And then…he magically won again.
Here. At Alto Baglio.
Her breath hitched. She found her phone and dialed Brody’s number.
It rang, but he didn’t pick up.
That’s when she knew she was definitely on to something.
BRODY RUBBED HIS ACHING HEAD and trudged up the hotel stairs. Even after everything, he had a crazy wish Amanda would back off her story. But who was he kidding—her character was to fight. To dig. To stand equal.
He hadn’t bothered to call her back. The front desk clerk was a skiing fan, and Brody convinced her to slip him a key to Amanda’s room. He nudged her door open with his hip while he swung inside with his World Cup trophy. The overall winner two seasons ago, that was him. Supposedly. The trophy had cracked immediately after he’d received it—some irony that was—and the tour officials had taken it to repair it for him. Harrison had chosen today—irony again—to present it to Brody. A signal, he was sure. A message not to forget all they’d fought so hard for.
Brody settled the crystal globe the size of a soccer ball onto the nearest table and blinked to accustom his eyes to the low light.
Amanda was sleeping beneath the white down covers on the hotel bed. She was huddled on her side, and her hair was tousled around her in the way he’d gotten to know so well. Somehow, he wanted to work this out with her. They had compromised before, why couldn’t they now?
He set down the room key on the bedside table and clicked off the lamp, then moved the pile of notebooks and papers surrounding her. Knowing Amanda, she’d crashed because they’d caught so little sleep these past snowbound days. Instead, they’d been up nights loving, laughing, exploring each other’s bodies. Exploring each other’s desires.
Kicking off his boots, he slid under the covers beside her, pulling her close. He felt something hard, saw she was curled around her laptop, so he moved it to the table beside his trophy. Then he returned and rubbed his hand up her belly and over her breasts. She sighed, still asleep.
This was all he wanted, to keep Amanda beside him. Sometime during this past week he’d let her under his skin and near the reaches of his heart. It was the most dangerous thing he’d ever done, yet somehow the thing that felt most right.
He kissed her hair, inhaling the scent that had come to signify comfort. He’d wanted his time with her to last. He’d planned for it to last, even after the season was over.
“Say goodbye to her, Brody.” Harrison’s voice echoed in his head, and without thinking, Brody ground his teeth.
“No freaking way,” he’d told Harrison. “She stays with me through the race, and that’s the bottom line.” His team had stared at him. Steve had come back from his drive visibly upset, and they’d known that the inevitable was happening: Amanda was getting close to the truth and she’d stop at nothing to expose it. The team had spent the afternoon in the private room of a nearby restaurant discussing what to do.
“Picture this headline: Brody Jones’s Record Attained With the Help of Steroids.” Harrison had gestured to the block letters he’d written in marker on a yellow legal pad. “Can you deal with seeing that on every sports page in the country? Best Skier in Generations Has Record Tainted.”
His fists clenched, Brody had forced himself to listen while Harrison outlined their options. “Every sponsor will drop us like tainted goods. Vivere has one out in their contract—moral scandal. Brody can get sick, be injured, have a bad year, and still they have to pay us. But a steroid allegation? No way—they’ll bail on us without question. The same with Xerxes and any others we manage to sign. And Brody’s charities? Forget it. No one is going to give money to an Olympic athlete who cheated. Hell, they could strip your medals. They’ve done it before. And those kids you wanted to help, Brody, they’ll lose out, too.”
The bald facts had sat in his gut like poison. He wasn’t the only one who had everything to lose. Brody had looked from face to face of the guys who stood by him. His team. A few had been with him for twelve years, through the lows to the highs and back again. They’d sacrificed winters with their families, relationships with their kids and job opportunities that had come their way, all to support him and be part of this team.
A winning team. A team with integrity.
A team that didn’t cheat.
Brody breathed slowly in and out, struggling to maintain his composure. He knew what he needed to do. He needed to get up from the bed. Put on his boots. Start up his motor home and drive to Alto Baglio without Amanda, in the process keeping everyone around him safe from her interrogations and her questions. Safe from her headlines.
As if sensing his dilemma, Amanda stirred awake, rolling to face him. Her hand fluttered to his chest, and as always, his best intentions disintegrated. Her touch was like balm to him.
“Brody?” she whispered. “I’m glad you came back.”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, tasting her essence, drinking in all that she was.
I love her. The thought crashed in his consciousness. He felt a tenderness he’d never thought possible. He let his head slip below the covers and he kissed her and touched her all over. He wanted to bring her comfort and pleasure and happiness; he wanted her to feel as good with him as he felt with her.
She moaned and slid off her panties, and, as he’d done so many times this week, he joined himself with her. But this time was different. This time he was truly making love to her, to the person she was. This time he knew he loved her and hoped that somewhere within her heart, maybe she could love him, too.
Afterward, she lay in his arms, tracing her fingers across his chest. “What made you decide to give us a chance?”
He had to be sure she loved him back. “Just finish your story tonight,” he said hoarsely. “File whatever you have, and then pack your bags.”
