spiraling toward a sense of hopelessness. He’d felt this way before, after his accident, and he recalled exactly how he’d wanted to fade away instead of making the decision to get up and go to physical therapy. Not participating in life seemed easier. This situation just wasn’t going to get better.
He had to shake the crappy give-up attitude. “No,” he said out loud. Who would he be if he gave up everything over a bum leg and a little snow? His grandmother was right. Giving up had never been an option and he blinked hard to clear it from his mind.
Chase shoved his phone back into his pocket and put his hands out, ready to brace himself. If he couldn’t walk, he could sort of...slide.
He dug his fists into the snow and tried to lift from the hips. Gravity helped, but only a little. Keep your head in the game, Elkin. He dug in again. Pushed off again. His bad leg hit a rise in the snow, and it felt like a knife had been plunged into his kneecap. He bit back a cry of pain, not wanting to give in to it.
A rumble came from above him that sounded like a snowmobile. The ski patrol.
Chase threw his arms up over his head and waved them, shouting as loud as he could. Getting hit by a snowmobile would be a terrible conclusion to this adventure.
They were getting closer, almost on top of him, and he heard a shout over the sound of the motors. Two guys, two snowmobiles. One of them split off, and the two of them rolled up on either side of him. The man in front lifted his goggles.
“Hey, man. Don’t you know this is a ski hill? You’re supposed to ski back down!” Pete the chairlift operator peered down at him, a confused expression on his face. “What are you doing out here? I thought you weren’t skiing.”
“I’ll excuse your joke, but only because I’m so glad to see you.” Chase’s teeth chattered with cold and a pure shot of relief. “But listen, I’m going to need some help.”
“Yeah. Looks like it.” Pete leaped off the snowmobile and waved for the other guy to help. Chase was embarrassed to only dimly recognize the other employee.
He winced as the two men lifted him to his feet, the pain shooting through his entire leg. It was a team effort to ease him onto the back of the snowmobile.
“Sorry we don’t have a rescue sled,” Pete said as he got back on the snowmobile. “We didn’t expect to find anybody on the slopes since they closed twenty minutes ago.”
“No problem. Hey, would you call down to the lodge and make sure my brother’s around? I’ll need to talk to him, and my phone was dead.”
Pete made the call and drove Chase back to the main lodge. Every bump hurt his leg, but the pain was already beginning to ease—if only a little. His awkward angle sitting in the snow probably hadn’t helped. At the front door, Pete offered him an arm to get off the snowmobile, and Chase found he could bear weight.
“Thanks, man. You’re relieved of duty.”
; Pete saluted him and headed back out.
Dealing with the situation probably could have waited until morning, but Chase couldn’t wait another moment to put an end to all the stolen-bracelet nonsense. He hobbled through the lobby to the bank of elevators and went up to the second floor. This guest and his family always booked the largest suite available when they visited. He made it to the end of the hallway and rapped on the door.
A confused murmuring came from inside, and after a few moments, the door cracked open. Emily’s mom, a platinum-blonde lady who he’d never seen without all her makeup, squinted at him in a pair of silk pajamas. “Emily, get back in bed,” she said in a loud whisper. “How can I help you? My husband isn’t here right now if he’s who you were looking for.”
Chase took the bracelet from his pocket and held it in the air so she could see it. “I think someone lost this.”
“He found my bracelet?” The door flew open, and a squealing Emily ran out. She tore it from Chase’s hand, pressing it to her cheek. “I can’t believe you found it!”
Chase met the woman’s gaze, her open mouth proof of her shock. “Where—where was it?”
“It has a broken clasp,” he explained. “It was in some churned-up snow near a tree.”
The little girl burst into tears.
“Emily, what—” Emily’s mother put a hand on her shoulder.
“Hey, listen—it’s okay.” He knelt to Emily’s level. “Did your bracelet break while you were skiing today? I’d love to hear what happened.” He wanted all the truth and needed to hear the words for Tana’s sake.
Emily looked up at him, her bottom lip quivering and her face red. “It broke,” she howled. “It fell off my wrist. I got to the bottom of the hill, and it was g-gone.” Her eyes went wide. “I didn’t want to tell my dad. He would have been so mad at me. So, I said my teacher did it.” Emily hung her head, tears dripping down onto the floor.
Her mother gasped. “Mr. Elkin, I promise you, we will make things right. Emily?” She crooked a finger at her daughter. “Come back to bed. We’ll sort all this out in the morning.” She turned back to Chase. “I’m sincerely sorry about this and my husband’s overreaction, Mr. Elkin. You leave him to me.” The glint in her eyes suggested that her husband should be very, very worried.
She shut the door with a muted click, and Chase felt like the weight of the world had been lifted off his shoulders. Almost all the weight, anyway. He still had one more conversation to have tonight before he could finally give in to the pain and head for home.
Chase took the elevator back down to the main floor and headed for his brother’s office.
“Hey,” he said. Their faces lit up, and his grandmother rushed to him, throwing her arms around him.
“Chase, we heard from the ski patrol. What made you go out on the hills? Your leg—” His grandmother said, her voice worried and strained.
“I was looking for the bracelet.” Chase held his grandmother tight. She could beat her cancer, but tonight was proof life was short and fragile enough as it was. “And I found it.”
Jonas scoffed. “You didn’t. In the snow?”
“I was lucky.” He straightened up, keeping his arm around his grandmother. “I put on a pair of skis and then skied until my leg gave out. It happened to give out next to a big fir tree, which is exactly where I found the bracelet. I’ve returned it to the family. The little girl, Emily, admitted that it broke while she was skiing, and she made up the story about Tana to keep her dad from getting upset.”
