by Dani Collins
And he thought, You idiot. How had he not seen what a tender heart she had?
“Yeah, good for them.” Good for the old man who was falling for a woman who was actually going to stick around. Nate swallowed back an ache that wound up stuck like a husk in the base of his throat. “What about asking Vivien for help?”
“If she gives me a job and I can pay my own way, that’s enough of a favor. Then I’m not beholden to her. But if I asked her to help with the skiing, she would just tell Rolf to help me. She would make him help me. I don’t want to put him in that position and I don’t want to be indebted to him. Or something he takes on begrudgingly, because Vivien demanded it. Better to just leave it.”
Okay, that elephant had trampled across his feet twice now. He was going to have to just ask. “How serious was it between you two?”
“What? Rolf? It wasn’t.” She ironed her palms across the dog’s flat skull, but he was pushing back against the pressure, loving it. “Do you really want to know what happened? Are we really having this conversation?”
“Do I want details? No. As few as possible, but when did it happen? How long were you together?”
“An afternoon. Not even. It was years ago, right before he retired. I was starting to rise in the standings. I think he thought I was older. I said hello, reminded him I had skied with Trigg and asked him how Vivien was. Then I saw him a couple months later and he walked up to me and said, ‘You said you were the same age as Trigg.’ I said, ‘No, I didn’t,’ but he just walked away, all pissy.” She chuckled, then shrugged sheepishly.
“So why…? Never mind. I probably don’t want to know.”
“Why did I approach him? Why did you hook up with me? We’re all human. Sometimes the tension gets to me, especially during competition. It gets to all of us. He was convenient and I knew he wouldn’t be a pest after.”
“A pest.” Nate wondered if that’s how she saw him right now.
“I haven’t had much luck with boyfriends. My first was a skier who was super controlling, wanted to tell me how to ski and when to train and what to eat. I was sixteen and let that go on for a whole year. Then I tried dating someone outside my world and he was ultra-possessive and didn’t understand the demands. He kept telling me to quit. So I gave up on relationships. I get hit on a lot, though.”
“Really?” He managed to sound sarcastic when he was actually jealous as hell. “That’s so weird.”
“Believe me, I’d be happy with less attention.” Her frown held zero humor. Her expression stayed dour and for about five seconds, she looked like she was going to add something else, then returned her attention to the dog, lavishing him with affection. “Anyway, it’s always been really important to me to get to the top on my own and not owe anyone anything.”
He understood needing credit for a win, but he had a feeling there was more at play here.
“That’s backfiring on me now, of course. I don’t have a network to fall back on.” She tried slapping a brave smile on it, but her lips weren’t steady.
“Ilke…” He picked up her hand and set it palm down on his knee, then covered it with his own, thick dark fingers between slender pale ones, her cool soft skin warming under his touch. “I don’t know how to say this so you believe it, but you’ve got me. Okay?”
She stared at him. As he watched, her blue eyes clouded with ever more helplessness. Her mouth quirked into a crooked line that she tried to steady by biting down on her lips.
“I want to believe you. I do. It’s just really hard. Not something I’m ready to risk.” She sniffed. “But thank you. It’s the nicest thing anyone has said in a long time. And you really were awesome at the hospital and everything. I appreciate that. For what it’s worth, you’re getting a lot more out of me than anyone else has in a long time.”
“Jesus, babe.” He looped his arm around her and crammed her into his side.
She was surprisingly wiry and strong under that slender back and pair of narrow shoulders. Even so, he was starting to glimpse the fragility inside this well-kept shell. He wanted to scoop her into his lap and protect her from every hurt in the world.
She leaned in to him with a shaken sigh, but when she tilted her face up, her expression was shadowed with uncertainty.
“I’m not trying to get into your pants,” he assured her, pressing a kiss to her hair. “I’m saying you do have a friend.”
“You’re friend-zoning me?” She winced, but grinned ruefully at the same time.
