From the Top

by Dani Collins

  “Only to say eventually, but not yet. I mean, we have a wedding to plan.” Glory held up her left hand. “Not to mention a ski hill to build, a lodge to finish, and a book to write. Two books. One is almost done.”

  “When is the wedding?”

  “July fourth.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes. And the lodge had better be ready because all the rooms are booked. Don’t ask me by whom. I don’t have any friends. I’d elope, given my druthers. Rolf would take me to the courthouse, but it’s good publicity for the lodge and the hill. Also, Dad really wants to give me away and Vivien is dying to make our wedding the lodge’s first historic event. Trigg, big surprise, is amped about planning the bachelor party.”

  “Therefore, Rolf made Nate his best man?”

  Glory threw back her head in a laugh of great enjoyment.

  “That would be just like him, wouldn’t it? I’m not even going to tell Rolf you said that. He would totally do it. Oh!” Glory reached for the phone on the edge of the bar. “But I will tell Trigg that’s what he’s done. Thank you. I’ve been looking for a way to kick that man in the butt. We’ll see if he dares seduce another manager.”

  Her thumbs worked fast before a whooshing sound indicated her message had been sent. She slapped the phone onto the bar again. “He’ll be fit to be tied. Love it.”

  “Who?” Rolf was the last to arrive. He smelled of aftershave and wore a suit and tie. He set his hand on Glory’s waist, exchanged a light kiss with her, then nodded at Marvin that he would have what she was drinking.

  “It’s a secret, but expect an outraged text from Trigg.”

  “That’s all he sends. Listen.” He included Marvin in his quiet announcement. “The official statement is that there was a theft and some vandalism at the base. Police are investigating. I’ll fill you in later, but that’s all we’re saying for now. We should mingle.”

  “Yes, dear.” Glory made a face, then batted her eyes at him.

  Rolf drew her across to introduce her to the people he’d taken skiing. Ilke joined Vivien, who was holding court with a couple of women.

  Only half a dozen people had actually gone up in the helicopter today—four men and two women along with Rolf and someone from the local search and rescue as a precaution.

  Three women, spouses of the investors, had gone into Haven with Vivien midday. They had poked around the art gallery and the limited shopping, coming back with hand-painted scarves and carved bowls, all content with their day-trip. Two other couples had arrived an hour ago for the dinner and would spend the night, but didn’t ski.

  Three round tables were set up here in the lounge. Rolf and Glory hosted one, Vivien and Marvin another. Ilke wound up at the third table, partnered with Nate, which she should have seen coming. Her whole body tensed and tingled when he held her chair then sat beside her. She could swear she felt the heat radiating off his body.

  Probably hostility.

  Aside from making sure everyone had been introduced, he didn’t acknowledge her, leaving her to converse with Dirk Basco, the man on her other side. He was fifty or so, decent-looking for his age, and eager to impress her. He claimed to be a local, since he had owned property in the area for years, but his ex-wife and children lived in Missoula.

  Dirk had interests all over Montana and the rest of the western states. His name had been on the helicopter. She hadn’t seen it? He ran a charter service out of the airport in Kalispell and owned the construction company knocking together all the buildings Rolf was putting up. And he was a real estate developer. He’d been buying up land for years around the resort, well ahead of the curve. He had known the previous owners of the hill and had met Oskar Johansson several times. Advised the man on this very purchase.

  “I knew someone would eventually jab this area in the arm. I’ll make a killing in the next few years, when people started flocking here, looking for vacation homes.”

  Ilke worked really hard, for the sake of Nate and Rolf and her precarious position here, to pretend she admired Dirk’s foresight. In reality, Dirk’s hurry to congratulate himself reminded her of her stepfather, which turned her stomach. It took all her effort to keep her revulsion from her face.

  Which caused Dirk to nudge her with his elbow. “Smile,” he ordered.

  Die, she nearly retorted.

