In Too Deep

by Dani Collins

  Wren wormed her hand free and folded her arms, smiled with closed lips, and began planning to slip away as quickly as possible.

  *

  “We’ll come back,” Trigg promised the kids on the stoop.

  He did see them as kids when a year ago, they’d been his peers. The shift wasn’t just the arrival of Sky. He had already been veering away from a decade of nomadic wandering, but Sky’s appearance had accelerated him light years ahead of the twenty-somethings who had dropped out of college to take a job where they only had to work hard enough to play on the slopes all winter.

  Oh, to be so carefree again.

  It was really humbling to think of all the partying he’d done over the years while Wren had attended a handful of ice-cream socials, too busy being a parent to be a kid.

  Tonight, he would make sure she had a chance to act her age. He pointed her to lead the way around the corner of the building. “Let’s get a burger.”

  Around the back, a small concrete pad held the barbecue and a picnic table. The table was full of paper plates, salads, buns, condiments and a cake that read, “Let them eat cake.” People in lawn chairs sat in clusters and a Roadside Renovations truck was parked at an angle, tailgate open. A handful of their crew sat in the bed on the wheel wells and around the edges.

  Another cheer went up for Trigg. A few people gave Wren a polite smile while she looked apologetic and self-conscious. Someone offered him a beer and he handed it to Wren before accepting one for himself.

  She said, “Thank you,” and sipped, but he could tell she didn’t plan to finish it. When she bellied up to the table, she scanned the food and said, “Are you out of cheese? I thought Marvin ordered a box of singles. I’ll see if it’s in the lodge kitchen.”

  “It’s in the fridge inside.” Paula rose. “I’ll get it.”

  Nice try, Trigg thought, watching Wren as she fixed a bun and took her plate to the cook at the barbecue. She carried her burger to where Devon sat on the tailgate and set her plate on the other end. She was practically in the trees, half hidden from the party by the bulk of the truck. Such a cute little wallflower.

  Trigg kept an eye on her while he helped himself to salad, taking fresh ribbing about Sky.

  “You should be manning that barbecue, Dad.”

  “Forgot my License to Grill apron.” He wondered how much Wren had dated. She was so adorable, thinking no one wanted her here when he knew of at least three guys who were dying for an opportunity to approach her in a social setting. Four. One of the Roadside tradesmen took note of where she had stationed herself and was already shifting his body away from his boys, working up his line as he prepared to cross toward her.

  Trigg moved to cock-block. He told himself he was keeping the lamb from the wolves, but there were other things at play. His palm could still feel the soft heat of her slender fingers. Her bare legs were impossible to ignore, all smooth and lightly tanned, toned and tapering to pretty ankles. Since when did he have a thing for knees with dimples? Suddenly he was imagining all sorts of dirty ways to worship hers.

  Since when did he want something as complicated as messing around with his newly discovered daughter’s aunt? He didn’t. He wasn’t that stupid.

  His dick was, though. His dick responded to everything about her no matter how many discussions they had on the topic. When he’d been mad at her, he’d found it a lot easier to ignore her, but now they talked over breakfast and he always found himself watching her mouth. There weren’t words to describe it except flowery ones like luscious and blooming. The shape of her lips was a poem. That’s what he’d decided.

  He joined her in time to hear her compliment Devon on the staff house and the restoration of the lodge.

  “Glory was telling me what the lodge looked like when you first came here. It must be strange to stay in one place for a year, then move on to something else. Do you have family you’re looking forward to getting back to? Or are you headed to a new job somewhere else when the lodge is done?”

  “I got family in Minnesota and thought two months ago that we’d be going to Kentucky after this. Nate asked us to bid on finishing the base village, though, when they fired Basco. Looks like we got work here through the fall.” Devon drank straight from her bottle of beer. “I don’t mind sticking around. Devil you know, right?” She winked as she nodded at Trigg, then looked back at Wren. “What about you? You like it here?”

  “I do,” Wren said, sounding surprised. “It’s pretty. Marvin is great to work for and everyone else is really nice.”