“Well—” He’d been half-hard this whole time, just sitting next to her. “I’ll admit to feeling differently when I think about the way we rang in the new year. Why? What do you think we are?” He subconsciously braced himself.
Her mouth started to form a cheeky reply, but as she met and held his gaze, and memories flooded through both of them, she sobered and started to blush. The helpless, hopeless look came back into her eyes and she ducked her face into the hollow of his shoulder, throwing her arm around him and hugging tight.
“I don’t know,” she said into his shirt.
He pressed his lips to the part in her hair, horny, but feeling tender and sad at the same time. It was confusing and—
Murphy put his paw on Nate’s thigh and tried to shove his cold, wet nose into their embrace.
Ilke laughed and pulled back. “Tell me again why Rolf and Glory won’t keep him?”
“Exactly.” Nate splayed his thighs, seeking room to ease the ache behind his fly.
“You’re right about not being able to stay depressed when he’s around.” She went back to petting Murphy, but her lashes lifted and her gaze was unguarded and vulnerable. Full of longing, but still short on hope.
He was in so much damned trouble. “I should probably go. Before I try to blur the lines.”
“Can I keep him?”
“Do you want to get up at three in the morning and stand outside while he pees?”
“He does that? And you still talk to Trigg?”
“He’s getting better now that he’s older, but yeah, sometimes he needs to go out in the middle of the night.”
“Okay, well, no. I don’t want to do that. Have a nice non-sleep.”
“Thanks.” He rose and so did she.
He adjusted himself because it hurt, then they stood there awkwardly. She was kind of smiling and averting her gaze, but she was close enough he could see her attention flicker to his mouth and back to his eyes, conflict and uncertainty mingling with temptation in her expression.
It was the same on his side, but he was losing the battle. He wasn’t close enough to just drop his head, which saved him. He forced himself not to step any closer, no matter how badly he wanted to.
Then she came in close, saying a light, “Thank you,” as she stepped into his space. She lifted her mouth and his head dropped without his planning to do it.
Maybe she only meant to give him a peck of gratitude, but his mouth touched hers and the taste of her slammed through him. Damn. He groaned and she moaned. Her arms went around his neck and she came up on tiptoes. Her breasts pressed into his chest and their tongues started tangling.
He’d been dying for this. The feel of her rang through him as profound relief. He wrapped both arms around her and stroked over her back, reacquainting, fitting her tighter and closer, jolting him with pleasure when her mound ground up against his hard cock. He slid a hand under her ass and held her there. Firm and delicious. Mind-blowing.
“Ouch!” She broke away, knee almost coming up to crash into his throbbing junk.
He swore and jerked his hips away. “What—?”
“He stood on my foot. It hurt. Sorry.” She rubbed the top of one foot with her other.
“Should patent him as birth control. Where were you on New Year’s Eve?” he asked the dog.
She didn’t laugh, which made his heart lurch.
“I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, it’s okay.” The corners of her mouth went down. “But…I don’t have any
regrets, Nate. I’m sad, but I’m not sorry.”
It was official. She was going to break his heart even worse than she already had.
“Me, either,” he said, probably never meaning anything so sincerely in his life. He would always hurt, but he wasn’t sorry. He stole one more very brief kiss, hand cupping the side of her neck. “But I probably shouldn’t do this.”
“Probably not.”
“It feels really good, though.”
“It does.”
They wavered. Shared one more. Not a long one, but it was deep and sweet. The kind of kiss that soothed a hurt.
“’Kay, I’m leaving.” He kissed her again. Just a little one.
She nodded. “Good night.”
Last one. Almost chaste. “Night.”
She followed him to the door and they kissed one final time before he forced himself out into the cold hall.
He looked at the dog and suspected that no amount of scrubbing those furry ears was going to lift this weight of might-have-been from his chest.
*
Vivien was enjoying her second evening libation by the fire in the lounge, lost in wondering how she had wound up locking lips with Marvin today, when Glory’s voice cut into her recollection of it.
