by Diana Palmer
Janey made a face. “Dad’s future wife,” she corrected. Her face fell. “Can you imagine Lindy here, all the time?” she asked miserably. “Suppose we run away to Siberia?”
“Why Siberia?” Karina asked.
“Well, it’s cold and there’s lots of ice,” she said, smiling wickedly. “So we can skate all the time.”
Karina gave her an affectionate hug. “You have to face your problems, not run from them,” she said sagely. “If I could get back on the ice after my injury, you can cope with Lindy.”
“If you say so.”
* * *
THEY WERE BUNDLED UP, ready to leave for the rink with their skating bags, when Lindy and the boss walked in the door together.
They were both taciturn and unsmiling, and it looked as if they’d been arguing.
“Where are you off to?” Lindy asked belligerently.
“The ice rink,” Karina said. “Janey has a lesson at six...”
“Lessons! What a waste of time! The kid can’t skate,” she added, glaring at Janey. “She’s too clumsy.”
“She’s not clumsy,” Micah snapped. “Stop running her down.”
Lindy gave him a surprised glance, but she shut up.
“Have fun,” Micah told his daughter, forcing a smile. “Don’t stay too long,” he added.
“But there’s no school tomorrow,” Janey protested.
“We’re all going to Jackson for the day,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “Shopping. You need some new school clothes.”
“I need a skating dress, too, for the competition,” Janey said excitedly.
“What competition?” Lindy asked huffily, glaring at Karina. “I suppose she talked you into it. Neither of you know enough about skating to compete in anything!”
“I’m taking lessons,” Janey said tautly. “My coach says I’m good enough to compete at my level.”
“Some coach,” she scoffed. “A washed-up Olympic coach with no skaters!”
“It’s not Hilde, it’s Chad Barnes,” Karina interjected, trying not to sound aggressive. “He’s started coaching at the rink. He won silver at Nationals three years running in men’s singles.”
Lindy shrugged. “Whatever. It’s a waste of money, however you look at it. The kid never sticks with anything. How about some coffee, Burt?” Lindy snapped at the older man in the kitchen. “I’m freezing! And don’t make it so strong that I have to water it down again!”
“Coffee would be nice,” Micah agreed.
“I’ll put on a pot,” Burt said, trying not to look as offended as he felt at the newcomer’s demands.
“We won’t be late,” Karina promised as she herded Janey out the door.
“See that you aren’t,” Micah said coolly.
* * *
KARINA FELT THE words like blows. She wondered why Micah was so abrasive with her lately. He’d seemed less aggressive since her run-in with the bear, but now he was back to his old self.
She wasn’t really afraid of him, but he made her very uncomfortable. She couldn’t understand why.
“You’re really quiet,” Janey commented on the way to the rink.
“Just thinking about the new routine Paul and I are practicing, that’s all,” she prevaricated. “I’m excited about your first competition. You’ll do great!”
“Thanks for defending me,” Janey said. “Lindy makes me feel stupid.”
“Well, you’re not. You have to believe in yourself, in what you can do. Don’t ever let anyone else shake your self-confidence. You can do whatever you think you can do.”
Janey smiled. “Okay. Thanks.”
Karina smiled back. “You’re welcome.”
* * *
PAUL WAS WAITING for them out on the ice. Karina skated over to Chad Barnes with Janey and left her with him for her lesson.
“You and Paul are looking good,” Chad commented.
“Thanks,” she said, smiling. “Paul’s been in touch with the figure skating association. Since they use a varied criteria to choose the team for Nationals and the Olympics, we’ve got a good chance of getting in, thanks to that gold at the Worlds last year, and our record in international competition,” she replied. “It depends on whether or not I can skate a difficult program and keep my skating consistent. It’s a long road back from an injury.”
“We all get them,” he remarked. “I’ve had shin splints and strains and pulled muscles. I had a concussion once and a fractured ankle another time. I always came back with therapy and practice. You will, too.”
“It was hard to get back on the ice,” she confessed. “But now that I’m skating again, it’s the same old story.” She grinned. “I’m in love with the sport.”
“So am I,” he chuckled.
* * *
PAUL AND KARINA worked on a jump sequence they were going to incorporate into Hilde’s comprehensive dance routine for the long program. It was slow going. Not only did the jumps have to be performed flawlessly—landing consistently on either the inside or outside edge of the skates and not flubbing it—but they had to be synchronized, so that it looked as if they were joined by a long string. It took a lot of practice to get it just right.
They were panting for breath when they finished. Janey had long since gone through her lesson and was sitting out past the barrier, watching them.
“I never thought about how much energy it takes to skate a long program before I started skating myself,” Janey remarked when they came off the ice. “It’s really tiring, isn’t it?”
“Very,” Karina laughed, mopping her sweaty face with a handkerchief. “The rink is cold, but when you exercise so much, you get hot pretty fast.”
“I see why they told us to layer our clothes and wear thin socks, too,” Janey laughed. “Bulky clothes make it harder to skate.”
“There’s a lot to learn,” Paul agreed. “What time are we leaving in the morning?” he asked Karina.
“It’s a long drive. About nine?” she asked.
