Eight feet…seven…six…
She took a wobbling breath and hoisted the skis up, just as she had seen others doing it.
The skis and the points of the poles punctured the underside of the overhanging wave of snow and as Lindsay felt the bite of resistance, she put her weight into it, dragging the tips through the length of the overhang, effectively slicing it off at the edge of the eaves. At the same time, she tried to make it look like she’d been caught by surprise and had been thrown off balance by the snagged ends of the skis.
The weight of snow dropped down with a heavy, muffled impact…right on the top of Otto’s red cap.
Lindsay gave a cry of surprise and dismay, as she watched a gratifying amount of snow disappear down the neck of his coat.
Otto gave a shriek of shock, exactly like someone who had been doused with an unexpected icy bucket of water. The breathless sound was music to Lindsay’s ears.
He stood in the center of the snow mound that had built around his feet, gasping. Luke stood a couple of feet away, looking thoroughly surprised.
Lindsay put down the skis and poles and spread her hands. “I’m so dreadfully sorry. I have no idea how that happened…”
Otto wasn’t listening to her. His eyes opened wide and he pulled off his gloves with jerky speed and started struggling with the zipper of his coat. He pulled his hat off his head and dumped it on top of his gloves on the decking. The coat followed.
Beneath, Otto wore a pair of overall snow pants, the type that had wide elastic over both shoulders, holding the pants up, yet the pants themselves, although ending high above the waist, were loose and gaping.
Otto pulled the elastic off his shoulders and began groping inside the back of his pants, his face a tight mask of disgust and dismay. He pulled out a handful of fast melting snow, dumped it and went exploring again.
Lindsay licked her lips. The results of her scam were more effective than she had hoped for. Otto was oblivious to her presence, or her babbled explanations. Luke stood aside and Lindsay notice him rub at his lips again. Hiding more laughter?
They were all the focus of a loose group of interested bystanders, who were watching Otto’s strip show with barely concealed amusement.
It wasn’t quite enough. Lindsay wanted him to know without doubt who it was who had done this to him.
She stooped a little, as if she was peering at his down-turned face. “Why…it’s Doctor Berenger, isn’t it? Otto Berenger?”
That got his attention. His head snapped up and he frowned at her. “Do I know you?”
“Why yes, although you’ve probably forgotten. Lindsay Eden. You attended me once. Fancy running into you here.”
She saw his memory stir and supply the rest of the details.
“You,” he said flatly. He withdrew another handful of snow and shook off his hand. He was visibly shivering now. “Well, it would be you.”
Lindsay spread her hands innocently. “What can I say?”
Another tall man stepped to Otto’s side.
“What on earth is going on, Otto?” he asked.
Lindsay caught her teeth together before her jaw sagged too far. It was Arquette!
Oh, Lordy!
“Oh, there you are, Martin. This…woman just managed to dump a ton of bloody snow on top of me.” Otto snapped the bands of his snow pants back over his shoulder and glared at Lindsay. “And as coincidence would have it, we know each other.”
Arquette turned to her.
“It was an accident!” Lindsay protested.
Luke stepped up. “She’s right, Martin. I saw it all. The skis she was carrying caught the bottom of the overhang. Otto just happened to be in the way.”
Lindsay could feel her eyes opening wide, as she rapidly reassembled facts. Luke already knew Martin Arquette!
A sick wave of dread spread through her. No, he would not have tricked her like that, surely? But she could see no trick. It didn’t make sense. Something didn’t add up.
It was the unknown factor that made her deeply uneasy.
Arquette was picking up Otto’s gloves and hat while the little man struggled back into his coat. People were moving around them, walking into the café with curious side glances.
“Thanks for waiting, by the way.” Arquette was talking to Otto…and Luke! “I must have a word to the president about the cable car attendant. I know they have safety rules to follow but he was just a bit zealous, I’ll admit.”
“Not a problem at all,” Luke said, with a dismissive wave.
“Still, it’s a bit awkward having my two guests wandering around at the top of the mountain unescorted.”
Luke indicated Lindsay. “I ran into an associate, as it happened. I should introduce you, shouldn’t I? Lindsay, this is Martin Arquette, club member and in real life the current president of the state medical association. Martin, this is Lindsay Eden and as it happens, my boss.”
Lindsay shook Arquette’s hand, her own hand, her whole body, feeling numb. Somehow, Luke had turned this around on her. Why? What was the payoff? Her mind wouldn’t work well enough to figure it out.
Luke rested his hand on Otto’s shoulder. Did she imagine it or had his smile grown a little bit broader? “And the victim of your clumsiness, here, is Otto Berenger, a guest of the club just like me. Actually it was Otto who arranged this whole skiing trip for us. He’s a specialist in Seattle.” His smile became incandescent. “Otto is taking over the presidency of the medical association in a couple of weeks’ time.”
All the spit in her mouth had dried up. She wasn’t sure but she thought she might throw up with only a little more encouragement.
She managed to mumble a few inane social niceties and all the time she was aware of Otto’s glare and Luke’s victorious grin.
