“Hey, Gabriel.”
Brooke froze solid like a statue at the sound of Adrian Kinsey’s voice. Her eyes automatically flickered to view the redheaded stud. He had apparently just walked up the hill from the cabins—the Triple Play, in addition to its one hundred and fifty rooms, boasted of twenty luxury cabins—because he wore no jacket. He brought with him that vigorous outdoorsy scent, icy clear snow mingled with pine needles.
Adrian also froze when he spied her. His lovely peridot-green eyes were stunned. He was probably angered that she’d have the nerve to show up at the front desk. Brooke was so thoroughly mortified to the core she barely took note of a tattoo on his forearm. It looked vaguely Chinese, just some indecipherable black characters about two inches long, as though painted with an ink brush. She was ashamed that it warmed her innards to ogle his chest under the tight henley shirt. It was just so ingrained in her to admire men. She couldn’t help it. She should be running from him, not ogling!
Adrian spoke to Officer Gabriel Verona, but his gaze remained fixed on Brooke. “Gabriel. I got us a reservation at the restaurant even though it’s jam-packed with women who can tell that your dog was a bison in a past life.”
Cass waved a dismissive hand at Adrian. “Oh, that pet psychic convention. Just ignore them, Adrian. They’re all harmless women, really. Only a few are what I’d call truly off their rockers. The rest are just simple, everyday women who think cats can control their pendulums. So you’re dining with this fine officer?”
“Yes,” Adrian said vaguely. “He’s been out in the field for over two weeks eating his boot soles. Thought I’d kick him one notch up and show him Leif’s braised pork belly with apple cider.”
“My mouth’s watering just thinking of it!” Officer Verona said happily, and somewhat ambiguously. He was looking at Adrian with admiration, too, but Adrian still pinned Brooke to her seat with the force of his accusatory gaze.
It was too much. Brooke leaped to her feet, grabbed her purse, and emerged from behind the counter. She used Officer Verona as a shield, peeking around his arm to tell Cass, “I just remembered. Xandra needs me for some urgent errand. I’ll be back in about two hours.”
Brooke left Cass gaping openmouthed like a beached fish. She was deeply sorry Cass was now stuck at the desk, but Cass could get Erika to fill in if she wanted to continue flirting with the men. Me? I’m out of here. I can’t be in the same room as that man.
Adrian exerted such a powerful influence over her, like an inexorable lunar tide. Officer Verona was a hunk, and he seemed like a pleasant, cheerful guy too. But Adrian Kinsey, the military antiquities expert, had unknowingly staked a permanent claim in Brooke’s heart.
She did the only thing left open to her. She ran.
* * * *
Oh, the freedom! Brooke skied with unopposed force down Logan’s Run, all champagne powder today. She must’ve been going thirty miles per hour, even traversing the moguls just because it was fun.
Logan’s Run was an advanced run, not one of the most difficult or black diamond. Brooke liked it because it was quite long and one could get the impression one was flying. There were a couple of run outs where, if hit properly, one could do some fancy spins and jumps. She could even olly around without a bunch of children stomping like Herman Munster in their stiff layers of new ski clothing.
Brooke’s sister had been BASE jumping lately off some of the dizzying spires that abounded in the canyons, but Nathan had just told Xandra she needed to stop until after she gave birth to their child. Brooke could never fathom leaping off a steeple and into an abyss. Brooke was a daredevil, but only with skis—she needed something under her feet.
Running into the marine Adrian Kinsey again had thrown her for a loop. She had promised Xandra she’d keep it in her pants. She had gone too far, hanging with the rough crowd surrounding Xandra’s sleazy ex, Javier. Hell, Xandra had had to move from Charleston to Bumfuck, Utah to get away from Javier, and Brooke just blithely continued partying with that crowd.
Well, they were fun people. They had even gone skiing in Quebec and Vermont, great crowds of them hanging at the lodge looking chic in their expensive gear. Most of the Bolivians didn’t ski but conducted business in the chateaus, and Brooke got her ya-yas out on the slopes. She did a bit of modeling during the week and hung out on yachts and skied the rest of the time. She didn’t personally partake of the sort of business Javier and his cohorts did, so what was the problem? She was having fun.
She was thirty now, though, and her father and Xandra were right. She had to settle down, to figure out what she wanted to do other than modeling. She wouldn’t be pretty enough to model for much longer. Thirty was actually pushing the age limit in that field, and she’d never gone so far as to get breast implants, so that marginalized her even more. But what did she like to do? She liked horses. Xandra had just given the cattle ranch portion of the Triple Play property to their stepbrother Doug, a happy-go-lucky guy whom everyone liked. Brooke had been wracking her brain trying to think what she could do for the cattle ranch. Could she be a ranch hand? Why not? As long as Xandra paid her a salary and she kept that beautiful suite near Xandra’s inside the lodge.