“What did you do to my dad today?”
Vivien sputtered and her wine nearly sloshed out of her glass. “What?”
She looked past Glory to the bar, but one of Marvin’s young protégées was minding the tap while he grabbed a bite before the dining room closed.
“He’s wearing a shirt that fits.” Glory settled into the chair beside her with her own glass of wine. “His bottom half still looks like he’s auditioning for clown-school, but wow. Good work. How did the rest of the fittings go?”
“Oh, um.” Vivien cleared her throat. “I think we’ve made some excellent choices. Giovanni will be back in May for final fittings on the tuxedoes, but he’s sending a couple of rush suits for your father by courier.”
“So you’re getting him out of his pants, too? Thank you for taking him in hand. You’re a goddess—you really are.”
Vivien was going to blush like a virgin in a minute. She changed the subject. “Did you see Eden’s designs for the cake?”
“I did and she’ll hate me, but I asked if I could have the scallops from the second sketch and the flowers from the first, so she’s doing another one. Do you really think it needs to be four layers? That seems ridiculous.”
“She talked me down from five. And you saw the email from the dressmaker?”
“Yes, and that is turning into a bigger trip. I’m waiting to hear from my agent on when she might be available. If I’m going to New York for a fitting, I might as well kill two birds, but then Rolf said if I’m going that far, he’ll go with me and we’ll add a week in Germany.”
“The board?”
“Yeah, they’re bent out of shape about the theft.”
Vivien was well acquainted with the old farts on the board. Virtually all of them had been fixtures at Wikinger since Oskar’s time. They had fought him on buying this resort—and so had she, to be honest. Then the avalanche and Oskar’s death had pushed Wikinger to the financial edge. Rolf had still been racing, so the acting president and his minions had done their best to keep the company afloat, but they were a conservative bunch. They had enjoyed those years of control between Oskar’s death and Rolf taking his seat at the table and were very dug in and proprietary, seeing Rolf’s vision and drive as impulse and risk. He’d been knocking heads with them since assuming the mantle and the conflict had grown especially bad since he had begun pouring Wikinger capital into Whiskey Jack.
“Any progress on the investigation?” Vivien asked.
Glory shook her head. “Macy and Serge have been questioned. They’re both claiming they broke up because she cheated with Trigg. Dirk fired Serge, trying to make it up to Rolf, but now Rolf wants to buy a company helicopter and keep a pilot on staff so things like this won’t happen again. You can imagine what the board is likely to say about that.” She smirked into her wine.
“So like his father,” Vivien chuckled.
“Oh, Trigg’s no better! The helicopter is his idea. He told Rolf to remind the board that he’s turning thirty in a couple of months and will take his place at the table. They can let them run Whiskey Jack the way they see fit or he and Rolf will fire them and hire people who will.”
“Ah, my little boy is growing up.” Vivien sipped her wine.
“He’ll be out of diapers before you know it,” Glory agreed, then grinned. “I’m going to tell him I said that.” She took a moment to text. It pinged immediately. “Ha. He says, ‘Too bad you’re not.’ Growing up, he means.” She chuckled with enjoyment.
“So when will you and Rolf be leaving?”
“Yesterday if he had his way. I’ve been trying to finish this draft and then my darling fiancé pointed out that if we’ll be gone, we could let Devon finish the renovations in our rooms. So I have to clean up that mess before we leave.” Glory tilted her head back against her chair. “This is going to be the craziest few months. I don’t know how I’m going to get it all done.”
Vivien wanted to tell her not to worry, that the wedding was under control, but she was spending an awful lot of time on lodge business. She didn’t know how she would get everything done, either.
“Oh!” she recalled with a jolt. “Ilke is out of her room. Said she’s ready to get back to work.”
“Isn’t she going back to Sweden? To train?” Glory set her elbow on the arm of her chair and braced her chin on her fist. “I asked Rolf and he seemed to think that’s what she would do. Actually, he said, ‘Quitting now would be asinine.’”
