Free Fall

by Jill Shalvis

  Hating the weakness, she forced a smile. “Why, are you tired?”

  “Lily—”

  The walkie-talkie at her hip went off, and anything the two of them might have said or done was put on hold as Sara’s voice filled the air. She was the middle sister, two years younger than Gwyneth. Instead of cold, cynical and bossy, she was mothering, nosy and bossy. “Lily Rose, I’m at your desk, and you’re not here.”

  “Amazing powers of deduction,” Lily muttered.

  “Lily Rose? Can you hear me?”

  She might be a badass to the rest of the world, but to Sara and Gwyneth, she was the eternal baby sister. “What’s up?”

  “You need a maid. My God, your desk is a disaster.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be down in a few,” she said into the walkie-talkie.

  Less than five seconds later, her cell phone rang. She didn’t have to look to see it was Sara. “What now?” she said when she’d hit speakerphone rather than take off her helmet so that she could hear.

  “I just wanted to tell you something.” Sara spoke with slow care, a sure sign she was miffed. “Two things. Aunt Debbie showed up earlier. She skied a while and now wants a suite.”

  “Well, you’re guest services. Check with your reservations desk, but I’m sure both our suites are taken this week.”

  “They are. She’s making a stink, saying she told you to clear one for her.”

  Aunt Debbie was their mother’s younger sister, their grandma’s “surprise,” a late-in-life baby, and was only a few years older than Gwyneth. A born diva, she lived in New York, but always came out to ski once a year or so, wearing the finest designer gear, bearing embarrassingly expensive gifts and smothering hugs. She’d spend the time hanging around the lodge looking rich and beautiful, always choosing some particular spectacular ski stud to hook up with for the week.

  Certainly if Aunt Debbie had told Lily she’d planned on coming to ski this week, Lily would have remembered to take an Advil in advance. “Well, she didn’t. Just give her the best room you can come up with.”

  “I will, but, sweetie, you really need to remember these things or ask for help if you need it.”

  Lily banged the phone on her forehead. Talking to her sisters was like talking to two particularly impenetrable brick walls.

  “Oh, and Gwyneth says an old friend is coming in tonight for a week’s stay with his brand-new Jeep.” There was laughter in Sara’s voice now. “And that you’re not to steal it, as is your habit with Jeeps.”

  Instead of banging her head again, Lily tipped her head back and looked at the sky, into the snow falling out of it like angel drops. It’d been ten years since she’d been arrested for stealing a Jeep. “Didn’t you get the bulletin? I don’t steal new Jeeps. Only old ones.”

  Sara chortled. “Sorry. I couldn’t resist.”

  Lily disconnected. “Aren’t you funny.”

  “Older sister?”

  Lily tentatively flexed and bounced on her knee, testing. Not good. “Yeah. She hasn’t grasped the fact that I’m no longer a wild child and that stealing Dad’s precious Jeep Laredo to go smoke weed on Mole Hill just doesn’t hold the same appeal.”

  Logan laughed and once again pulled off his backpack, unzipping it. “Ah, the fond memories of our stupid youths.”

  Impressed that he didn’t ask her a million questions about her past, she watched him kneel in the snow and shift through his pack. “Granted,” she admitted. “I had more stupid moments than most.”

  “Because you got caught?” He pulled out an elastic bandage.

  “It wasn’t difficult that time. I forgot to set the emergency brake, and when I got out to sit on the cliffs to smoke and watch the moon, the truck rolled down the mountain.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “And now I’m that stupid kid forever, no matter how many years I put between me and my…indiscretions.”

  “I take it you’re the baby of the family?”

  “Unfortunately.” She eyed him as he came close once again, tossing the bandage up and down in his hand. “And you?”

  “The oldest.”

  “Ah.” She smiled. “So are you an impossible, cold, hard know-it-all?”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  Slowly she shook her head. “You might be impossible, and the know-it-all part remains to be seen, but I don’t buy the cold.”

  He ignored that and nodded to her leg. “What’s with the knee?”