Jonas put a hand to his forehead, dropping into his leather chair. “Damn.”
“So, what you’re going to do,” Chase continued, “is give Tana her job back right now and promote her to the position she earned. Either that, or I’ll leave with Tana to wherever her next job is, assuming she even wants me anymore. From now on, we’re a package deal.”
Grandmother took a step back and beamed up at him. “That’s my Chase.”
“Right now, Jonas.” Chase wasn’t backing down, and he wanted this over so he could go home with some dignity before his leg gave out.
Jonas nodded. “I’ll do it. We have to make things right.”
He hadn’t failed Tana after all. Chase went back to his house and waited for word Tana had returned. Except all he got was a text from his brother saying that she wasn’t answering his calls. Come morning, Chase would make sure the message got delivered. Personally, if he had to. But right now, he had to get off his leg.
21
Tana didn’t have much to pack, but it was taking forever. She surveyed her bedroom in the cottage and sighed. This place was supposed to be a new beginning—a house stuffed full of memories. She still had boxes in the closet that had yet to be unpacked from the move. Now they’d go into storage in her parents’ basement until she found another place. Tana lifted her suitcase, surprisingly light, and hauled it out toward the front door.
She didn’t want to leave. Leaving felt like giving up.
But Tana lifted her chin and went back for the last few boxes anyway. Lindsey was waiting for her at her parents’ house, and she couldn’t—wouldn’t—leave her daughter hanging. Not now, and not ever. They had a life in front of them.
It wouldn’t be the one Tana had planned on when she first got the job offer at the Elk Lodge. But it would be something amazing. It had to be.
Speaking of the greatest kid on the planet—or thinking of her, she supposed, since there was nobody in the cottage to talk to—Tana needed to figure out something special for her. Something to make up for the upheaval in her life.
There were no ski slopes in her parents’ town, but maybe she could treat Lindsey to some borrowed studio time at one of the dance places. Once upon a time, Lindsey had been in love with tutus and pliés.
Tana was halfway to the door when a knock sounded, startling her. She set the box in her arms down before pulling the door open. “Chase! What are you doing here?”
Chase stood there, feet planted, looking slightly out of breath and as gorgeous as ever. His presence flooded the room along with the morning sun. He looked slightly tousled, as if he’d just climbed out of bed. Tana was seized by the urge to drag him directly back to her bedroom. Against all reason, because she was leaving. The bed wasn’t made, but they didn’t need sheets to do what she wanted to do. She didn’t need sheets to lose herself in Chase’s body and forget all the things that hurt her.
“I couldn’t get a hold of you.” His green eyes shone with light and hope, and Tana couldn’t catch her breath, either. “Your voicemail is full, and nobody at the lodge can get you to pick up, either. But I had to see you. I had to talk to you. I kept coming by here to see if you’d come back. It’s been two days, and I—I can’t let you drive away for the last time without hearing me out.”
“I—” Her life was in shambles around her, or at least it had been until this moment. Chase was the first real spark of hope she’d felt, aside from Lindsey, in days. A spark she didn’t want to feel. “I emailed my resignation this morning, and I don’t want to talk to anyone from the Elk Lodge. Anyone, including you,” Tana huffed. She’d done enough crying, and now she needed to stay strong. But it was hard with him standing in front of her.
“If you don’t like what I have to say, then I’ll turn around and leave, and I’ll never bother you again. Okay?”
I want you to kiss me. Less talk. More kissing. “Go ahead. I’m listening.” It was the easiest way to get him to leave.
“What happened in the past isn’t important to me. What’s important to me now is that you know I believe in you. I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did when I found out about that arrest. It wasn’t up to you to divulge every detail when you didn’t know how I felt about you.”
“How you felt?”
“How I feel. I love you, Tana. That’s why I went to find the bracelet.”
“Wait, what?” Tana tried to wrap her head around what Chase just said. Impossible. All of it. Thinking back to the morning it
happened, she knew she’d been all over the slopes with Emily. The odds of Chase finding a delicate tennis bracelet made for a child were astronomical. And the odds of him falling for her? Miraculous. She wasn’t sure which shocked her more—the bracelet or the I love you. “You found it in the snow? On the slopes? But you don’t ski anymore.”
“I do now.” Chase grinned. "I skied until my leg gave out. Landed almost on top of it. But I found it. It had a broken clasp. I took it back to the family, and Emily confessed that she’d made up the story about it being stolen.”
“Chase, that—that couldn’t have been easy, searching in the snow. Are you okay?” Even the bunny hill would have been painful for him. And yet he’d kept going. For her. Tana thought her heart might explode into a ball of glitter and song. Gratitude sang in her veins. She could be thankful for this, even if he said nothing else to her.
“I’m fine. I’m completely fine. And it’s over, Tana. You’re cleared. Right before all this happened, my brother told me he was going to give you the promotion. After I returned the bracelet to Emily and her parents, I talked to Jonas and demanded he give you your job back and give you the promotion. I made it pretty clear to my brother that if he didn’t reinstate you, I was leaving with you.”
His words hit Tana like the world’s most exciting snowballs. She hadn’t checked her voicemails, not wanting to face the inevitable message that they were letting her go before she got the jump on the situation and resigned. It was a matter of pride. But this, this was a miracle.
Chase wanted to leave with her more than he wanted to stay here without her. Her heart broke open, spilling hope all over her insides in a warm wave.