She’d lost the bet. She’d been outflanked by a master strategist and her own stupidity.
Now she must suffer through a date with the victor. If he took her out to dinner, she knew she would be dining on ashes…and crow.
Chapter Four
Lindsay would have paid anything for a reason that would get her out of going into the office the next day but she knew no one was going to give her the excuse she needed to duck it.
Might as well get it over with.
She walked in with her chin high and wearing a pair of mirrored sunglasses she had bought that morning, borrowing deliberately from Luke’s arsenal of effects.
Everyone, including Timothy, was busy at their desks, heads down. The studiously busy people, the averted heads, made her spirits sink.
They already knew, then.
She stopped off at Timothy’s desk. “Where’s Luke?”
He jerked his thumb toward the ceiling. Gormley’s office.
Lindsay looked at her watch. “Nine twenty-three. Remind me to congratulate him, Timothy. It only took him twenty-three minutes to grease his way to the top with his news.”
Timothy winced. “Sorry, Lynds.”
“Lindsay,” she snapped.
“Right.”
“I assume he’s given everyone the four color details, then?”
“Well, sort of. He was kinda in a hurry.” Timothy frowned. “Actually, he was really vague about it, now I think about it.”
Maybe he had kept his word, after all. She felt the tension in her gut ease a little, enough for her to draw breath. She could look people in the face if they didn’t know the full extent of her humiliating loss.
“When Luke bothers to grace us with his presence, tell him I want to see him.”
“Okay, boss.”
Lindsay gritted her teeth. Only Luke had once dared to call her “boss.” Now they were all doing it.
On her desk was the morning’s mail, neatly arranged in logical piles. This morning, even more than many other mornings, her heart was not in it.
She sat down and stared out the picture window, instead. She studied the mountains and the snow and another knockout day.
* * * * *
Luke
made his way back to Timothy’s desk.
Timothy saw him coming and pointed. “She’s in. She wants to see you.”
There was something in Tim’s face. “Bad?”
“She’s been in there forty minutes. She hasn’t made a single phone call yet.”
“That’s bad?”
Tim nodded. “It’s the worst it could be.”
“Angry?”
“You beat her at the game she considers her own. You figure it out.”
Luke nodded. “Well, thanks. Guess I’d better get it over with.”
He really was bracing himself, he realized. He walked down the corridor to Lindsay’s office, wondering how he was going to justify himself. ‘You’re so beautiful, I’d do anything for a date with you,’ would be more likely to earn him a slap across the face than a flattered smile.
He tapped on the door and pushed it open.
Lindsay was standing at the picture window, quite patently doing nothing but stare out at the spectacular scenery and the busy town below. She didn’t even turn to look at him.
“Hi,” he offered.
“Good morning.”
He winced. No, not a good mood at all. He stepped in and shut the door. “You wanted to see me?”
She turned then and Luke felt his heart give a little jump. There was no anger there. The crystal green eyes were surrounded by flesh that seemed almost bruised.
She’s tired. And…defeated.
And hard on the heels of that realization came the confirmation, You’re the one who defeated her, you jerk.
Well it had seemed like such a superb opportunity at the time.
“You know why I wanted to see you,” she said shortly and there was no tiredness in her voice at all.
“You want to know why I…” He paused delicately.
“Why you cheated.”
“I didn’t cheat, Lynds.”
“Don’t call me that!”
“Sorry. I didn’t cheat. I didn’t lie. You did it all yourself.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” she asked dryly.
“I didn’t know I was supposed to be making you feel better,” he replied.
“I want to know why you tricked me like that.”
“I didn’t trick you.”
Her glance was withering.
“I didn’t. Look, the information was all there for anyone to find out. It wasn’t a state secret. I phoned the medical association and had a pleasant fifteen minute chat with a lady in the communications department. She told me Otto was to be the next president. Then I called Otto, introduced myself and told him why I was calling. You could have done the same, Lindsay. It’s called basic research. It’s called getting to know your client.”
She bit her lip and turned back to the window.
“For what it’s worth, I really was trying to help you get even with the guy,” he offered.
“Sure. It just coincidentally guaranteed I’d be totally persona non grata with either of them, leaving the field open to you. I assume you landed the account?”
“Signed on the dotted line last night.” At eleven p.m. after a brandy-soaked meal that had cost him a fortune but there was no need to tell her that.
“Lindsay, look at me for a moment,” he said, willing her to turn.
She turned and leaned against the frame of the window, her arms crossed. The defensive shield was up.
He spread his hands, trying to show his sincerity. “I could have explained I was there with Otto and Arquette. I could have told you that Arquette was coming up in the next cable car and we were just waiting for him. I could have told you Otto was the next president. I didn’t. I wanted to win the bet.”
She was just staring at him, the bruised eyes hurt. Quickly, before his self-esteem hit the basement, he added, “The end justified the means.”
“Win at all costs? I don’t believe you. Your ambition and dedication to your job has always been completely nonexistent.”