  “Still jet-lagged?” Nate said, head coming around so quickly she had to control a start. It was almost as if he had been monitoring their conversation the whole time. “You’re lucky she’s not yawning,” Nate said, tone mild, but she thought she caught a glimpse of contempt in his eyes as he met Dirk’s gaze. “How’s everyone’s drink?” Nate asked in the next blink. “Looks like we need another bottle of red.”

  He rose and she watched him move to the bar.

  Had he just come to her defense? She didn’t need a man to make excuses for her. She could tell guys like Dirk to fuck off all by herself. But she found herself fighting back the smile Dirk had wanted. She may not need a man to stand up for her, but it felt awfully nice that Nate had.

  Had he? He returned to top up a couple of glasses, then sat down to ignore her again. Maybe he was just keeping the dinner party convivial. Doing his job.

  Weirdly bereft, she tried not to tense when people asked where she was from and how she’d come to be staying here.

  “Vivien is a friend of my mother’s.” She skipped the part where she skied competitively. Rolf was the household name along with his brother. If anyone recognized her, it would be because the sportscasters had made such a big deal out of her ‘upset’ and how she had disappointed everyone. Theories as to why were all over social media. Or rather, painted into the gossipy corners reserved for mentions of female athletes—mostly so they could be detracted.

  Nate offered her the basket of dinner rolls. His gaze held a question, as if he was wondering why she wasn’t talking about her aspirations.

  She felt naked in that flash of his glance. Completely defenseless. Obvious in her failure. For one moment of supreme self-pity, she even asked herself why any man would want someone who’d screwed up this bad.

  It was all she could do to shove that negative self-talk out of her head and hide how shaken she was that, apparently, she was just like her mother and needed a man’s approval to validate her.

  She asked how the skiing had been and pretended not to be bilious with envy when the powder was waxed over as superb.

  “Sorry we missed the tour of the site, though,” someone said. “Will we have time to see it tomorrow morning?”

  “With the snow, there’s not much to see,” Nate said. “Flat spots where we poured the foundations last year. The office trailer looks pretty much like any other. It will eventually become a break room for our equipment operators and lifties, moved closer to where the equipment shed will go in.”

  “What about day care? We used to have to take turns, didn’t we, dear?” one of the wives said to her husband. “One of us always had to sit in the chalet with the baby, until all the children were old enough to ski. All the big resorts offer day care now, though. Our daughter and her husband enjoy the slopes together.”

  Ilke snapped a look at Nate. She hadn’t thought of that, but it wasn’t unusual for resort staff to enroll their children in on-site care where their children mingled with those of families leaving their smaller children while they skied for the day.

  Nate’s profile stiffened, but she was probably the only one who noticed it, since she was watching him so closely.

  “It’s certainly on the list of wants,” he answered blandly. “We’ve allowed a space for it in the operations lodge. Staffing of specialty positions is a challenge with our remote location, but staff housing has been started and with the right investors—” he winked “—we’ll quickly build our own village here and be able to offer things like day care. This year, putting in the first lift is our top priority, as well as clearing and grooming the runs.”

  Everyone chuckled, agreeing that was cert
ainly job one.

  Nate didn’t look at her and she wondered why she was waiting for him to do so. She looked to her plate and picked at the grass-fed steak that everyone else had finished.

  Was this how their relationship would be going forward? Her trying to resist his effect on her, aching for some sign of softening in him, while he resented her for daring to be fertile? Both of them pretending they were only casually acquainted when they had a child between them?

  “Did you grow up here, Nate?” one of the women asked. “Are you an avid skier?”

  “Sacramento,” he replied. “I didn’t try snow sports until last spring.”

  “Really?” Ilke couldn’t help asking. He was so well built and athletic. “I assumed you must love to ski, otherwise why would you take this job?”

  “Because I love building stuff,” he replied dryly.

  “But what about now? Do you ski? Do you like it?” Love what I love, she silently urged.

