by Bea Paige
“Whoa,” Max says, catching me in his arms. The breath of his laugh tickles my ear. “Steady, you could break something,” he murmurs, a little too sexily for my liking. He props me upright, turning me to face him. I am still ensconced in his arms.
“Okay?” He looks at me, the dark of his eyes a liquid brown. The air has suddenly got decidedly warmer.
“I’m fine,” I say, pulling away.
“Sure thing,” he chuckles, swiping a hand through his dishevelled hair.
“Good night?” I ask, realisation dawning. The relaxed pull of his mouth, the softness of his features. Max is clearly in orgasm thrall.
“Pretty entertaining, as it goes. A night with me always is. You should try it,” he adds, a slow smile pulling up his lips.
“I think I’ll pass.”
He falls into step beside me and I can feel the light touch of his hand on the base of my spine, as if he’s ready to catch me should I fall again.
“I can’t believe how much snow there is. I’ve never seen anything like it,” I say, stepping away from his touch. His hand falls away and I catch a strange look in his eye, but he says nothing.
“This? This is nothing. You haven’t seen anything yet. Wait until you get up the mountain. When the snow falls up there, well, it’s incredible.” Max’s face lights up as he describes the view. I can’t help but smile at his enthusiasm.
“Are you going to ski today? I could show you around.”
I shake my head. “No, I haven’t come for skiing.”
“Oh,” he says, taking one of the bags from me. “What have you come for, then?”
“I needed the money,” I say. It is easier to say that than to tell him I’m running away from a drunk mother.
“I see,” he says.
We reach the steps and head back inside the chalet. When I walk in there is a brunette woman dressed in a man’s shirt sitting across Bryce’s lap. She is gorgeous, with long limbs and full lips. She is also vaguely familiar. She smiles at Max, her expression changing as soon as it rests on me.
“You’ve got a maid. Great, I’m starving.” Maid? Fucking cheek. Immediately my back is up at the look she gives me, as though I am a piece of shit on her shoe. Then I notice the sparkling outfit in the corner and I remember where I’ve seen her before.
“I see you got yourself a pole dancer,” I say, looking her up and down. “How much did you pay her for a private lap dance, Bryce?”
I hear Max snigger beside me.
“You bitch…” she says, getting up.
Bryce stands, a look of horror on his face. “Candy, isn’t it time you got dressed and went home?”
“Candy? My name is Clara,” she storms, walking away from Bryce and down the hall.
“Candy, I mean Clara,” Bryce calls after her. He catches my eye as if he’s waiting for a reaction. What the fuck is going on? Are all the brothers trying to get a rise out of me this morning or is this normal behaviour? I wonder briefly whether Hudson has a woman in his room too, then shake the thought away, not willing to think about why that bothers me.
“Eggs and bacon alright for breakfast?” I ask Bryce as he gets up, avoiding the fact he is bare-chested and muscly as hell. He has those super sexy muscles that taper in a V-shape towards his groin, the kind most men would die for and most women want to lick. “Or do you prefer sausages with your eggs?”
Bryce shakes his head, muttering something I can’t quite hear under his breath as he rushes down the hall after Candy or Clara or whatever the hell the bitch is called.
Twenty minutes later Clara is gone, and Bryce, Max, and Hudson are all sitting around the kitchen island eating the breakfast I’ve cooked them up. For a split second, I feel a sense of peace watching them eat, but it is gone as quickly as it appeared.
“Pretty mean fry-up, Louisa, thanks,” Max says, jumping up and pressing a quick kiss to my cheek. By the look on his face, I think he is as surprised by the sudden show of affection as I am.
“You’re welcome,” I say, waving him off. “It’s no big deal.” I almost raise my fingers to the spot where he kissed me, but I don’t.
“Well, I’m hitting the slopes, you coming?” he says to his brothers.
Bryce nods his head. “Yep, I’m up for that. I’ll meet you at the lift in twenty. I’ve just got to get ready first,” he says, heading off to his room.
“Cool, bro, I’ll catch you there in a sec. What about you, Hud?”
“Maybe later. I’ve got some stuff to do.”