He nodded. “I’ll follow you in my own car. I’d offer you a ride, but you have to come back and I don’t,” he chuckled.
She smiled. “That’s okay. My car’s doing really good so far.”
“So, see you in the morning. Bonne nuit,” he added after he’d taken off his skates and packed up to go back to the room Hilde rented him.
“You, too,” Karina called.
“Night,” Janey said. “What’s bonne...whatever?” she asked after they were back in the car heading to the ranch.
“Bonne nuit,” Karina replied, smiling. “It’s French for good night.”
“I guess you speak it, huh?”
She nodded. “Enough, at least. Paul taught me when we were about your age.”
“A long time ago, huh?” the child teased.
Karina laughed. “Not nice!”
“At least you’re not as old as Dad,” she retorted. “He’ll be thirty-four in August.”
“Gosh. Ready for the retirement home,” she teased. But she was thinking what an age difference there was. He was eleven years her senior. She hadn’t thought much about his age. But there were those sparse silver hairs. She grimaced, wondering why it should matter to her. He was just her boss, and he was engaged.
“He’s got a lot of good years left.” Janey sighed. “I’m going straight to bed when we get home. Lindy will be up all night. She never sleeps. She just sits and smokes and watches movies and drinks black coffee.”
“She smokes?” Karina asked worriedly. Her lungs wouldn’t tolerate smoke.
“Oh, not in the house,” Janey added. “Dad put his foot down. He doesn’t like the smell.”
“I don’t like smoke,” Karina replied. “Lungs are very important in ice skating. You have to have enough wind to get around the rink without collapsing.”
“I believe it. She’ll smoke outside. She hates that,” she added with a smirk.
“You bad girl,” Karina chided. But then she laughed.
* * *
WHEN THEY GOT to the house, Lindy was sitting alone on the sofa with her arms and legs tightly crossed, watching an audience participation show with the volume up. Burt was nowhere in sight. Neither was Micah.
“Well, there you are, finally,” Lindy snapped as Janey and Karina walked in. “I thought you were going to spend the night!”
“We always stay later on Friday and Saturday night,” Janey said, but in a faintly submissive tone. She hated confrontations.
“Stay as late as you like, you won’t skate any better than you already do,” the older woman ranted. “I couldn’t teach you a thing. You’re thick as a plank.”
“I’m going to bed. Good night, Karina,” Janey said, and beat a path to her room.
“Smart-mouth,” Lindy said hotly. “She can’t even be bothered to be polite to me. Your doing, I imagine,” she glared at Karina.
The study door opened before she could say any more. Micah came through it, scowling when he saw Karina standing there.
“Where’s Janey?” he asked.
“She’s gone to bed,” Karina said. “She was tired.”
“Tired of skating, or tired of watching you and your new boyfriend play footsies at the ice rink?” Lindy said with a mean smile. “Everybody’s talking about you.”
Micah’s face tautened. “Playing footsies?” he asked.
“We’re just skating together,” Karina said defensively. “He’s my friend.”
“Oh, sure, that’s what they’re saying, all right,” Lindy added nastily. “You’re there with him before daylight every day and all day when the kid’s in school. Nobody practices that much. And the ice rink owner’s renting him a room by the week, too, isn’t she? That must come in handy for the two of you.”
Micah was looked oddly murderous. Lindy was smiling, but it wasn’t a nice smile.
Karina didn’t feel like trying to defend herself. She was tired and her ankle was sore. “I have to drive to Jackson in the morning to see my therapist,” she said. “Is it okay?”
“Therapist?” Lindy mused. “Do you have...mental challenges?”
Karina ignored her. “My sports therapist. He has to check my ankle.”
“Is it giving you any trouble?” Micah asked.
She shrugged. “It just gets sore, that’s all. He said last time that the break had healed very nicely.”
“Will it continue healing with all this exercise?” he wanted to know.
She wasn’t sure about that herself. The leg had a weakness from its former break as well as the ankle injury. She was aware of it, and worried about it. There was going to have to be a lot of training if she and Paul went to Nationals and were chosen for the Olympic team. Hours of practice every day, mostly all day, until the routine was set in stone. Would her ankle be all right, with so much stress?
She reminded herself that many Olympic athletes had come back from far worse injuries. It was a matter of exercise and proper stretching and medical attention when needed. But there was still that little nagging worry...
“I’ll ask him,” she said, aware that Micah was waiting for a reply. “Good night, boss.”
“Good night.”
“Honestly,” Lindy muttered as the other woman left the room, “how much time does she have to devote to the kid if she’s skating all day with that man?”
“I’ve been wondering that myself,” he said tersely.
Karina heard that comment and it wounded her. She went into her room and closed the door, her face flaming, her heart racing. Did Micah think she’d been neglecting Janey with all this training? She realized that she probably was. It was going to be an issue, she could see that already. Lindy was fanning the flames of Micah’s anger as well. The future didn’t look very bright at the moment.