  “See? Cold wouldn’t have even noticed.” She came clean when he didn’t give up an ounce of the intensity. “Ancient injury.”

  Crouching before her in the snow, he pulled her Gore-Tex pants up to her thigh while she silently thanked herself for shaving that morning. Then he bent his dark head. His breath danced over her skin. With his index finger, he traced the six-inch scar that rounded her kneecap in a half circle. His finger was warm and callused.

  “It’s old,” she said.

  “Not that old. Want the wrap?”

  What she wanted wrapped was his body around hers, but she wasn’t too stubborn to admit the bandage would give her the support she needed to get down the hill. “Please.”

  Tipping his face up, he smiled at her in a way that suggested he knew accepting help from anyone went against the grain. Still holding her gaze, he tugged his gloves off with his teeth, an oddly erotic thing all in itself. Then he peeled her ski sock down.

  She hissed.

  He went still. “Hurt?”

  “Your hands are cold.”

  He flashed a grin. “Suck it up.” With efficiency, he wrapped her knee, then pulled her sock back up and her pant leg down over her boot. “You should soak it when we get back. Do employees get to use the hot tub?”

  “Actually…” She stared down at him, into those amazing eyes. It was unusual, and it made no sense, but she wanted him to know the truth. She wanted him to know her. “I’m not quite an employee.”

  He straightened, standing a good head taller than her. “No?”

  “No. I, um…” She smiled wryly. “I own the resort. Inherited it, actually.”

  He didn’t even blink. “So I’m taking it you get access to the hot tub.”

  She stared at him, then laughed. Still no ridiculously invasive questions, not a single joke, none of the usual stuff that always so completely and totally irritated her when she revealed that she, a twenty-five-year-old punk, owned a ski resort.

  “Can you board down with your knee?” he asked.

  As her other option was lying in a litter while a pair of her patrollers took her down the mountain, she nodded. Though she went slower this time, he didn’t try to pass her or continue their race. Instead, he followed, presumably to help her if she needed it. And though she’d skied with plenty of men she’d planned on sleeping with over the years, she’d never felt so…aware of one as she was of Logan.

  The slopes were filled with skiers heading down to the lodge on their last run of the day as the sun began to sink. Halfway back, her walkie-talkie chirped again. It was Chris this time, with a new emergency on the east side. A boarder had fallen out-of-bounds. He was uninjured but unable to climb back up the sheer rock to safety.

  “Just shoot me now,” Lily muttered, then lifted an apologetic gaze to Logan. “Fun’s over. Again. I have patrollers on their way, but I’m going over to help.”

  “Whoever you were talking to sounded worried.”

  “It’s going to be a little tricky getting him back up. It’s getting dark. And where he went over is sheer rock, covered in two months' worth of ice, topped with some powder.”

  “Avalanche waiting to happen.”

  “You got it,” she said grimly. “There are signs making it out-of-bounds for exactly that reason.”

  “Maybe I can help.”

  “No.”

  “I have ten years’ climbing experience.”

  She let out a breath. He’d fixed her binding. With duct tape. He’d wrapped her knee when most wouldn’t have e
ven known she’d been hurt. Mr. Safety and Security, she’d give him that, and yet he willingly threw himself into any risk.

  Damn if that wasn’t unbearably sexy all by itself. “All right, fine. You’re hired. Let’s go, ace.”

  “Okay, Lily Rose.”

  She arched a brow. “Use my middle name again and you’ll be the one left out-of-bounds.”

  His laughter rang out in the snow-filled air and made her smile.

  4

  LOGAN WATCHED LILY’S PETITE form glide down the steep incline in the snow, doing so far more purposefully and carefully than she had earlier. He wondered just how badly she’d hurt herself.

  He could hear Wyatt now…You can take the man out of the SAR team but you can’t take the SAR team out of the man.

  Yeah, yeah, sue him. After a lifetime of watching after his two younger siblings for his overworked father, and then working search and rescue, taking care of others was nothing but pure instinct for him.