“Ah man, we’re here to play, not work.”
“All the same, there’s something I’ve got to do,” Hudson says as he glances my way.
“It’s fine by me. I’ll just wash these dishes then get out of your hair,” I say.
“Well, catch you later, guys.” Max pulls on a woollen hat and heads out of the door, leaving me alone with Hudson, who sits nursing his coffee. Not wishing to start a conversation with him after that weird stare out in the hallway this morning, I gather up the empty plates and start washing them at the sink. Outside the view is almost entirely white, interspersed with tiny spots of colour. I can already see a line of people dressed in bright skiwear as they trudge through the newly fallen snow. People are laughing, happy. Kids are running around throwing snowballs, giggling when they hit their target. I watch as a father leans down, picks up his daughter and spins her around in the air. A sudden sadness spreads through me at their happiness. That is what childhood should be filled with; laughter, fun, love.
“There’s a dishwasher for that,” Hudson says, breaking my reverie.
“I know. I don’t mind washing them up. It gives me something to do,” I say, dipping my hands into the warm, soapy water, concentrating on the task at hand. A sudden tension has filled the air and I am trying my best to ignore it.
I hear the scrape of the stool as Hudson gets up, but rather than leaving, I feel the sudden warmth of his body heat as he stands close behind me. My hands stop what they are doing as Hudson’s muscular arm slides around the side of me. A breath catches in my throat as he eases the plate into the water. I stiffen as he remains pressed against me, his other hand slipping around my side, so I am trapped in his arms. I can feel the thump of his heartbeat through my back as he takes my soapy hands in his, rendering me totally immobile. Not certain whether I am incredibly offended by his assumption that I would welcome his touch, or incredibly turned on, I don’t attempt to stop him. He is a total dick, but a goddamn sexy one. Flashes of his naked body appear in my mind and I look up at our reflection in the window opposite. He is staring at me unashamedly.
“Louisa,” he breathes, dipping his head to press a hot kiss onto my neck. Then he pushes my body forward, so I’m pressed up against the sink, his chest, hips, lips all pressed up against me so there is no space between us. Trapped there in his arms, my heart a dozen racehorses galloping in my chest, I do something that surprises me. I close my eyes and lean my head against his shoulder. An involuntary moan slips from my lips as Hudson runs the tip of his tongue over the curve of my ear. I can feel the pad of his thumb massaging the palm of my hand as his fingers slowly trail up my arm. The warmth of his touch is gone for a moment until I feel his still wet hand slide up the front of my sweatshirt and beneath my vest. He rests his hand against the curve of my stomach, his fingers spreading wide over my skin, his little finger dipping under the waistband of my jeans. The firm press of his hand and the gentle graze of his lips against my skin ignite something within me, something I’ve never felt before, something that scares me. I turn my head to the side so that our mouths are almost touching. Hudson’s evergreen eyes are hooded with desire.
“I have wanted to touch you from the very first moment I saw you.” His voice is hoarse, gravelly, and for one sweet moment, I want to touch him back.
“What the actual fuck?” I hear Bryce say from behind us.
Hudson steps away, wiping his hands on a tea-towel as if he’d just been helping with the dishes rather than tr
ying to seduce me. He is calm, cool, triumphant, and I know in an instant that I have just been played. I pull my eyes away from him and look at Bryce. There is a heated look on his face and for some reason, I feel ashamed. I feel like my mother whoring herself out to the first man who shows her the least bit of interest.
“Fuck you,” I say, tears pricking my eyes. Hudson starts to open his mouth, but I push past both him and Bryce, grab my coat and head out into the cold.
Chapter Seven
I take a walk to the bottom of the first piste and sit on a wooden bench, watching a group of kids, no more than five or six years old, move across the flat snow on tiny skis. Their ski instructor makes them follow him in a single line so that he looks like a mother duck and they his ducklings. Then he stops and gets them to line up in a row in front of him. He looks in my direction and waves. I press my finger into my chest and he laughs, pulling his ski hat and goggles off. It’s Pierre.