“No, Lynds, it’s not the winning that counts. Not for me. That’s your obsession. For me, it was what I was going to win that justified it. But you wouldn’t understand that. You’re too busy winning to ever look up and consider what it is you’re trying to win.”
The hurt look deepened but her mouth thinned with anger and he mentally kicked himself. It hadn’t been his intention to turn this into one of their shooting matches.
“I think you’d better go,” she said quietly, her voice even.
“Just one question?”
After a pause, she nodded.
“You spent a lot of money and time trying to win this bet. What was driving you? I bet there wasn’t a single moment where you fantasized about me getting on a plane and flying out of your life.”
Her eyes opened a little wider. Surprise. He was right then.
“Yes, you spent the entire time just thinking about how good it would feel to win, to beat me.”
“Damn right,” she retorted and he was astonished to hear a husky quality to her voice. Was she holding back tears or something? It made his next question come out more gently than it might have.
“Do you genuinely enjoy your life, Lynds? I mean, really enjoy it? Is this career path you’ve laid down for yourself really what you want? Is it truly what gets you out of bed in the morning?”
She spun back to the window. Her back was very straight and the squared shoulders told Luke that if she wasn’t actually crying, she was very close to it.
“You don’t understand,” she said, softly.
“No, I don’t,” he agreed. “But I listen well.” His heart was racing. Was he finally going to break open the tough shell a little?
She remained silent for a long while and he let the silence grow. Lindsay couldn’t stand silences. She’d be compelled to fill it.
“I have to do this,” she said at last.
“Have to? Nobody has to do anything in this universe except die and pay taxes.”
It was the wrong answer, wrong response. He knew it as soon as the words came out of his mouth but he had been surprised into it by her answer. He saw her back straighten even more and she turned to face him, her green eyes snapping.
“Is that right?” she said. She walked over to her desk and pulled out a heavy cream-colored card from a pile of papers and spun it across the desk toward him. “Well, I have been told I have to go to this little affair. I don’t want to but I have to. You won your date with me. This is it. You can be my escort and share the…pleasure.”
Luke picked up the card, flipped it open and scanned it. The company’s management Christmas party. Top echelon management only and the best clients of the company. Nothing was spared impressing the clients. The event was always a glittering PR exercise dressed up as a social evening.
“I can see why they want you to go,” he said. “It’s a prime opportunity.”
“Well, now you can go too. I’ll pick you up at seven.” She turned back to the window. “Don’t be late.”
He put the card back on the table. “Whatever you say, boss.”
He had his hand on the door handle when she spoke again.
“I’m curious…”
“What?”
She turned her shoulder enough to glance at him. “If you had wanted a date with me so badly, why didn’t you just ask for one?”
“Would you have said yes?”
Her glance dropped to the floor.
“I rest my case,” he told her and left.
* * * * *
The closer the day came, the more she didn’t want to go to the Christmas party. Even Gormley’s insistence that she be there was not enough to compel her into going.
What was driving her was the utter certainty that her mother would have gone all out for this affair. She would have waded into the “prime networking opportunity” with a cry of joy and poured on charm and grace that would have stunned everyone there.
So Lindsay gritted her teeth and made preparations, grimly pleased that at the sa
me time she was fulfilling this obligation she would also be getting rid of another one—her date with Luke.
* * * * *
Luke lived in an anonymous row of apartments, pleasant and neat. Lindsay hadn’t really thought about what his home might look like but when she saw it, it struck her as appropriate. Only the most temporary sort of accommodation would do for him. She was pretty sure he had an apartment in Manhattan and suspected the apartment would look as transient as this short-term place.
Luke was waiting out the front of the apartment building and jumped into the passenger seat of her black Land Cruiser as she pulled up. “Nice,” he remarked, looking around the interior.
“It works well in snow.” She pulled out onto the road and settled down for the fifteen minute drive into the downtown area where the hotel was located. Snow was falling again and the temperature had lifted a little. The night was still, cool and muffled. There was very little traffic on the streets.
“Well, what I can see so far looks great,” Luke said.
Puzzled, she glanced at him and realized he had swiveled in his seat to study her.
“You mean me?”
“Of course, you. I can’t see much under that thick coat of yours but the hair and the makeup look wonderful.”
She touched the carefully arranged pile of curls on her head self-consciously, swallowing hard. Suddenly her heart was beating in her throat.
“You say thank you,” Luke added.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a compliment, Lynds. You’re supposed to say thank you. Didn’t your mother ever teach you that? Guys compliment, girls say ‘thank you’. Blushing is optional.”
“My mother died when I was sixteen.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not. You didn’t even know her.”
“No but I’m sorry you missed out on having a mother around right when you needed it.”
She realized she was clenching the steering wheel in a death grip and forced herself to loosen her hold. “Thank you for the compliment,” she told him stiffly.
He didn’t reply and she concentrated on driving the already treacherous streets. It was only when she was glancing to the right to check for oncoming traffic that she realized he was still staring at her.
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