  Devon’s mouth quirked in affectionate disgust as she said, “I should have known that niece of yours was his, way she was carrying on.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Trigg propped an elbow on the wall of the truck bed and took a healthy bite of his burger. “Unless you mean that she’s a superior human being, exactly like me.”

  “You keep telling yourself that, son.” Devon grinned as she drank her beer.

  “Wren was telling me she hasn’t partied since the wild nights at the dentist office, when they spiked the punch bowl with fluoride rinse.”

  “Yeah?” Devon looked at Wren, knowing better than to take anything he said seriously.

  “Instead of being hung over in the morning, you have really white teeth,” Wren said, straight as a plumb line.

  Trigg grinned. Sky had wit, but he had given his own genes credit for it. He remembered Mandy as giggly, but not particularly funny. Wren was quick, though. It was one more thing that made her really, really attractive to him.

  Nate showed up with a Ping-Pong table, something Rolf wanted on hand for guests through the wedding.

  “You want to play?” Trigg asked when he noticed Wren watching the game that started. “Don’t say you were planning to leave. We’ll play the winners,” he called. “Are you any good? Don’t embarrass me.”

  “What do you think we did at church socials? Smoke pot and paint graffiti?” She took a bite of her burger.

  He chuckled and they were called up as they finished eating.

  “You’re a lefty, aren’t you?” she said, switching onto his right side. She hunched into ready stance.

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Don’t you embarrass me.”

  She was spectacular. He had excellent hand-eye coordination and moved fast, but she had next-level precision skills, adding backspins and somehow landing the ball right on the edge of the table where their opponents least expected it.

  They won seven games in a row, finally losing to Nate and Rolf who teamed up in a deliberate effort to take them down. Trigg and Wren were getting tired by then, which is how the men won, but they didn’t make it easy for them.

  They all high-fived and left the tournament grinning. Rolf veered away to sit with Glory while Nate went for cake.

  Trigg followed Wren back to where their beer had gone warm.

  “Where did that come from?” he asked her.

  “What? Girls can be good at sports.”

  “Lot’s of people are good at sports. I’m talking about your cutthroat competitive streak.”

  “Oh. That.” She wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up. When people went after me in dodge ball, I got straight A’s and screwed them with the bell curve. When they said mean things about my sister being held back and getting pregnant, I trounced them at Ping-Pong in front of God.” She widened her eyes to imply there was nothing more profoundly cruel. “Which didn’t help in the making of friends department. It was a vicious cycle. They called me Gump. But I won.”

  “You scare me.” Not true at all. He was fascinated and could only think of getting closer. Knowing more.

  “I’m only mean when I’ve been drinking.” She sipped her beer, made a face at the warm liquid, and set it aside. Then pointed toward the lodge. “I’m going now.”

  “No. We’re having fun.”

  “This has been fun. Thank you. You were right. I needed to do this.
But if I go back now, Sky won’t have an excuse to come looking for me.”

  Fair, but he was genuinely disappointed. This wasn’t the let-down of a woman cutting short a date. He’d been enjoying the hell out of watching her laugh and move fast and crack jokes. He wanted to keep spending time with her.

  “I’ll walk you back.”

  “It’s not even dark. I’ll be fine. Stay and have cake. Actually, I’ll take a piece for Sky.” She moved to grab a square already on a paper plate.

  “All right. See you at breakfast?”

  “I’m working the coffee counter, so yes, you will. G’ night.”

  Sleep tight. He watched her leave, admiring the fit of her jeans until he felt a nudge against his arm.

  “Probably not the best use of your time,” Nate said, scooping a forkful of cake into his mouth.

  A dart of guilt went into Trigg’s conscience and stayed there, stinging.

  “I need a fresh beer.” He opened a cold one and splashed it against the tightness in his throat.

  Chapter Twelve

  Trigg thought he was so smart, but Sky knew what he was doing, dragging her around the base to show her how she needed to learn math and geometry and German if she ever wanted to work for the family business.

