Love on the Lifts

by Rachel Hawthorne

  Love on the Lifts

  RACHEL HAWTHORNE

  To Terri, Renee, and Maggie

  With Love

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  “A totally hot ski instructor,” Leah suddenly announced excitedly. “That’s…

  Chapter 2

  You’re one to talk,” I finally tossed back at him…

  Chapter 3

  “Okay, we need to talk house rules,” I announced.

  Chapter 4

  Pile It On Pizza was where we all ended up…

  Chapter 5

  I couldn’t sleep. My mind kept replaying my stupid banter…

  Chapter 6

  The next morning, while I took my shower, I tried…

  Chapter 7

  Allie and Leah were totally bummed when I called to…

  Chapter 8

  Hey, Kate, we missed you,” Leah said, as she sat…

  Chapter 9

  Joe surprised the heck out of me by not heading…

  Chapter 10

  “Hot dogs?” Sam asked. “That’s your idea of cooking a…

  Chapter 11

  I really tried not to think about Joe’s comment on…

  Chapter 12

  A Brad-ectomy.

  Chapter 13

  There are some things in life that you simply expect.

  Chapter 14

  “I have to head to class,” Leah said brightly. She…

  Chapter 15

  “What about this one?” I asked, pointing to a picture…

  Chapter 16

  It was late by the time we all got home…

  Chapter 17

  There are days on the mountain when it’s so sunny…

  Chapter 18

  “We have to stop meeting like this.”

  Chapter 19

  “I can’t believe Joe had a skiing accident,” Sam said…

  Chapter 20

  Okay. I was a lousy Florence Nightingale.

  Chapter 21

  As the days went by, Joe became the worst patient…

  Chapter 22

  The next morning I was in the kitchen fixing French…

  Chapter 23

  It seemed to take three hours for the shuttle that…

  Chapter 24

  Girls Night Out.

  About the Author

  Other Books by Rachel Hawthorne

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  “A totally hot ski instructor,” Leah suddenly announced excitedly. “That’s what you need to take your mind completely off Brad Connor.”

  “How can a ski instructor be hot?” I asked. “His classroom is a snow-covered hill. He’s gotta be cold.”

  Allie rolled her eyes and Leah gave me a sharp look that said she was seriously contemplating throwing the snow she’d just scooped up at me.

  “That is so lame, Kate.”

  Okay, so it was lame, but I was also extremely cold, with visions of curling up in front of a roaring fire dancing through my head. And obviously, the chill seeping through the knitted cap I’d pulled down over my ears was causing periodic brain freezes. Even stuffing my shoulder-length, obnoxiously naturally curly red hair under the cap didn’t seem to provide any extra insulation against the frigid air that surrounded us.

  And it was unbelievably cold. After all, we were in a ski resort town with white peaked mountains all around us.

  Leah, Allie, and I had flown in earlier that afternoon. My aunt had met us at the airport and driven us to Snow Angel Valley where she’d made arrangements for us to stay in a condo by ourselves. It was totally awesome. Three bedrooms, a sunken living room, a redwood deck. But more importantly, it was ours for the duration of our visit. Just ours. No parents, no chaperones. We were totally on our own, with the freedom to do exactly what we wanted.

  Once we’d settled into our respective bedrooms, Allie had announced that she wanted to build a snowman. But now that we were actually doing it, the activity seemed as lame as my joke. I mean, really, we were seniors, and a snowman is something you care about if you’re, like, two years old—or if you’ve never been around snow.

  Leah and Allie had never been around snow.

  I saw it at least once a year, usually over winter break when I came to visit Aunt Sue while my parents took their annual gotta-getaway-from-it-all cruise down to the Bahamas. Aunt Sue lived in Snow Angel Valley, owned a bookstore-slash-hot chocolate café, and rented condos to the tourists more than she did to the locals. This winter break, remarkably, one of her condos wasn’t being rented.

  So she’d offered to let me stay in it instead of staying with her in her apartment over the bookstore. She owns all these nice condos, but she lives in an apartment. Go figure. She calls herself a minimalist, preferring a simple life to one “cluttered with materialistic objects that serve no purpose other than to provide a place for dust to gather.” Her words, not mine.

  But you gotta love someone who sees dusting and scrubbing as a poor use of one’s time.

  “I’ve never seen a headstone inscribed ‘May she rest in peace. She kept a clean house.’”

  Again, her words, not mine. Not that Aunt Sue is a slob or anything. She’s not. She simply doesn’t believe in spending time doing things that aren’t important to her.

  She is absolutely, without question, one of the coolest people I know. Especially since she told me that I could bring along a couple of my friends to share the condo with me.

  So I did. Leah Locke and Allie Anderson. And I’m Kate Kennedy. We call ourselves the alphabet trio because somehow we all ended up with our first and last names starting with the same letter. Alliteration. Of course, we have a lot more in common than our alliterating names.

  We attend the same high school, live in the same neighborhood, have the same best friends (each other), and are presently boyfriendless.