“Hey, Pierre,” I call, waving back. I watch him as he looks down at all the kids and pulls a face. They all laugh like he’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen.
“He is so goddamn cute, isn’t he?” I turn to see Shawna walk towards me, a huge grin plastered over her face. She sits down next to me on the bench. “So, what happened last night? You went downstairs with Luke, then when I tried to find you later you’d gone. When I asked around after you some really fit guy with the greenest eyes and the sexiest smile I’ve ever seen said you’d left.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. I was a bit knackered. Decided to head back early.”
“Sure, no sweat. That fit guy though, he was smoking hot. He was with two other men. The bearded guy was all over one of the dancers. I heard he asked her back to his place after her shift had finished.”
“He did. She left not long ago.”
“What?” Shawna says, her mouth dropping open in a delighted laugh. She claps her mitten-covered hands together. “You mean your family are those three hotties. Did any of them come with a girlfriend?”
“Nope. I basically think they’re here to fuck,” I say, remembering Hudson’s hand on my stomach.
“Ah, it all makes sense now,” Shawna says, her face lighting up.
“What makes sense?”
“They are the brothers Freed.”
“Freed? That’s their surname?” I laugh at the ridiculousness of it. “I suppose they like to be free to get into women’s knickers.”
Shawna giggles, shuffling up next to me on the bench. “Apparently, they’re not really brothers. That’s just what they tell everyone. Rumour has it they all grew up in some care home and that all of them had shitty mothers.”
My head snaps around to look at Shawna. “Who told you that?”
“Luke told me about them, or rather he warned me about the brothers Freed when I first started here.”
“Is that so?”
“He said there were these three brothers who come here every year for the whole skiing season. That they are wealthy, love to party, and love women. According to Luke, they shag their way through the holidaymakers, resort staff, chalet girls, locals. A different girl every night. They’re a bunch of lotharios and are amazing in bed by all accounts, but emotionally fucked-up. Like, big time.”
“Yep, I reckon that just about sums them up,” I say, feeling angrier by the minute at Hudson’s advances. What a total prick.
“Well, shit. If I were you I’d be offering myself up on a platter. They are ridiculously gorgeous.” She looks at me and I can’t help but laugh at the face she pulls, even though there’s no way I am going there. Nope, the brothers Freed were off limits.
“I’m telling you, Louisa, there isn’t a hot-blooded woman on this planet who wouldn’t get her clothes off for one of those three hunks.”
“Well, there’s me,” I say, trying to forget the moment by the sink with Hudson a few minutes ago. That had been a complete lapse in judgment.
“I don’t believe it. You can’t tell me you wouldn’t jump in bed with one of them, given half the chance?”
“They love themselves a bit too much for my liking,” I mumble.
Shawna narrows her eyes at me. “What aren’t you saying? Please tell me you shagged one of them?”
“No, I haven’t shagged one of them, and I don’t intend to either. The brothers Freed are not for me. I don’t do damaged goods,” I say, mostly because my own damaged soul is enough to contend with. There isn’t room in my life for any more.
“Hudson, how are you doing, mate?” a man says as he’s skiing towards us. Shawna and I both flip our heads around and find ourselves staring at the brothers Freed. All three are looking at me. All of them look pissed as hell. Fuck.
For the rest of the day, I avoid going back to the chalet. I don’t want another confrontation with the brothers, so I take a trip up the mountain instead to observe the skiers as they speed down the slope. Despite it being cold enough for snow, the sun still feels warm on my face, and I understand now why so many people have a tan. The view from the café is incredible. When I sit in the outside seating area I feel as though I am on the top of the world, and that all my troubles back home are just tiny specks of dust like the skiers at the bottom of the piste. But my feelings of freedom and peace are short lived when I realise I must go back to the chalet to prepare the evening meal and face the brothers once more. I pay for my drinks and food at the bar then take the lift back down the slope. Half an hour later I am back at the chalet.
“Well, if it isn’t our very own Ice Queen,” Max slurs as I enter.