  Trigg and Rolf took lots of calls in German and spoke it to each other quite a bit. At first she thought they were doing it to keep things from her, but she realized that most of the time, they were just saying the first word that came to mind. Or they were swearing at each other. She’d figured out those words really fast.

  But even though spending time at the base made her feel as though she was on the longest field trip of her life, it was kind of cool when everyone gathered around the bottom of the lift station on the Thursday before the wedding. Nate pushed a button and the one chair that was mounted started moving.

  Everyone clapped and yelled, “Yeah!” and high-fived each other. Then they all had to be quiet and listen to the radio. Other guys up the mountain said that the chair cleared all the towers to the top and they watched it come back with no problems. When it stopped and still held the hard hat Nate had placed on it, there was more high-fiving and cheering.

  Sky had never given one single thought to how chairlifts worked. Now she knew how much they cost and how much weight they could bear and how fast they were allowed to go. She knew that human resources managers, like Orin, had to write up things like job descriptions and employment contracts just so lifties could stand at the bottom and look at the tags on ski jackets and drop the bar in front of people when they sat down.

  She had learned building inspectors could be your best friend or worst enemy. She knew that even when you were smart and had experience, education mattered. Chivonne was really popular and everyone said she did a great job as Nate’s assistant, but she was taking classes online to get the same certification as Nate. When Sky asked her why, Chivonne said, “Money, honey.”

  So Sky got it. She knew she had to get serious about finishing her school year. She didn’t want to be a dropout failure at twelve. Duh. But when she did have a minute while Auntie Wren was in the shower, and looked up the courses she had to take, she realized how far behind she really was and felt pretty barfy about it.

  Maybe after the wedding.

  She shut down and pulled up Crash Bandicoot. She had finally broken down the other day and asked Trigg how he had played it so well that night. He said he used to play it as a kid. Hers was the re-mastered edition, so a lot of it was the same.

  Auntie Wren came out of the bathroom in her bra and underwear. “Finish up. I’m hungry,” she said, pulling clothes out of a drawer.

  Sky did and stood to look for her hoodie, but it was warm out. She hadn’t been wearing it much. She wore her new skort, the one she’d got on their shopping trip last weekend. Trigg had given her one of the Wikinger T-shirts out of the box after she caught up a bunch of filing for the office and she only had to put on her new sandals.

  Auntie Wren was wearing one of her long skirts, a new one and not as frumpy as the ones she usually wore. Sky thought of them as her church clothes, since she used to wear them on Sundays if they went to church with Nana. This one had a wide waistband and a pretty flower pattern around the bottom. Her top was a sleeveless blue sweater in a halter style that left her shoulders bare. It made her look really stacked. Her hair was loose, not in a ponytail.

  “Are you wearing makeup?” Auntie Wren looked surprisingly hot. Like she was going on a date.

  “Wedding guests are starting to arrive.” Auntie Wren wrinkled her nose. “I feel like I’ll reflect badly if I don’t make an effort.”

  “Ew.” Sky hadn’t realized this was a beauty pageant. “Do I have to dress up?”

  “You look great. They’re not allowed to criticize you anyway. I’m the one who kept you under a rock all this time.”

  “Well, I don’t want to look like that’s where I crawled from.” She went into the bathroom and put on mascara and lip gloss, then combed out her ponytail. “I thought people were mostly coming Monday because all the guys are going to Las Vegas this weekend.”

  “Honestly, I can’t keep up. Some of the men are meeting there and coming back with Trigg and Rolf. I guess some of the older relatives are checking in this weekend, so they can adjust to the time change. Instead of a bachelorette party, Glory wanted to go to a spa, but Vivien arranged for a traveling spa to come in Saturday with massage tables and mani-pedi chairs. I think there’s even a hot tub. They’re setting up in one of the empty buildings at the base, where Vivien wants to put a real spa eventually. And did you know she has one of those makeup trailers coming in? The kind that go to movie sets?”