  Granted, she was tough as hell and damned up-front and practical to boot, and could undoubtedly take care of herself—but that didn’t stop him from wanting to make sure.

  And then there was the searing heat that shot back and forth between them like a Ping-Pong ball with every glance, every word. She might not be the drop-dead beautiful ski bunny Wyatt had had in mind for him, but she had a secret sort of try-me smile and a way about her that was far more sensual than any woman he’d been with in a long time.

  They got to the lift they needed to take and headed back up again. In less than ten minutes they were standing at the lip of another dizzy drop-off where their skier had fallen, with four other patrollers who were dealing with the victim’s freaked-out friends, all of whom were eventually convinced to go wait at the lodge. The patrollers had already determined that their victim, down the precipice about forty feet, wasn’t hurt. Now they were trying to figure out where the out-of-bounds signs had gone.

  “Just this morning, three of them were spread right here across the cliff,” Lily said, baffled.

  “They’re gone now.” One of the patrollers scratched his head. “Hard to blame the guy for getting into trouble when he didn’t know he was heading into it.”

  “Oh, no. No excuses. Anyone in his right mind would know to stay off this cliff.” Lily shook her head. “But still, this looks bad.”

  “Some stupid punk prank,” Chris said, setting up a strobe light to help them see in the growing dark. “Someone thought they were funny.”

  “What do you think?” Lily asked. “Take him down from there, or back up on a rope?”

  “Either way,” Chris said, “it’s going to be a tricky rescue.”

  They knew what they were doing, Logan told himself as he stood there silently, but he itched to pitch in and help.

  Another call came over the radio. Seemed the identical-twin troublemakers hadn’t followed Lily’s directions and were now fighting on the front lodge steps. Adding to the problem was the crowd of their buddies hooting and hollering and urging them on, and an increasingly aggressive crowd.

  Looking royally pissed, Lily nodded for three of the crew to go down and handle it, leaving just her and Chris. The snow kept coming down, plus it wouldn’t be long before they’d need the lights—daylight was fading fast, already impeding vision. “I’ll go after this idiot,” she said, resigned.

  “Skiing out from there will be tough going,” Chris said. “And we’d have to send a snowcat to pick you up, which’ll pull someone away from another post. We’re already short-staffed.”

  “It’ll be a climb back up, then.” She began to gear up with the harness and ropes the others had left. “Can you set up some caution tape to close off this area until we find the signs?”

  Watching her, Logan discovered he couldn’t sit back any longer. “Let me go down for him,” he said.

  “Logan—”

  “Your knee might give out on you on the way back up. I’ve done this a thousand times. More.”

  “In the snow? On ice?”

  “In the snow, on ice,” he assured her. Maybe not at this altitude, and not at a ski resort, but so what? He could do this, more safely than she could at the moment.

  She looked at her patroller. “Chris, you should officially meet Logan. He’s SAR out of Ohio, a helicopter and rappelling expert. We can use his help, yes?”

  “Are you kidding? Yes.”

  “Hey!” came a faint cry from over the cliff. “You guys ever coming for me or what?”

  Lily rolled her eyes at Chris, then leaned over the edge in a way that suggested a great ease with heights and an even greater confidence in herself. “Are you injured?”

  “No! Just cold!”

  “I’m coming.” She grabbed the ropes but her walkie-talkie chirped again, and at the news from Danny at base she swore softly. They had a kid on his last run of the day with a broken wrist on the bunny slope, leaving her team stretched thin and thinner. “Chris—”

  “I can’t leave you alone, Slim.”

  “I’ve got Logan.”

  Logan moved in. “I’ll do whatever’s necessary.”

  Chris agreed reluctantly and turned to Lily. “Rappel down to him, but risk the ski-out, since you don’t have enough manpower to pull you back up. Keep on the radio. I’ll send in a snowcat to pick you up at the bottom.”

  “And then there were two,” Lily said to Logan when Chris had left.

  “My knee’s good enough for what needs to be done.” She prepared to rappel over the edge. “Don’t let me fall.”