  Their gazes snagged and his mouth quirked. “I grew up on a skateboard. Trigg gave me a board and that felt more natural.”

  “Blasphemy!”

  “You sound like Rolf.” His gaze warmed with humor.

  “Next you’ll tell me you prefer Microsoft over Apple products.”

  “Did you bump your head? Of course, MS.”

  “Enjoy your viruses.”

  For a few seconds, they were grinning at each other the way they’d been that special night. Electricity crackled like a live wire between them.

  She saw when he remembered she was pregnant. That this evening was a pantomime for guests. Maybe he even watched the way her thoughts clouded with her own helplessness that they couldn’t be the easygoing couple who had enjoyed each other’s bodies, but had to reckon with the reality that they were grown-up strangers with a very real issue between them.

  “Is there some sort of rivalry between skiers and snowboarders?” someone asked, forcing them to break eye contact.

  It physically hurt her in the chest to lose his attention, which was so disconcerting, she hardly kept it from her face.

  “Skiing is very disciplined and technical,” she managed to explain. “Alpine, anyway. Freestyle is more like snowboarding. Looser. Reacting and expressing. But then you also have your cross-country enthusiasts who think everyone else is going too fast, failing to appreciate their surroundings.”

  “I don’t ski,” Dirk announced. “Except off the back of my boat.”

  Ugh.

  A discussion of boats ensued and her moment with Nate was firmly quashed. Still, Ilke found herself watching him, hoping for another smile, another glimpse of affinity that would make her breathless all over again.

  He didn’t look her way again and she eventually realized she was behaving like a cocker spaniel. She let the server take her barely touched plate, feigned interest when Dirk told her that he had attended one of those ten-thousand-dollar-a-plate dinners for a candidate once, and left for her room as soon as she politely could.

  Chapter Six

  Sundays were Nate’s day with Aiden. He usually picked him up on Saturday afternoon, working overtime at the site in the morning if Aiden happened to have a playdate in town, which he did today.

  “Frankie is getting him on her way home from the clinic,” Wanda told him when he arrived. “Should be here any minute. Want a coffee? It’s fresh.”

  He preferred when their exchange was a handoff of Aiden’s backpack and a polite few words, leaving him on the porch for three minutes, max. Stepping into the house and sitting at the kitchen table grated. It wasn’t contempt or anger or thoughts of Wanda and Frankie having sex. He never thought about that.

  No, it was the warmth of the home that Wanda was making with her lover that got under his skin. He took in the periodic table for a placemat that was obviously Aiden’s spot, and the Christmas cactus blooming on the windowsill, and the fact the house smelled like coffee and bread and something flowery, like the pleasant scent that hit on walking into a natural food store.

  It grated to see her building the life he had expected she would build with him. He felt so lied to by the pictures she had once painted, he was trying to convince himself he’d never wanted that scene in the first place.

  But when he sat down and fingered through the seed packets on the table, he knew there was a part of him that still wanted this.

  “You’re finally getting your garden,” he said.

  “The greenhouse is on order. I’m starting those in egg cartons on the landing upstairs. There’s a good window for it.” She brought him a mug of coffee that tasted poignantly familiar. It was the brew they used to sip on lazy Saturday mornings while playing with their new baby and planning their weekend.

  Apparently, he’d be back to that soon, minus the partner. It had been three loaded days and he hadn’t begun to wrap his brain around it. Nevertheless—

  “I should tell you—”

  “I wanted to ask—”

  “What?” they said together.

  Wanda shifted to lean on her elbows, cup suspended in her fingertips the way she always did with a hot mug, blowing across the top. “You go first. What’s up?”

  He tensed, guarded around her these days, mostly because they were rarely alone. Frankie was inevitably in earshot or Aiden underfoot. They hadn’t sat alone and talked about anything except their son and the logistics of shared custody for months. A year, probably.

