by Skye Jordan
He pulled back, frowning. “What’s wrong?”
She laughed. “Why does something have to be wrong for me to tell you I think you’re amazing?” She pushed past him with, “Get. I’ve got to get these put away before we go.”
Noah followed, his feet shifting on unfamiliar ground. “Where are we going? I thought we were working out when you got home.”
“We are. I decided to change it up a little today.” In the kitchen, she unpacked bags and stocked the fridge. “Go change into warm stuff while I put these away. We’ll be working outside today.”
“Doing what? And where?” he asked again, setting the bags on the granite. “What’s this sudden spontaneity, and why are you being so cryptic?”
“It’s a surprise, and I’m plenty spontaneous. Now go.”
Noah jogged up the steps to his room, only realizing just how huge an accomplishment that was once he was on the landing. He automatically looked down toward the kitchen for Julia and found her frozen in the act of pulling something from the bag, watching him with a triumphant, excited grin.
They shared the awesome moment silently, making it that much more intimate, until Noah couldn’t hold the joy back and a laugh bubbled out. “Never thought I’d be so thrilled over something so simple.”
“You deserve the thrill. You’ve come a long way in a very short time.”
“We’ve come a long way,” he corrected.
She acknowledged his statement with a nod, though he couldn’t tell if she agreed.
By the time he’d changed into jeans, boots, and a long-sleeved Henley, Julia was ready to go. Noah drove, taking directions from Julia. They headed toward Heavenly, but then passed the massive resort and continued into the mountains beyond.
“The only thing out here is Zephyr Academy,” he said, trying to figure out her game plan.
“I know. Finn told me you spent a lot of time there.”
“I pretty much grew up there.” A smile slowly turned Noah’s mouth as memories drifted in. Great people, great experiences. “It was more of a home than a school. I haven’t been out here for a long time. Not since one of the camps I used to give clinics at moved to a new location about five years ago.”
The SUV’s tires slipped, slipped, slipped, then stuck. Noah pressed the brake and crossed his arms on the steering wheel, staring out the windshield at the place he’d called home for many long winters.
“Looks like we’re walking from here.” Julia reached for the door handle, and Noah reached for her arm.
“What? Why?”
“Because, as you know, walking on unstable surfaces works your fine muscle control. You’ve got the major muscles supporting your ankle built. Now you need to work those small muscles to get your finesse back.”
“Dude, did you just call me finesseless?”
“That’s not even a word.”
“Says who?”
The door closed, and Noah climbed out, meeting Julia in front of the SUV’s grille.
“So…” She pulled on gloves and tugged her knit cap down to cover her ears. “Let’s just get up there and make a loop around the property.”
“Do you realize how big this place is?” he asked, trudging along beside her. “There are at least a dozen buildings.”
“Can’t wait to see it.”
They were both breathing hard by the time they’d plowed through the shin-high powder leading to the first building.
“This was the office,” he said, “where the principal lived. Just like in regular school, you didn’t want to get sent to the office.”
“Which probably meant you spent a lot of time there.”
He grinned, shrugged, and turned to the right, approaching a big industrial building with metal roll-up doors. Stepping up to a window, he cupped his hands around his face to peer inside. Nostalgia washed over him as he scanned the workbenches and tool racks. “I learned to weld here. Learned to repair skis and snowboards. Even designed and built a board of my own.”
“That sounds cool.”
“It was. Very cool. The place was owned by a great couple, Matthew and Helena Rizzuto. They were better parents to me than my own ever were.”
They moved on to a row of small buildings, paint weathered, roof battered. “These are the classrooms.” They wandered past, peeking in the small windows to each room. Desks, chairs, and bookcases still filled the hollow space. “Feels sad to see it like this, so empty. It was always so full of life. Something was always going on.”
The memory gave Noah a spark of something that had been missing from his life for a long time. Something he hadn’t realized had been missing until he felt it again. This had been his home. The people running the school, the kids attending the school, were his family and friends. They’d built a community, one in which Noah had thrived, achieved, and gone on to do great things. And its current abandoned state bothered him.