CHAPTER NINE
KARINA WOKE IN a cold sweat. She’d been dreaming again about the plane crash that had killed both her parents. It was a nightmare that never ended. She recalled all too vividly their faces, their torn bodies. She’d lain there in the snow all night long. The moon had been full. The bodies were vividly colored. Karina’s leg had been broken and she couldn’t move. The pain had made her pass out at first. Then it was a continual throb that almost blinded her to the two beloved dead people near her in the strewn wreckage of what had been an airplane.
The fuselage had survived the impact, although it had split. Her father had been in the pilot’s seat. He was still strapped in, despite the crash, sitting up, stark dead. Her mother had been in the seat across from Karina. Her seat belt had snapped, like Karina’s. The two of them had been thrown. Her mother’s head was at an impossible angle, her body torn by the stressed and crumpled metal of the airplane’s body.
Death. It had a smell, even in the numbing cold that was unmistakable. It had been late morning before search crews had found them. By then, Karina was going in and out of consciousness. She’d had blood loss from cuts on the broken leg and her torso, not life threatening, but weakening. Only her thick coat and boots and a blanket she’d had in her seat had kept her from getting frostbite. She’d spent several days in the hospital.
Paul and Gerda had come to see about her, to help with the red tape that would permit her to bring her parents’ bodies home for burial. That chore had been nightmarish. The broken leg, the aftermath of the crash, the nightmares that had gone on and on and on.
Micah had guessed that she’d seen her parents’ bodies. He didn’t know that she’d been in the wreckage with them all night, or that she had constant nightmares for months afterward. Like tonight’s.
She got out of bed, pulling a robe around her gowned body, and opened her door. She stood there, hesitating. She didn’t want another confrontation with Lindy if she could help it. But, then, Lindy would be in the bedroom with Micah. Why did that hurt?
She went into the kitchen, relieved that nobody else was up. It was three o’clock in the morning. She put on a pot of coffee, leaning against the counter, trying to cope with the misery the nightmare had resurrected.
Her heart jumped when she heard a door open. Not Lindy, she prayed silently, please not Lindy...
She turned, guilt all over her face, flushed from sleep, in its frame of long waving pale blond hair that cascaded around her shoulders, to her waist in back. Her gray eyes found the boss and she relaxed, just a little.
He was wearing black pajama bottoms and nothing else. His black hair was tousled. His chest was thick with curling black hair over muscles that had the same light olive tan as the rest of him. He was magnificent to Karina’s innocent eyes. But he looked irritated when he spotted her in the kitchen.
“What the hell are you doing up at this hour?” he asked curtly, glaring at her. The way she looked made him wild. She was exquisite like that, with her long hair down, her face soft from sleep, her eyes quiet and still, like mist in the early morning.
She drew in a quick breath. “Nightmare,” she said tautly.
His chin lifted. His dark eyes slid down her exquisite figure, over her pert breasts, outlined sweetly by the flimsy robe, to the deep curve of her waist and hips. She was enticing. His body had refused to cooperate with Lindy, who’d finally stormed out of his bedroom into the guest room and locked the door. It wasn’t uncooperative now.
The sight of Karina drew his big body as tense as if it had been slammed with a bat. He was aroused. Very aroused. She was too young and she worked for him. He shouldn’t even be thinking of her in those terms. He was engaged. Lindy was insistent about setting a date. He didn’t want to set a date.
He glared at Karina and went to the cabinet. He took down two mugs and placed them in front of the coffee pot. He was close. So close that she could feel the heat of his
body, feel the quiet strength of it in ways that made her nervous.
He touched her long hair, gathered it into one big hand and used its light pressure to turn her toward him. It was wrong. He shouldn’t... Even while he thought it, his mouth lowered to settle on hers.
“Mr....Torrance,” she whispered, a faint protest that was suddenly smothered by the warm, hard pressure of his mouth on her soft lips.
He nipped her lower lip. “Open it,” he said gruffly.
“Wha...?”
She gave him, involuntarily, the opening he was looking for. It galvanized him. Pleasure shot through him like a jolt of whiskey, drawing his powerful form taut, drowning him in urgent need.
“You...mustn’t,” she began in a choked, helpless tone. She was hungry for him. She hadn’t realized it. Not until now, when she had no defenses whatsoever.
“Shh,” he whispered into her mouth, and drew her completely against him.
The feel of her went to his head. He felt young again, drunk with need. She made him ache. Made his breath catch in his chest. He groaned softly as his big hands smoothed down her back, coaxing her close to the raging need that his body betrayed.
She’d never felt an aroused man. Not since long ago, during one of the many out-of-state events that she participated in while moving up the levels of ice skating before she and Paul had officially become a pair. An assistant coach had backed her into a wall after practice, the night before the event she’d come to do, and tried to force her. She’d fought, screamed. That had made him furious. He’d hit her, over and over again, tearing at her clothing, terrifying her.
Her father had come to pick her up, and worried that she wasn’t outside waiting for him. He’d gone into the practice area just in time to save her from being overwhelmed by the angry, vicious man who was assaulting her.
She’d been in tears. Her father had called the police. There had been a minor scandal. The assistant coach had been fired, but he was liked and Karina came in for some angry taunting from fellow skaters that he’d coached. Some of them didn’t believe that he’d really tried to rape her at all. They thought she was hungry for attention.