  In this quiet kitchen, however, looking into features as familiar as his own, he relaxed. He’d known her since high school and aside from her hair—which she was always cutting close, growing out, dying bright red, bleaching, braiding, and straightening—she never changed. Didn’t age. Her skin was fine-grained, her cheeks round. She had long-lashed doe eyes that children trusted on sight. Her smile was wide and her voice soft.

  She might no longer be his wife, but she was still the trusted friend who was the mother of his child. Words that should have been difficult to dredge up rolled out the way he might have confessed an old transgression like forgetting her birthday.

  “I got someone pregnant.”

  Her jaw dropped. Her coffee went down to the table with a sharp, thunk. She blinked once, twice, three times.

  “Who?”

  “No one you know.” He barely knew her. “She’s not from here. I’m only telling you because it’s going to affect Aiden. Eventually. September.” It was barely March, but summer would fly by in a blur of overtime. By the time his son was starting his final year of preschool, Nate would be holding a new baby.

  He rubbed his damp palm on his thigh.

  “She’s having it? What are you going to do?”

  “Hell if I know.” He was so desperate for someone to tell him what to think or how to react, he was opening up to his ex-wife. But Wanda knew him better than anyone. He honestly couldn’t think of anyone else to talk to.

  “Are you going to marry her?”

  He snorted. You could take the lesbian out of the pastor’s house, but you couldn’t take his firmly instilled values out of her reflexive responses.

  “No.” Ilke wasn’t going to be here.

  “But she’ll give you access. Please say you’ll share custody. Where does she live? Where will they live?” There was the mama bear he had married.

  “Apparently, I’ll have primary custody.” He set down his own cup and gave her a minute to absorb the full force of his bemused outrage.

  “Are you serious?” She sat back, as incredulous as he still was. “Well, that’s good. For you. And the baby. And Aiden.”

  Kind of her to say, but did anyone besides his boss understand what he was trying to do on that mountain? How it was a house of cards and if one fell, they all did? Some of those investors last night had expressed real interest. Nate might soon be erecting four buildings this summer, instead of the two they could currently afford. His workload would double. Newborns were more work than all of that combined.

  Wanda was biting her lip, frowning deeply as
she gazed out at the empty driveway. Worrying how it would affect Aiden, no doubt.

  “It’s next to impossible,” he said, needing to get this much off his chest. “What am I going to do? Hire a nanny to live at the lodge with us? I keep thinking…” He dug his thumb and fingertip into his eye sockets, unable to believe he was about to say this. “Eden said the other day that you mentioned you want another baby.”

  “She told you that?” Her voice held enough freak-out, and she jerked back in her chair with enough apprehension, he knew the news had been relayed out of turn.

  His gut tensed with foreboding, but he made himself speak the crazy thought that had been dancing in the back of his mind.

  “What I’m saying is, if you’re looking for sleepless nights and diapers…” He showed her his empty palm. “I’m going to need help. This is the only way I can see to keep the baby and my job. It’ll be Aiden’s half-brother or sister. The more time they spend together, the better, right?”

  Here’s what’s left of my pride. Finish wiping your feet on it.

  She bit her lip, staring at the driveway again. He couldn’t tell if she was willing Frankie and Aiden to show up or fretting that they would arrive in the middle of this conversation.

  “I’m not asking for a decision right now. I’m just looking for options, wondering if you’d even consider it.”

  Her brow wrinkled hard. She wasn’t meeting his gaze, but he could see the troubled shadows in her eyes.

  “Oh, Christ, you’re not already pregnant, are you?”

  “No! Heavens, no. Is my head in a toilet? No, I wouldn’t do that again for anything.” She tilted her head with a hint of remorse. “I mean, I love Aiden. And yes, I would love another child, but you remember how sick I was.”

  It had been pretty awful. She had wound up on bed rest for the last two months. He wondered how Ilke was feeling. He should have asked. He would, but right now his insides were flopping and gasping like a fish in the sand as he realized there was someone else who could be pregnant.