  He looked at her in horror. “I won’t.”

  She smiled. “That was a joke, Logan. Gotta lighten up some. After I’m safely down, send my board down, too, then maybe you could gather the ropes for me and shut off the light. I’ll ski the guy down to meet the cat.”

  And with that, she was gone. Totally trusting, believing in him, confident in her own abilities to make this thing happen.

  She had to be the most amazing woman he’d ever met in his entire life. But that thought would have to wait because he now had her hanging off a sheer, icy cliff in questionable weather, her life in his very hands.

  How many times had he put his own life in his teammates’ hands and never given it another thought? Hundreds. Thousands. So he had no idea why his stomach had fallen to somewhere near his toes, with his heart in his throat, where it firmly remained until she signaled to him that she had reached the victim.

  He sent down her board, then pulled up the ropes, gathering them so that he could ski with them looped over his shoulder. When he took another look over the edge, Lily and her rescue vic were already gone. Safe, he hoped, knowing they were moving down harsh, unwelcoming terrain not meant for humans.

  Logan quickly taped off the area and shut down the light. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the growing twilight, and then began his own descent, on the regulated, patrolled slope closest to the rescue, stopping only half a minute later when an odd flicker of reflection came from the cluster of trees to his right. Skiing off the trail, about five feet in, between two tight trees, he found three signs.

  Three “out of bounds” signs. He gathered them up, tucked them under his arm and, with the ropes still looped over his shoulder, headed down again, not stopping until he was at the lodge, standing in front of the first-aid cabin to its right, listening to the radio conversation between a patroller on a snowcat and Lily.

  He was relieved when he heard she’d been picked up, but had to wait another fifteen minutes before she came into view, looking tired and in some pain.

  “Hey,” she said in surprise at the sight of him hanging out on the covered deck. She lit up with pleasure, which froze on her face when she saw the signs lying at his feet.

  “The area’s taped off—and I found these just off the trail,” he said.

  “So some punk really moved them on purpose. Damn. Hard to remember if I was ever that stupid. Thanks for putting the tape up—and bringing these down.” She picked up her walkie-tal
kie and asked someone to come get the signs and put them back where they belonged in the morning, before the hill opened to the public.

  “You okay?” Logan asked when she was done.

  “Sure. You didn’t have to wait for me. I don’t want you to waste your ski time on me.”

  Hadn’t anyone ever waited for her? Made her feel like she was worth waiting for? “I just wanted to make sure your knee was okay—”

  “I’m a big girl.”

  Yeah, he was getting that. Getting that she had to be. She was also intelligent, quick-witted and strong as hell.

  She stepped off the covered deck into the lightly falling snow, then turned toward him, opening her mouth to catch a snowflake on her tongue.

  A tongue he suddenly, desperately, wanted in his mouth. “You’re sure you’re not hurt?” He moved off the deck to stand next to her. They were alone, and because of it, he stepped even closer.

  “What are you going to do if I am?” she asked in a daring voice as she caught yet another snowflake on her tongue. “Kiss it better?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I dare you.”

  Without hesitation, he hauled her up against him to do just that and covered her mouth with his.

  Her surprised murmur filled his head, along with the ensuing heat when the kiss went instantly hot and sweet all at once, sending hunger and desire skittering through his veins. He rocked against her, and with another surprised murmur, she opened her mouth to his, clutching him close.

  Close was good, even if they were separated by clothing and gear. The material was designed to insulate, but none of it was a match for the heat that zapped between them. The pressure of her body, the glide of her tongue with his, gave him a glimpse of both heaven and hell. Heaven because he couldn’t remember a better kiss than this, hell because he wasn’t going to get much more, not out here in the open as they were.

  But God, she fit against him so absolutely, as if she’d been made for him, and he fisted his hand on her jacket, low at her spine, rather than explore her curves and heat in public. After one more slow exploration of her delicious mouth, he forced himself to pull back, letting out a groan when her lips clung to his before letting go with a little suction sound that made him even harder.