Instant Attraction

by Jill Shalvis

  “And landed here.”

  “For the next month anyway. After that, I’m not sure, but that’s a part of it, the not being sure. Whatever it is, it’ll be bigger and even more exciting. So in answer to your question, I’m trying to have an adventurous spirit, always. I’m not great at it yet….” The incident in the equipment garage came to mind. She offered a self-deprecatory smile. “And I realize I’ve just opened myself up for more of your amusement at my expense, but I’m just trying to be honest. I think coming here, as far out of my comfort zone as I can get, proves I’ve got some adventure in me.”

  He was quiet for a long moment, studying her as if seeing her for the first time, all signs of amusement gone. “Doing what you did took guts,” he said very softly, with more emotion in his voice than she’d yet seen from him.

  He knew of what he spoke, she realized, and swallowed hard. She hadn’t realized until that very moment just how badly she’d needed someone to get it, get her. “You think so?” she whispered.

  “Yeah.” His voice was low, almost hoarse. “I do. And your honesty will get you a lot further than any sense of adventure, always. I’m sorry I teased you.”

  And with that, he pushed off from the desk and walked out of the office.

  Once Stone and Nick left with their guests on their trip, Cam got away by himself. He needed to think. It used to be that he did his thinking while boarding.

  But it’d been just over a year since his spectacular crash, and he’d never gone back to it.

  Was he afraid?

  Not really. Unless he counted the fact that he was afraid he’d suck. But even that wasn’t enough to have kept him off the mountain.

  It was his own mortality.

  But dammit, he needed to think. So like the good old days before he could afford a lift ticket, he climbed Widow’s Peak with his board on his back. On a scale of 1 to 10, the climb was a 100; but he’d done it so many times he could have made it blindfolded.

  Just not with his bad knee. Holy shit, he was out of shape. By the time he got to the top of the jagged mountain peak, his legs were overcooked noodles and he was breathing like a freight train. He stood looking out at the valley far below, his past life spread out in a blanket of white glory. An icy wind blew over his heated body, slowly cooling him down.

  But it wasn’t the sweat drying that made him shiver. It was the knowledge that there was no way in hell he was going to take the board off his back. Every time he tried, his fingers shook, and he remembered the crash in vivid Technicolor. He’d been racing for a world title, lost his concentration, caught an edge, and had woken up in a Swiss hospital. He’d spent a month flat on his back recovering from three surgeries, one of which had nearly killed him. Then he’d spent another eleven months wandering the planet feeling sorry for himself over losing the only thing that had ever been his unconditionally.

  The board was a heavy weight on his back. He wanted to be on it. Wanted the rush of the roaring crowd, the feel of the gates as he flew through them, the dizzying speeds as he headed to the finish line…

  But that wasn’t going to happen, not ever again.

  You’re as good as you’re going to get, his last doctor had declared.

  But not as good as he’d once been, not even close. He had seventy percent mobility, which meant he could get out there like the average Joe Blow but…

  But.

  He’d never again be a world champ using the skills he’d honed from the age of five out of sheer determination, grit, and desperation to get away from the life he’d hated. Even after he’d gone to live with Annie, the determination and grit had remained.

  He’d been the best of the best, and because of it had been lifted out of poverty, had been offered a life where he could travel every single day of the year if he chose, a life where people treated him like he was somebody.

  And now that was gone, forever. Fuck. Fuck it. Without taking the board off his back, he started hiking back down the hill, ignoring the aching muscles in his good leg and the pain in his bad one. A couple of hundred yards along, he heard a yell from above him. And then, “Oh shit!”

  “Cody, watch out for that effing tree!” someone else yelled in equal panic.

  Two guys burst through a set of trees above Cam, avoided the trees by a miracle, and threw themselves to the snow at his feet.

  “Jesus, Tuck,” Cody gasped, rolling to his back. “Jesus Christ.” He slapped his hands down his body. “We’re alive.”

  “Barely.” Tuck lifted his head and smiled at Cam. “Dude, we almost killed you.”

  Not likely, Cam thought, as neither of them could have aimed and hit him if they’d tried. They were fifteen, maybe sixteen. Both with knit caps low over their eyes, baggy boarding gear and goggle tans.

  Cody shoved his cap up a bit to see better. “Hey.” He peered at Cam’s face. “Hey, I know you.”

  Cam shook his head.