The place is heaving, full of people I don’t recognise and some that I do. Clara, the bitch from this morning, is draped around Bryce’s shoulders, her cherry lips pulling on his earlobes. For some ridiculous reason, it pisses me off. Clara whispers something in his ear, and he turns to look at me, his eyes narrowing. When Clara kisses him, he pulls her close, all the while looking directly at me. My heart drums way too loudly in my chest and I turn away just as Max stumbles forward. This time I’m the one to catch him. He can barely stand up straight. I take the can of beer out of his hand and manoeuvre him through the throng of people.
“I think you should go lie down before you pass out,” I say. He really must have knocked back a lot of booze, considering a well-stacked guy like him could be so thoroughly drunk. He is almost at the stage of oblivion. I recognise the signs, I’ve seen it often enough with my own mother. When I look about the room, most of the people are in a no better state than he is. I guess this is the partying Freed brothers Luke had told Shawna so much about.
“I’ll help you get him upstairs,” Hudson says, approaching us. He places an empty glass on a side table nearby and wraps Max’s arm around his shoulder. There is a woman watching us. She looks older, more sophisticated than most of the other revellers in the room, with long blonde hair a few shades darker than mine and the prettiest steel-grey eyes. She is stunning.
“Hudson, do you need me to help?” she asks.
He turns to her. “No, Louisa and I can manage. I won’t be long, Sacha.”
“He’s had too much to drink,” I say, stating the obvious. I can feel Sacha’s eyes on me. She’s taking the opportunity to look me up and down as though I am a threat. I give her a smile, one that says there’s no need to worry about me, but she just raises a haughty eyebrow. I dislike her immediately.
Hudson nods his head. “Max tends to knock the drink back when he’s hurting.”
Hurting? Why would he be hurting? I don’t ask, not sure I want to get into a conversation about some girl Max might be pining after.
Together we manage to get him upstairs and into his bedroom. I haven’t been in it before now and I am surprised by the sheer size of it. In the centre of the room is a huge king-sized bed covered in soft cream blankets, complementing the warm wood of the walls. We lay Max down. Hudson takes his shoes off and pulls an eiderdown over him, and then he does something completely unexpected and extraordinarily tender. He leans down and ki
sses Max on the forehead. It’s not at all sexual, more like a father kissing his son at bedtime, but it surprises me nonetheless. Hudson turns to face me and, noticing the look on my face, sighs.
“Despite what you might think, I’m not a complete arsehole. None of us are.”
I don’t say anything, we just stand and stare at each other. I can tell he has more to say, so I wait.
“The rumours you heard are true. We are not blood-related, although in every other way Max and Bryce are my brothers. I have looked out for them since we ended up in the same care home together. I left at eighteen, worked hard, got a place. As soon as they were old enough to leave a couple years later, we moved in together. We’ve been inseparable ever since. We work together, we live together still. I don’t think that will ever change. We’ve achieved a lot in the past eleven years after leaving the care home.”
I nod my head. “And the women? Sacha?” I say, waving my hand around, hoping he understands what I mean. What I really want to know is why he set his sights on me this morning. Why it had been so important for him to make me want him. Wait? Did I want him? I shake the thought aside, not willing to go there. Besides, he’s clearly moved on already. Or rather switched his sights to someone else.
“They are a symptom of a fucked-up issue we all have…” He sits on the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb the now sleeping Max, and looks up at me, his green eyes flecked with pain. “We were all abandoned by our mothers. Not all in the same way, but abandoned nonetheless. I guess we find comfort in the arms of women. Fuck, I don’t know. Sacha is someone I’ve known for some years. We’re fuck buddies, that’s all.” Hudson pulls a shaking hand through his hair. For whatever reason, he feels the need to share this information with me. I’m about to ask why when he gets up off the bed and walks towards me, standing just inside what is a comfortable distance. Remembering the way he made me feel earlier, I step back, needing space between us. A strange riot of emotions clamour for my attention but I push them down.
He looks at me wide-eyed. “Christ, I have no idea why I feel the need to share any of this with you. I don’t know what it is but there’s something about you, something I recognise…” His voice trails off at the look of horror on my face. Am I that emotionally scarred by my mother that everyone can spot the deadness inside me?