“It would be,” Vivien agreed. “But she’s still hurting. And it’s off-season now so here is as good as anywhere to cross-train, I imagine.”
“Did you know about her and Nate?” Glory asked in a confidential tone.
“Oh, gosh, no. I had a small suspicion, but I rather hoped she was here to see me.” She’d been trying to earn Ilke’s trust for years. “I should have known better. She’s hideously independent.”
Seeing Ilke with Nate this evening was both heartening and worrisome. They made an adorable couple. Vivien wanted the best for both of them, but she knew from watching Trigg and Rolf what competing took out of a person. What it did to relationships. What was Nate going to do? Quit his job, abandon his son, and leave Rolf in the lurch? Unlikely.
But Rolf was right. Ilke couldn’t quit at this point.
“Yeah, it makes sense now, but I thought it was weird she came here and didn’t go stay with family. Her mom is in New Zealand, isn’t she?” Glory asked.
“Yes, but that woman…” Vivien lifted her brows and let her tight mouth speak for her.
“Hmm.” Glory wrinkled her nose. “That’s too bad.”
“It is,” Vivien said crisply, still incensed when she thought about the anxious, intimidated look she’d seen on Ilke’s fourteen-year-old face when her stepfather had patted her ass like he owned it. Her mother had said something ignorant about the affection between them and Vivien had nearly lost her mind.
“I invited Ilke to come live with me, years ago. She wouldn’t, but I swore she would always have a place with me and I’d like to keep that promise. She won’t let me pay for her room for any length of time, though. I want to offer her work if she wants it.”
“Of course.”
“But with all the new hires, we have the front desk covered this week.”
“How are you making out with finding a new manager?”
“We haven’t seen a résumé worth calling in for an interview, I’m afraid. So Ilke can help with payroll later in the week. For the next few days I’d rather give the new hires the practice on the desk, though. How would you feel if I asked her to help with the wedding plans?”
“Fill your glass slippers. Anything I don’t have to do is a win. Actually…”
Rolf interrupted whatever
she might have said as he appeared. He sat down across from Vivien and asked her, “How many tents are you planning to give Marvin?”
Vivien nearly spit out her wine. “Just the one,” she choked.
Now she was in danger of blushing again. Honestly.
*
Despite being forced out of bed yesterday, Ilke had trouble rising today. She didn’t want to get up, eat, or beg Vivien for a job. She didn’t want to do anything.
Okay, she wanted to ski. The crack in the curtain suggested it was a blindingly sunny day out there with a crisp blue sky. A perfect day where the only sound would be the scrape of her edges across frozen snow. That sound was music. Bliss.
But thinking about it brought on a huge wave of guilt and anxiety. She could ski. That shouldn’t make her happy, considering what it had cost her.
Skiing was her therapy, though. The place where all her troubles had always disappeared. She would give anything to lose herself that way today.
Skiing had become her troubles, however. She could send for her skis. She could even buy some, but then what? Pay a helicopter to get her to the top of the mountain before the snow melted? Go to another resort and practice? She could go home to Sweden and let the government cover her basic needs, but she would still have to find the money for training camps and start building her standings all over again. She still needed a trainer along with technical and medical staff.
Deep down she worried it would all be for naught anyway, that she couldn’t get back to where she’d been. Maybe it hadn’t been the pregnancy that had caused her to lose so badly. Her times had been rocky through the end of last year. Sure, she had been skiing on a wrenched knee for a few weeks there, but maybe she had peaked as an athlete and was losing her edge.
Maybe the entire world knew she was garbage. Maybe that’s why no one was returning her emails.
Maybe she would lie in bed for the rest of her life.
Nate might check on her, though, the rat.
Text me when you wake up, he’d messaged her last night after leaving her with all those kisses burning on her lips.
Why? she had replied.
I want to know you’re okay.