By the time they’d traveled the length of the barracks and he peered through the window to the tiny room he’d shared with Finn and Jake while they’d all finished high school and trained for the Olympics, his ankle was definitely sore in a whole new way.
“You weren’t kidding about the small muscles. They’re toast.”
“The only way to strengthen them is by repetitive small movements, like what you get trying to maintain your balance on uneven ground. The snow adds a slippery element and makes you work harder. And I knew there was no way I was going to get you to sit in the gym and do the monotonous exercises needed to get the same result you’re getting here.”
He stepped back from the window and swung an arm around her neck. “Great idea. But why here? There’s snow all over Tahoe. We could have taken a walk along the lake.”
A slow, excited smile crossed her face. She grabbed his arm and pulled him around the front of the bunkhouse. “Because I wanted you to see this.”
She stopped and lifted her hand to the dorm. A four-foot-wide FOR SALE sign adorned the peeling wooden siding. Noah glanced at Julia, searching for a clue to this riddle, but he only saw her beautiful smile and the glint in her eye that appeared when she was really excited about something.
In this case, he couldn’t figure out what.
“Sorry, baby. I’m not catching what you’re throwing.”
“It’s for sale.” She stated the obvious, stepping close and clutching the open front of his jacket. “And I think it would be the perfect location and size for your base camp.”
“Base camp?” He felt like there was a black hole in his head. Like his brain was missing some critical information to make sense of what she was saying. “What base camp?”
“The one for your extreme snowboarding adventures.”
His brow pulled hard.
Julia released his jacket and gestured to the building. “The property backs up to Heavenly, and there’s more than enough space for you to build a superpipe. The old basketball courts behind the garage would be a perfect chopper pad for your backcountry excursions. What used to be a garage could be storage for all your gear. The dorms could be perfect for housing people during short clinics. It’s got an industrial kitchen, classrooms, meeting rooms. The bones of everything you could ever need to make your dream of an extreme adventure camp are here.”
Excitement grew from a spark to a flame, and he glanced around the property again, seeing it in a whole different way. The place might need a ton of work, but she was right, it had everything he needed and wanted in a base camp for that elusive dream that had been rolling around in the back of his head for years.
“Wow,” was all he managed to get out.
“Overwhelming?” she asked.
“Yeah. I mean, in a good way, I guess. I always saw it as someday, you know? Time passes so fast. I swear I was twenty-one yesterday. Now I’m thirty, at the tail end of my career and—bam—time to plan the rest of my life.”
She slid her arms around his waist and bundled close, her smile bright, her eyes warm. “It would be an awesome life for
you.”
But would it be an awesome life for you? lay on the tip of his tongue as he lowered his head to press a kiss to her cold lips. He wasn’t sure where her interest in his future had come from, but he liked it.
He lived his life from one event to the next. From one endorsement to the next. From one sponsor to the next, never knowing when the bottom would drop out. It was the gig of a lifetime for a twenty-year-old or even a twenty-five-year-old. But he was looking into his fourth decade of life, competing against guys barely out of their teens.
So, yeah, he needed to be thinking about his next step, which brought his mind immediately back to Julia and how he could possibly keep her in his life.
Noah had the barbecue flaming, the music cranked, and three of his five buddies coming tonight, already slamming around the beta snowboarding game Guru had sent over. But still no Julia.
He slid his parka over his shoulders and stepped outside to check on the briquettes in the grill on his patio, but his gaze spent more time searching the guesthouse for signs of her. The distant sound of laughter and his front door slamming made him look at his watch.
The glass door behind him slid open, and he glanced over his shoulder to see Finn come out with a beer in hand.
“Dude, you’re supposed to be relaxing,” Finn said. “You’re worse than a teenager on prom night. She’s probably trying to avoid this ugly crowd as long as possible.”