  “No, dude. I do. You’re Cameron Wilder. Dude,” he said, smacking Tuck in the chest. “It’s him, look.”

  “Sweet. Hey, man, we need some pointers.”

  “Stay out of the trees until you know what you’re doing.”

  They both laughed and slapped each other around some. “So why are you walking down?” Cody asked Cam.

  “Your knee?” Tuck asked. “It’s not better?”

  “No.” Which was infinitely more appealing than the truth—that it was as good as it was going to get, so he’d switched gears and became a Professional Quitter.

  “You’re not, like, giving lessons, are you? Cuz my mom would totally pay you to teach me how to board without breaking bones.” Tuck pulled up the sleeve of his jacket and revealed a casted wrist.

  Teach other people how to ruin their lives too? Huh, what a concept. “No.”

  “We could walk down with you, and you could tell us about the 2006 X Games, where you—”

  “Can’t. Sorry.” Their faces fell, and he felt like an ass. A complete and utter loser ass. “But you could come by the lodge.” Where he had closets and closets full of sponsor gear he’d never be able to use in one hundred lifetimes. “I have extra gear if you’re interested.”

  “Dude!”

  “Can we bring our friends?” Tuck asked, lit up in sheer joy.

  “Yeah.” Why the hell not. He already felt like a one-man freak show, might as well become one.

  “Maybe you’ll be boarding again before the end of the season and we could tag along,” Cody said. “You know, like, sometime.”

  Cam looked into their young, eager faces and felt a hard tug on his gut. He wanted to say leave me the hell alone, but he couldn’t do it. He simply couldn’t look into their hopeful, whole-life-in-front-of-them faces and crush their dreams just because his were gone. “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Sweet!”

  They hit the mountain slope again, arguing over who to bring with them to Wilder, and Cam followed.

  On foot.

  Chapter 5

  After flying their clients to Cascade Falls, Stone and Nick spent the day leading them down a series of verticals. By late afternoon, they’d tackled four different peaks and sat at the top of Mt. Paiute, looking out over what felt like paradise.

  “Never gets old,” Nick noted.

  “Nope.” Stone turned off his iPod. “Cam should have come.”

  “Said he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, whether he’d stick around or not.”

  “Yeah.” They were both well used to Cam and his special level of bullheadedness. “I’ll call him.”

  “Don’t,” Nick said.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’ll piss him off.”

  “Will not.”

  “You’re his brother. It’s what you do.”

  Yeah, but it was worry that propelled him. Partly that was because Stone was the middle child, and that’s what he did, worry, and partly because their father hadn’t ever worried about Cam. In fact, he’d resented the hell out of the baby who had not only not been hi
s but sickly too. Cam had eventually gotten healthy—no thanks to their father’s harsh discipline—and had ended up with Annie—a fact that Stone was convinced had saved Cam’s life.

  The old man was long gone now, but Cam still took everything to heart, deeply to heart, and had a habit of just shutting down rather than feeling something, even before the quick rise to celebrity and fame had closed him off. And then the snow-boarding accident, which had taken away the one thing he’d loved above all else.

  Without the rush of his sport, Stone knew Cam was flailing, lost, trying to find his place. What Stone didn’t know was how long it’d be before Cam figured out there wasn’t a physical “place” at all, only a mental one. With Nick shaking his head, he called Cam.

  “You lost?” Cam asked dryly.

  The relief Stone felt from hearing his brother’s voice made him instantly grumpy. It’d always been this way. Stone doing his damnedest to take care of everyone, especially Cam, and Cam doing his damnedest to make Stone not want to. “Nick wants to come back for you so you can ski with us tomorrow.”

  Nick rolled his eyes.

  “We could use the company,” Stone went on. “Our clients are a bunch of spoiled, rich punks who don’t want to ski as much as find a good view and sit and drink beer.”

  “Sounds like you a few years back.”

  “I was never more interested in beer than skiing.”

  “Right. You were much more interested in women.”

  Okay, true. “You coming or not?”

  “Not.”

  Stone tried to keep his cool, but as he considered Cam a flight risk, it was difficult. “You getting restless feet again? Because I swear to God, if you even think about leaving, I’ll attach cement blocks to your feet.”

  “Jesus, relax. I’m not going anywhere.” Cam hesitated. “I went hiking. My knee’s swollen up.”