Her hand crept around his neck. “You want me to leave you tonight?”
“No, I want you to stay with me tonight.” He turned to her, pulling her to him, speaking against the hair at her crown. “Stay through the race at Alto Baglio. And then…stay some more.”
He found himself holding his breath. He wanted her to understand, without having to risk telling her what had happened. He wanted her to forgive him. The things he’d told her earlier about his father had been his father’s fault, but this—the steroid use—he had done that. And somehow, he needed her to show him it was okay.
“That all depends on you, Brody,” she said quietly.
He waited, his arms wrapped around her, his lips against her hair. He’d known this moment was coming. He’d known, and yet he’d hoped it wouldn’t anyway.
“You’re not being honest with me.” She lay very still beneath him, her body tense. In her own way, she was probing; she didn’t know exactly what he’d done.
“I’ve been honest with you on everything that counts, Manda.” His voice shook.
“If that’s what you think,” she said, “then you’re not being honest with yourself either.”
“I’ve never been more honest,” he said bluntly.
She paused. Maybe she was working up her courage. “I need you to tell me the secret you’ve been hiding from me,” she said, bracing her hands against his chest and forcing him to look in her eyes. “And I need you to tell me now, because I do want to build something with you.” She shifted her head to look at his trophy, sitting fixed and whole again on the bedside table. She turned back to him. “Whatever that problem represents to you, whatever Harrison is holding over you, we can fix it together.”
“You can’t fix me, Manda.”
“I know that. But we’ll never go further than here if you can’t share this important part of yourself, whatever it is, that you’re keeping hidden from me. It hurts me that you’re shutting me out, Brody. It hurts me deeply.”
Her eyes radiated with pain, and that was his fault.
“I’ll tell you everything when my race is over and you’re not investigating me anymore,” he said brokenly.
/> She nodded, swallowing. She seemed to be fighting a battle within herself. Finally she rolled out from under him and gathered her clothes. A bustle of movement that all but killed him.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“I’m sorry, Brody, but that’s not a solution.”
“It is to me.”
She paused to study him, her clothes pressed to her chest. He’d never seen her look so sad. He waited, but she disappeared into the bathroom, and he heard the faucet running.
She came out fully dressed. She was serious with her decision, and he didn’t even try to stop her. Because he knew it was inevitable. Had known all along, if he’d been honest with himself.
“You can’t trust me after all we’ve shared?” she asked.
He said nothing.
With her lips pressed together and quivering, she went back into the bathroom and emerged with her bag of toiletries. She opened her suitcase, still filled with her clothes, and dumped it inside. Then she zipped her suitcase together and reached for her laptop. “Will you stop me? Because you still can.”
“This is your hotel room,” he said. “I’ll leave.”
Tears gathered in her beautiful hazel-green eyes. He felt sick at the sight of them, but what could he do?
“You know what your problem is?” she whispered. “You can’t forgive yourself. You carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. I saw it, the night of our accident. I didn’t understand until now. But you know what, Brody? If you don’t stop doing that, you’ll never fix anything in your life. Whatever it is, just let it go and then maybe you’ll find what you’re looking for.” And then the door shut, and she was gone.
He waited, but she didn’t come back.
He sat, all alone in her empty hotel room. Just him and his repaired World Cup trophy, perched on the bedside table where her laptop had been.
He’d rather have her laptop back. But he didn’t see how he could.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
INSIDE THE BUSINESS CENTER at the main resort near Alto Baglio, Amanda squeezed her forearms over her stomach. Two days had passed since she’d left Brody and everything hurt.
She’d cried herself to sleep that first night without him, her phone by her pillow, but Brody hadn’t called. A hundred times she’d second-guessed her decision to leave him. Most people would think it unreasonable to expect him to tell her everything, especially after such a short relationship. But she and Brody had been through a war together. He knew the most horrible things about her. And she, the things he was most ashamed of.
Or so she’d thought. Whatever this secret was that Harrison held over him, Brody didn’t trust her enough to confide it. He’d tricked her with misdirection in order to keep her from seeing what he wanted to keep hidden. He’d used stories about his father to deflect her. That he’d leveraged her guilt and shame about her own father’s treatment toward her only made his betrayal worse.
She hated the conclusion she was drawing, but she’d been right to walk away from him. Because another day had passed, and still he hadn’t phoned. He wasn’t interested in repairing their rift. He wasn’t interested in making her an equal partner with him.
And so, on the second morning away from him, she’d woken to a new understanding, abundantly clear: to choose Brody was to follow her mom’s path, a relationship with a man who shut her out.
If this was what Amanda allowed from a relationship, then she would be as powerless as her mom, following a husband around Europe who kept secrets from her, too, to keep her in a weaker position.
Unlike her mom, Amanda refused to be weak.
She turned to her work, knowing she was wiser. She’d fixed her mistake of leaving the hotel room Paradigm had paid for by moving to the cheaper hotel where her sister was staying while Massimo helped coach the Italian team. Amanda booked a small, adjoining room that shared a bathroom with theirs, and then buckled down with her quote-gathering. Work would continue to be her salvation.