Noah shook his head. “This ugly crowd was her idea.”
“Her idea was for you to relax. She’s rewarding you for a job well done. Give the woman what she wants, for God’s sake.”
Noah grinned down at the briquettes as he moved them around to even out the burn. He was certainly giving her everything she wanted in bed; he made sure of that. But when he thought about her beyond the bedroom, his smile faded. She’d been acting strange all day. Nervous when they’d woken late, insistent when they’d visited the old school, edgy as they’d prepared for the party.
For the first time in weeks, he couldn’t read her. And it unsettled him.
“I can see why you’re into her, man,” Finn said. “Sure as shit don’t blame you. But watch yourself.”
Noah turned his head to look at Finn, whose gaze was trained on the guesthouse. “What does that mean?”
“She’s not the trash you’re used to. And you’ve gotten in pretty deep.” He met Noah’s eyes deliberately. “She’s leaving in a few days, dude. Then you take off on a world tour for two months, where you have to be one hundred fifty percent in your head. You’ve missed eighty percent of the season. You can’t afford to be distracted by anything if you’re going to pull yourself out of the hole.”
The swell of emotion burst, and his shoulders deflated. Finn was right. But the warning came too late. Noah was already having a hard time imagining his life without her in it.
“I’m good,” he lied. “Thanks for the reminder.”
“Got your back. Carpe diem, right?”
Since they’d met as kids, that had always been their motto. Noah nodded, smiled. “Right.”
Finn shivered dramatically. “Freezin’ my balls off out here. Come in and kick Mercer’s ass on your game so I don’t have to listen to him gloat over me all night, would you?”
“Sure thing.”
But Noah continued to hover over the grill after Finn disappeared inside. He stared down at the glowing coals and followed the slow crawl of white edges as they closed in on the black square.
The only solution Noah could see would be taking Julia on the road with him for the rest of the season. And wouldn’t it be so damn cool to actually experience the places he boarded with someone he loved?
Loved.
A trickle of fear coursed down his chest but dissipated in milliseconds, replaced by joy. A bright, burning streak of joy.
Noah took a deep breath and tried to regulate the flash of emotion. But when he looked up, Julia was walking toward him, all bundled in her parka, her shiny hair flowing around her face. She grinned and waved, and his heart squeezed hard.
Fuck him to hell and back—he was in love with her.
“Hey.” He shoved the foreign idea aside. “Did you fall asleep?”
“No.” She broke his gaze and looked down at the grill. “Research. You know how I lose track of time.”
She started to step past him toward the back door. Noah closed the grill and followed her inside, where ear-splitting screams—one of triumph, one of defeat—came from the living room.
Julia grinned over her shoulder. “Your game?”“They haven’t turned it off since they got here.”
He slipped her jacket off and tossed it over the breakfast bar, then slid his hand up her arms when what he really wanted to do was curl her into him. “Hey,” he said softly, drawing her attention. “Are you okay?”
She turned toward him, smiling. “Sure, why?”
“You just seem a little off today. Little nervous, little edgy, little…something.” He brushed his fingers through the loose strands of her hair. “Do you need to talk?”
Her gaze slowly lowered, skimming his lips, his chin, holding on his chest. “Well…” She pulled a breath and met his eyes again, her gaze guarded, but soft. “This morning—”
A roar of shock erupted from the living room, followed by raucous laughter. “Dude, no way!” Finn yelled. “Noah, you gotta see this.”
Julia smiled, but Noah wanted to bean the guys. He was hoping she was going to open the door to dialogue about their relationship.
She reached up and stroked his cheek, then skimmed his lip with her thumb and pushed up on her toes to kiss him lightly. “We’ll talk later.”
Noah ran a hand over her soft hair. He was absolutely ready to have that talk—the one he’d spent his entire lifetime avoiding. “Definitely.”
Once the other guys arrived, they traded the video game for the World Ski Championships, and Julia disappeared into the kitchen.