  Cam’s pain after the accident had nearly killed him, and had nearly killed his brothers to watch him suffer through it. Stone hadn’t realized there was still that particular demon to fight. He swiped a hand down his face and fought to keep his voice even. “Have you been keeping up with your PT?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The meds?”

  “Quit them at the same time I quit you.”

  “Have you—”

  “Stone.” Cam’s voice held frustration, and something else. Defeat? Whatever it was, he didn’t sound like himself. “It’s just a bad day.”

  Sympathy wouldn’t work here, not on Cam, even though that’s what Stone felt. “Sorry, didn’t get that you were still so fragile. You just stay there and relax.” Beside him, Nick sighed, and Stone ignored him. “Take a nap.”

  “You know what? Fuck you.”

  There. There Cam was, and just like that, the tightness in Stone’s chest eased in relief. A bum knee they could deal with. An attitude-ridden Cam they could deal with. It wouldn’t be pleasant and there would be fights, but what they couldn’t deal with was Cam vanishing again.

  “Look, I’m back, okay? I’m here, and I’m…trying. I’m trying to help like you asked.”

  “I’d rather you want to want to be back,” Stone said.

  “Yeah, well, I’m working on that too. I’ve spent the past two hours booking no less than four upcoming groups, all of which will bring in more money than you did in the last month.”

  “Is that why you told Katie I’d triple her salary to shut up?”

  “Mentioned that, did she?”

  “She did.”

  “She also mention that she survived the Santa Monica bridge collapse?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s…different.”

  “You mean because she doesn’t worship the ground you walk on?”

  “That doesn’t happen so much anymore,” Cam admitted.

  And he didn’t know how to deal with that either, Stone guessed. “I’m not the chick police, but she’s not your type.”

  “That’s never stopped you, amigo.”

  A not-so-subtle reference to two summers back, when Stone had had a thing with the cleaning crew—two Puerto Rican sisters who’d come on to him one night after too many vodkas and a whole bunch of bad karaoke. The sisters had been excellent at their job and muy caliente, but unfortunately also muy crazy. “I was going through a phase, okay? It’s passed now.”

  “Well, so has mine,” Cam said.

  “Your pissy phase? Christ, I hope so.”

  Cam let out a low laugh and hung up. Stone shut his phone and met Nick’s gaze.

  “Hey,” Nick said. “At least he’s still with us.”

  “Yeah, but for how long? He’s looking at Katie, which is interesting.”

  “He said he hasn’t gotten laid since Serena dumped him.”

  “A year,” Stone mused. “Unlike him.”

  “Because he’s never had to make the moves before.”

  “Yeah.” Stone shoved his cell into his pocket. “Who let T.J. go out on a month-long trek so he doesn’t have to deal with the day-to-day shit of the ranch, including our baby brother?”

  “You. You don’t like to be gone for long periods of time, and you know it. You like to be in charge, bossing everyone around, making sure we all do your bidding.”

  “Now you sound like Annie.”

  Nick fell silent at that. He’d been with them since before Wilder Adventures, years before. He’d gone to school with Annie, had been in love with her since day one, and had helped her out with a young Cam. It’d taken a long time to convince Annie to marry him, because like all the Wilders, she tended to work hard at pushing people away, including the best person to ever happen to her. “The divorce sucks.”

  A man of few words, Nick just nodded.

  “You’d think it would make her happy since it was her idea, but she’s a bigger nightmare than before.” Stone slid Nick a glance. “Can’t you fix that?”

  Nick shook his head. “She has a thing for the UPS guy.”

  “What?”

  “She likes his shorts.”

  “Then get a pair of shorts, man.”

  “She said I didn’t see her.” Nick shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Hell, I don’t even know what that means.”

  “Maybe it’s girl code. Maybe she thinks you don’t love her.”

  Nick looked completely befuddled. “How can she think that? I sold my Jeep to buy her a ring. I sold my Skycrane heli when she had that bad turn with her diabetes and got so sick. I sold my life to make her happy, and she says I didn’t see her?”

  “So see her.”

  “Yeah. Any thoughts on how exactly?”

  “No, but she’s cranky as hell, and she’s scaring people. If you don’t start seeing her soon, we’re all going to pay.”

  “So you’re saying I have to get my marriage back together for your sake?”

  “For the greater good of Wilder Adventures,” Stone said.

  “For your sake.”

  “Yeah.”

  Nick shook his head. “All of you Wilders are crazy.”