  “Yeah. We had to move out of the office trailer into the operations building so the security company can use the office trailer. Whiskey Jack hired a bunch of guards and some of the guests have their own bodyguards. There’s going to be, like, twenty guys with earpieces and guns. Like an actual movie.”

  “Is it a romcom? Or a spy thriller?”

  “Hello.” Sky held up her hand. “Coming of age. Obviously.”

  *

  Wren would have loaded her plate at the buffet and hidden in their room given the chance, but along with all the other ‘soft opening’ changes that Vivien had been rolling out, tonight the lodge was shifting to only offering a buffet at breakfast. They would offer menu service the rest of the day from now on, except for special occasions. Wren and Sky even had to wait to be seated.

  “Oh, hey Sky.”

  A man about Trigg’s age joined them at the entrance to the dining room. He was really good-looking. Blond, blue-eyed with a red-gold stubble highlighting his strong jawline. His T-shirt was painted across his muscled chest. It had a logo that was a Q with the tail crossed so it was an X.

  “I’m supposed to meet your dad. You know where he is?” His gaze traveled to Wren’s, warm and friendly in the male way that signaled he was open to conversation.

  She immediately felt overdressed. Flattered, because he was way out of her league, but obvious. She had tried too hard and was sending the wrong signals. Life was so much easier when she was invisible. She looked to Sky rather than meet his gaze.

  “He probably took Murphy out. He’ll show up soon. This is, um, my aunt. Wren. This is Quinn. He’s filming the wedding and doing the documentary about building the resort. He was there today when the chairlift started.”

  “Oh, Quinn Baxter.” Wren offered her hand. “I should have recognized you. Glory sent me a link to your documentary about the race across Mongolia.” He filmed extreme sports, not weddings. “I only watched the trailer and haven’t had a chance to watch the rest.”

  He shook her hand, then glanced past her to say, “Four. Thanks.”

  Oh. Apparently he was joining them. She bit her lips as they were shown to a table. Sky sat beside her and he sat across from them.

  “Weddings don’t seem like your usual gig,” Wren said.

  “Turns out I can be b
ought for the low cost of a season’s pass to a resort that doesn’t exist. Do you ski? Board?”

  “I went to a ski camp when I was eleven, but that’s it. Sky took lessons at school.” She glanced at her niece, trying to deflect Quinn’s attention.

  I’m really quite boring. Don’t bother.

  “You’re morally obligated to board, aren’t you?” Quinn asked Sky. “Trigg wouldn’t let you do anything else.”

  “He said he would disown me if I skied. I asked if that was a threat or a promise.”

  One corner of Quinn’s mouth pulled into a grin. “You two were cracking me up today. I should have known his kid would be funny. It’s good. Keep him on his toes.”

  Stupidly, now Wren felt like she wasn’t part of the inner circle. She told herself she didn’t care and smiled as they placed their drink orders.

  “What do you do, Wren?” Quinn’s blue eyes came back to her. A different blue from Trigg’s. Solid blue where Trigg’s had a navy circle around his irises.

  “I’m the manager here at the lodge.”

  “Ah.” He blinked, seeming to wait for her to say more. His mouth twitched. “I’m used to asking questions and letting people say everything they have to say, then asking another question.”

  “I’m used to letting guests spill their life story then telling them to enjoy their stay.”

  He smiled with bemusement. “Sky?”

  “I’m used to being sarcastic. How much do you want?”

  “Careful,” Wren warned. “It’s a limitless supply.”

  *

  Trigg poked his head into the dining room and saw his buddy Quinn on a date with Wren. What the fuck?

  “Hey,” he said, walking up to where Quinn was leaning forward from his side of the table, saying something that had pasted a gorgeous smile across Wren’s sexy lips.

  Wren’s lashes, darker and longer than usual, swept up with surprise. She was caught mid-laugh, face pink, hair loose and wavy. Her top was sexy as hell. He wanted to brush her hair back and taste her bare shoulders, work his way up to her earlobe and cheekbone.