  Although I have to admit that I’ve been crushing on my brother’s college roommate Brad Connor ever since Mom, Dad, and I went to the university to visit Sam during family weekend. That’s when I met Brad. And oh my gosh, is he a hunk. Tall, dark, and handsome doesn’t even begin to describe him. He has a killer smile—

  “Why are we making our snowman round?” Leah asked, interrupting my nostalgic musings about Brad.

  Beneath Leah’s red cap, she has cropped hair that was brown until she dyed it as black as a raven’s wing. It gives her a sort of goth look that gets her a lot of stares when we go out. Or maybe it’s her stunningly beautiful violet eyes. Or her pierced eyebrow. Or her braided leather choker. She has this really dark, mysterious aura going on that doesn’t really fit with her bubbly personality. She even designed this mosaic that she plans to have tattooed on her neck the day she turns eighteen. Me, I don’t want needles anywhere near my jugular.

  “Because that’s the way snowmen are supposed to be,” Allie said.

  Allie, on the other hand, is the girl-next-door. She’d stuffed her blonde hair beneath her pink knitted cap. Her pink coat had fur around the cuffs and collar. She’s Barbie-doll petite, which sometimes irritates Leah, since she only has to look at chocolate in order to absorb the calories. Fortunately for me, since I’m a chocoholic, I was born with a high metabolism that burns calories quickly. That sometimes irritates Leah, too.

  “How would you know how snowmen are supposed to be?” Leah asked.

  “I’ve seen pictures,” Allie retorted.

  The part of Texas where we live had never been visited by a single snowflake, which was the reason they were so totally into building this snow guy.

  Leah picked up a twig. “Let’s be creative. Let’s make him buff, give him some abs, some guns—”

  “Guns? Are you going to make him a
cowboy—” I began.

  “No.” Leah held her arm up at a right angle, closing her hand into a fist. “Guns. Muscled arms. That’s what my brother calls them.”

  Her younger brother is on the football team and into working out. Not that he needed to work out. He was huge.

  “Guess I don’t know about guns, since Sam isn’t into that whole being-in-shape thing. He’s so incredibly skinny.”

  “He’s not that skinny,” Allie said.

  “He’s not buff, either.”

  “But our snowman should be,” Leah said. “Otherwise, he’s like everyone else’s snowman, and what fun is that? Come on, let’s put him on a diet and into a workout program.”

  She knelt in front of our lopsided snowman. He was really pitiful-looking, listing to the side a bit, all lumpy, not at all the way snowmen appeared in drawings that I’d seen in picture books when I was a kid.

  “I think we can turn him into a sexy stud,” Leah said.

  “You can turn him into a sexy stud. I’m pretty sure I hear hot chocolate calling to me.” Aunt Sue’s shop had more than fifty varieties and was only a couple of blocks up the street.

  “It won’t take me that long. Let me finish before it gets dark. Tomorrow we’ll be skiing and I might not be able to get back to him.”

  “I don’t think he’s going to melt anytime soon.”

  “I like to finish what I start.”

  That was true enough. I’d never known anyone as single-minded as Leah. I couldn’t deny my best friend this one small pleasure. Besides, like I said, she’d never been around snow. I wanted her to enjoy it as much as possible.

  “Not a problem. The hot chocolate will wait,” I told her, as I sat on the wooden steps that led up to the redwood deck.

  The condo was situated on a hill, sloping down into the back. The lower level, what I considered the basement, wasn’t completely underground. It had high windows that actually looked out on the backyard. From the street, we’d entered the second level of the house, which was considered the main area and contained the sunken living room, a kitchen, and a bedroom. If we walked through the main room, we came to the sliding glass doors that led out to the deck, where water from the hot tub steamed up to create a foggy mist.

  Why anyone would need a hot tub during the winter was beyond me, but there you have it. All the condos on this street had steam rising from hot tubs. I had yet to see anyone use one. A waste of electricity keeping the water heated, as far as I was concerned.

  We’d gone through the sliding glass door and down the steps to play in the backyard. To build our snowman. Like little kids.

  So much snow had fallen before we got here that our booted feet sunk into it when we walked over the ground. It covered the deck and the steps. Which was good. You want lots of snow—powder—when you’re going skiing.

  I tucked my gloved hands into the pockets of my parka and watched as Leah began scraping away some of the snow that we’d worked so hard to gather up for our creation.

  She stopped and glanced over her shoulder. “So what do you think about what I said? Let’s find you a ski instructor.”

  There was that single-minded purpose of hers.

  Both Leah and Allie, by virtue of being my best friends, knew about my crush. They also knew that he looked through me like I was an open window.

  I wrinkled my cold nose. At least I think I wrinkled it. It was frigid, almost numb. “I don’t know. I really like Brad. Going after a ski instructor seems a little bit like being unfaithful.”

  “But he hardly knows you exist,” Leah pointed out.

  “True, but a ski instructor would be temporary—”

  “Which is why he would be so perfect. No long-term commitment. Just short-term fun!”

  “I think Leah’s idea is fantastic!” Allie exclaimed. “We spend the time while we’re here honing our flirtation skills. Then when you tell your brother that each of us was heavily involved with someone over winter break—”

  “Why would I tell Sam that all of us were involved with someone?”