On the television, an animated view of the Vail course was being mapped out for viewers. “Dude,” Jake said, glancing at Noah. “That’s the run where you tried a cab 270 to switch, half-cab on back 540 off flat down and biffed big-time because you were totally under the fly. Remember?”Noah grinned and was about to remind his friend just how hard he’d hit a tree ass-first while he’d been laughing at Noah, when Julia walked in with a food tray.
A collective groan rounded the room, all except for Noah. He’d grown to love Julia’s cooking and had to admit the improved eating habits had made him feel ten years younger.
Julia paused on the top step, tray held too high for anyone to see what was on it. “Oh really.” She drew out the word in her faux-snooty voice. “Well, if that’s how you feel about it, I’ll take my homemade chips and gourmet dip right back to the—”
“Whoa, hold on.” Mercer stood and sauntered toward Julia. He peered over the edge of the tray, inhaled, and closed his eyes with a look of pleasure. “Score.” He leaned closer to Julia and murmured, “If I sew all their mouths shut, can I have this for myself?”
That kicked off a flurry of laughter, bickering, and bartering with Julia in the big middle of it all. Noah watched her joke with his friends as if she’d been part of their group since the beginning, and his certainty that she needed to become a permanent member of this motley crew only deepened.
But the chips and dip vanished within minutes, and Julia collected the tray and disappeared into the kitchen again.
“Dude,” Jake said from his seat in the opposite corner of the sofa, his voice quiet. “What’s up with the cooking and serving? How’d you get her collar on so tight?”
The insinuation that he had Julia under his controlling thumb hit Noah wrong. He was just about to set Jake straight—probably in an inappropriate way—when Mercer said, “It’s not about control, dumbshit, it’s about treating them right. If you’d date a decent girl for a change, you’d figure it out. I keep telling you, do them right in bed, they’ll do you right out of bed. You’re too d
amn dense to catch on.”
Noah closed his eyes, rubbed his lids, and sighed. Normally, he would not only have laughed with the guys but spurred the lousy innuendo along. Now, he didn’t know how to deal with this protective sensation toward Julia. And he couldn’t exactly come out with she’s mine, back off, because while they’d all assumed he and Julia were sleeping together, he hadn’t even hinted at the reality.
And even in reality, she wasn’t his. Not indefinitely.
“Nix the gutter, guys,” Noah said. “She’s treating us like kings.”
Julia chose that moment to enter the room again with two more trays of food. Jake popped off the couch and took one from her, like he was suddenly Prince-fucking-Charming. She thanked him, then bent to set the other tray on the table. Her shirt fell open, exposing the soft cleavage between her perfect breasts. And while she was fidgeting with the tray, she lifted her gaze to Noah’s without moving her head. There was heat there, like she knew what she was doing to him. A secret, or at least a semisecret, between them among all the other guys.
Lust speared through him, as hard and fast as a crack of lightning. He dug his fingers into the leather sofa cushion. Without breaking his gaze, Julia lifted something from the tray and brought it to him.
She glanced over her shoulder at the guys where they swarmed around the food like ants on a sugar cube, then sat on the arm of the sofa. “I have a treat especially for you. Open.”
Noah parted his lips. He didn’t know or care what she put in his mouth. He’d take anything she gave him. With her own tongue sliding slowly over her lower lip, she slid something inside his mouth, purposely grazing his teeth with her finger, dragging it across his lip on the way out.
Noah couldn’t drag his gaze from hers—not until flavor burst in his mouth. The cinnamon hit him first—spicy and warm—then the apple, tangy and familiar, then the sugar. So damn good he wanted to roll his eyes back in his head and groan.
“Oh my God,” he murmured instead, glancing past Julia to look at the tray. It was covered in little squares topped with whipped cream. He chewed, and the familiar flavor of pastry, fruit, and sugar hammered his taste buds. “Did you find my Apple Strudel Pop-Tarts?”