As always, she covered the pain with busyness and phone calls. Her yellow notepad lay on the desk, the names of Brody’s old coaches, teammates and competitors listed and then crossed out in heavy black lines. She’d talked with nearly half of them.
“He’s great for the sport.” “Everyone loves training with him.” “No one works harder and is a better role model to the younger athletes than Brody Jones.”
It figures, she thought. No one had a clue about his secret. If she hadn’t been so heartsick, she might have laughed at the paradox. Even in breaking up with him, she’d gained nothing.
I can’t give up now.
The quest that would give her everything she lacked was almost complete. Once she had her masthead position, no one could make her feel weak again. Not even Brody.
She snapped off a piece of the bittersweet chocolate that had come with her cup of cappuccino and tried to let it melt in her mouth.
Then she made another call to see what pieces she could excavate next.
“RELAX. YOU’RE GOING TO WIN the race tomorrow.”
The words from his coach barely registered with Brody. He’d skied his practice run competently, but his heart wasn’t in it.
He kicked out of his rebuilt slalom skis and then passed them off with the rest of his equipment. He noted his time, his placement (first), but then stood at the finish line like an amateur, scanning the stands for Amanda.
Which was stupid. She’d left him. In two days she hadn’t called or tried to see him. They’d reached an impasse. Nothing more to say. The only thing left for him to do was win. She wanted him to forgive himself? A win was how he could do that. Because in his world, a person fixed things himself. Made them right. And if she couldn’t see that, they could never be together. End of story.
He took off his goggles and rubbed his eyes. The practice runs had ground to a halt because the guy behind him had wiped out badly enough that they were flying in a medical chopper, which was grueling stuff.
The kind of stuff that shook a guy up.
“Brody, let’s take a break,” Jean-Claude suggested.
He must really look spooked. “No, just let me chill for a while, all right?”
“Where’re you going?”
Brody shrugged. How the hell did he know? He just needed to get out of there. He didn’t want to think about skiers being hurt in accidents and not having the people they really needed with them.
He turned and tromped through the lodge, heading automatically to the main bar the way he’d done a dozen times before, a dozen seasons before. But this time, the smell of spilled lager and grilling sausage didn’t appeal. Was Amanda here, or had she flown back to New York?
“You want to have a drink with me, Brody?”
He stared at one of his former sponsor’s reps, a grizzled old-timer for a ski-clothing manufacturer who was patting the empty stool beside him. Harrison would nudge Brody to take the offer, because, hey, business was business and this was part of the game. But he didn’t have the heart for it.
“No, thanks,” he said.
“You’re saying no to a beer with a potential sponsor?” The rep laughed at him. “What kind of alpine racer are you?”
A screwed-up one, apparently. Brody shook his head and walked away. He avoided the tour bunnies and the legends, his friends and the skiing-friendly public. Instead, he found himself wandering the hotel’s public rooms, anyplace with internet access and an electrical hookup where a reporter with a laptop and a smartphone might be hanging out.
He found her in the business center, sitting alone while everybody else partied. Brody ground to a halt, his feet rooted to the floor, his heart pounding like a teenage boy’s.
Her long, beautiful hair was pulled off her face, and wisps of escaping strands brushed her neck. She wore no makeup and a simple black turtleneck. In no way, shape or form could anyone call her a tour honey, but he was drawn to her as he’d never been drawn to another woman.
He took a step forward. But she wouldn’
t go back to his trailer even if he asked, because she didn’t want him anymore. She wasn’t at all interested in fooling around with the great skier, Brody Jones. If he’d ever had a chance with her, he’d blown it completely. From what he’d heard this morning, she’d been calling guys on the tour, asking for quotes, doing her job.
And the truly sad thing was, he understood her better than anyone. He knew why she fought, why she could never give up. He knew exactly what she needed to make herself whole.
All their time together, everything they’d shared, and all she wanted was to know the most important part about him. She’d asked him, more than once, and he had continued to lie to her. He’d lied to himself until Harrison had pointed it out.
It was funny, Brody thought. He’d come back to the tour to prove himself a man of integrity. And yet, the only integrity he’d found had been in her: sitting here at this moment in the business center, aboveboard, honest and pushing through the pain that was etched all over her face.
She had integrity. She was the person he wanted to be. The person he’d fooled himself into believing he already was.
At that moment, as if time had slowed and stopped to show him what he needed to do, from the corner of his eye he noticed MacArthur Jensen walking their way.
As always, Brody stiffened. He willed MacArthur past them.
But, as if by divine intervention, the folder MacArthur carried slid from his hand, the papers scattering across the floor.
Brody’s reflexes kicked in. He stepped behind a lamp to shield himself from view until his old coach passed. MacArthur stopped and knelt.
Amanda, hearing the quiet thunk of the pages hitting the floor, looked up. Brody could see her face as she blinked at her father and then stood before him, still clutching her laptop. She had sadness in her eyes as their gazes met and then MacArthur stared straight through her.
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