  Looking down, Allie stomped the toe of her white boot against the snow, creating a hole. “I don’t know. He might want to know what all of us did. Or you could just tell him about your experiences. My point being”—she lifted her gaze back to mine—“that when Sam tells Brad that you had a guy chasing after you, Brad’s interest will skyrocket and he’ll be all about getting to know you.”

  “Do you really think that Sam—not knowing that I have a crush on Brad—is going to tell Brad anything at all about what I do? Guys are not like girls. They talk about dumb stuff, like who is the best NFL quarterback and where can they find a handy poker tournament. They don’t try to figure out how they can get together with someone.”

  “Maybe you should tell Sam how you feel about his roommate,” Allie said. “Maybe he’d invite Brad to come home with him on the weekends.”

  “Right. Like Sam is going to care. He thinks I’m just his stupid baby sister.”

  “You think he’s your stupid older brother, so it all works out,” Leah said, backing up a little to inspect the snowman’s abs.

  I had to admit he was starting to look pretty good. Not a surprise really. Leah is heavy into art, and sculpting is her thing. That and designing tattoos.

  “Because he is stupid,” I said, responding to her comment about Sam. “He treats me like a kid, even though he’s only a year older than me.”

  “But he’s in college—” Allie began.

  “So? I’ll be in college next year. Besides, he’s always treated me like I’m just a kid. I can’t tell him anything personal or important. I especially can’t tell him anything like ‘I think your roommate is God’s gift to girls.’ He’d make my life impossible.”

  “Brad is cute,” Leah said.

  Under the pretense of wanting to record the history of my brother’s year at college, I’d asked to take a picture of Sam with his roommate. Unfortunately, the zoom on my digital camera had somehow been pressed—by a renegade finger, I assumed—and I’d only been able to get a really good close-up shot of Brad. No evidence of Sam in sight. Gosh, darn. What a shame!

  The photo was now the background wallpaper on my computer desktop.

  “His eyes are so incredibly blue. It’s like looking into a vast sky.” I sighed. “I could look into them all day, all night.”

  “His whole package is good-looking,” Leah said. “Kinda like our snowman now.”

  I smiled. “He is looking good.”

  “Are you talking about the snowman or Brad?”

  “Both.” She’d given the snowman abs, a chest, and upper arms—guns.

  Leah tossed aside his rock eyes and his pencil nose—we hadn’t been able to find a carrot. Aunt Sue had stocked the fridge and pantry for us, but she obviously hadn’t expected us to undertake creating a snowman, us being seniors and all. Hence, no carrot.

  “Who should I make him look like?” Leah asked.

  “Kate’s Brad,” Allie said.

  “He’s not my Brad.”

  “He could be if you’d practice on a ski instructor,” Leah said.

  “I don’t know. It sounds so…tawdry.”

  “And that’s a problem because…”

  She left the question dangling on the air, waiting for me to come up with a good excuse.

  “Look, it doesn’t hurt to kiss a few frogs before finally kissing your prince,” she added, tired of waiting for me.

  “Are you going to flirt with a ski instructor?” I asked.

  “You bet.”

  I looked at Allie. “Are you?”

  It was difficult to tell because she was so bundled up but I think she shrugged. “I guess. What can it hurt? Besides, I could use a little romance in my life.”

  “I think we all can,” Leah said. “After all, we’ll be here for three whole weeks. We might as well have someone hot to cuddle against and keep us warm.”

  “All right. I’m game if y’all are,” I said. I did
n’t want to be the only one without someone to snuggle with.

  “Great!” Leah pointed her gloved finger at our buff snowman. “Okay, back to the really important issue. Who should I make him look like?”

  Leah is like that. Carrying on two or three conversations at once. Sometimes she makes my head spin.

  “Well, if Kate doesn’t want it to be Brad, how about Colin Farrell,” Allie suggested.

  “All right. Let’s pack some more snow on his head so I have enough to work with,” Leah instructed.

  Reaching down I scooped up a handful of snow. I shoved myself up from the steps, walked over to the snowman, and patted the snow into the ball on top of his body.

  “I’ve seen some pictures of awesome ice sculptures,” I said. “In Alaska or somewhere. Every year they create all these fantastic sculptures.”

  “I’d love to do something like that,” Leah said. “Maybe I’ll create a garden of snow sculptures while I’m here.”

  “Well, you have plenty of snow to work with.” I glanced off into the distance. The mountains were beautiful, covered in glistening white.

  “We’ll be on the mountains tomorrow,” I told them. “I can’t wait.”

  A snowball unexpectedly and painfully pounded hard into the back of my head. “Ow!”

  Putting my hand back there, rubbing the sore spot, I spun around and could hardly believe my eyes. My irksome brother was standing on the wooden deck, a huge cocky grin plastered on his irritatingly handsome face.

  Why had I gotten stuck with the red hair and freckles like Mom while he had not a freckle in sight and had inherited Dad’s dark hair? I tried to take consolation in the fact that he wouldn’t hold on to that beautiful thick hair forever. Eventually, hopefully, it would start to disappear like Dad’s was now doing.

  “You’re building a snowman? What are you, like, two years old?” he taunted.