A mogul run made Brooke’s teeth chatter, so she torqued in the other direction and found herself zooming toward a stand of piñon pines. She didn’t lose any velocity because she was preparing to pivot around and head back toward where some college kids had emerged, yelling as usual.
She was a nanosecond away from making the turn when the appearance of a white-faced, redheaded man about ten feet in front of her threw her for a loop. She continued whooshing into the trees with the massive momentum of the G-force. I’m screwed. A tree was fast approaching, and the ginger man, who was of course Adrian Kinsey, made such a giant leap for her that they collided.
The force of the collision was probably even worse than the potential collision with the tree. “Ooph!” All the air was expressed from Brooke’s lungs as she went hurtling to the snow, a heavy man on top of her. They plowed a huge furrow about twenty feet long into the powder, sliding like one enormous Tasmanian devil with flailing limbs. Their boots automatically came unclipped as they tumbled end over end across the snow. She had crashed so heavily she was “having a yard sale” with all the flying items.
A fallen log put a stop to their skidding ball of body parts. Brooke was on the ground, panting, clinging to the arms of Adrian’s ski jacket. How the hell did he get downhill this fast? She had assumed the men were going to have lunch at Leif’s restaurant in the lodge.
“Holy shit!” she cried and immediately detached herself to sit up, shoving the idiot away. “What were you thinking?”
“You were about to crash into that tree!” he protested.
“So it’s better to crash into you?”
“Ah…yeah?” he suggested, angry now that she hadn’t appreciated his lifesaving skills.
“I would’ve made that pivot if you hadn’t appeared suddenly like some kind of fucking spirit from beyond the grave! You scared the shit out of me.” Brooke slapped the powder from her jacket and pants and glared at the marine, who was still on his butt in the snow. He did look virile and athletic, his brilliant scarlet hair standing out in sharp relief against his periwinkle blue beanie and jacket. Brooke had no doubt that he could be a pretty mean customer if riled. Adrian worked for the same “private military contractor” that Xandra’s new husband Nathan had worked for. And if he was half as tough and robust as Nathan, he was a hard-as-nails contender. So Brooke softened, and even reached a glove out to assist him to stand.
“Sorry about that. I was just…enjoying the scenery in the woods.”
She could not fault him for stepping aside to pee. “How did you even get down here before me?”
They were standing this close for the first time since the ill-fated treatment room encounter. Adrian made no move to back away from her. He shrugged, and his eyes twinkled with amusement. “Maybe I’m just a better skier than you.”
“It ruins my peripheral vision.”
Brooke had taken off her helmet to feel her skull, as though it had cracked like an egg. “It ruins more than that when you hit that tree.” It was pleasant, actually, standing here in the middle of a snowy grove with the dashing spy. She confirmed what she’d thought odd before—he did exude a scent of snow crystals, or clean ice. The college kids screaming in the field sounded like they were five miles away. Once again, Brooke was completely enraptured by this man. She tossed her helmet in the snow so she could run her hands through her thick, dark brown curls. She was a man-eater, she knew, familiar with all of the moves that distracted and turned men on. She had even mastered the art of taking a man’s mind off an argument by scratching her cleavage absentmindedly.
But she remembered. She must not treat this man like any of her other conquests. He was a friend of Nathan’s—a sensitive POW who had been brutalized. “You’re a coworker of my brother-in-law, Nathan. You should be more careful when you ski, because you seem to ski so often.”
He shrugged. He even looked happy, as though they were sharing a piping mug of hot chocolate, not recovering from a near fatality. “I figure it’s my time, it’s my time. You’re…Xandra’s sister?”
Now Brooke squirmed. She felt like a terrified teenager on her first date. Awkward, not knowing what to say. “Yes, I didn’t arrive till they were on their honeymoon, so I haven’t spent much time with Nathan.”
Adrian removed his beanie, and his resplendent crimson hair stood up in shiny spikes. He speared his fingers through his damp hair, and it stood up like a porcupine’s quills. “Yes, I didn’t see you at their wedding. I would’ve noticed such a high-spirited, luscious girl as you.”
Brooke brightened. That’s a compliment. Holy shit, that’s a compliment. I can’t resist a compliment.
“Instead, I only noticed you behind the spa’s desk. And, of course, when your hands were massaging my ass.”
Oh, God. I want to vanish into a hole in the earth.
Brooke couldn’t swallow, her throat was so dry. She yammered something like, “I don’t work that job anymore. I…”
“Adrian!”
Brooke exhaled with relief when that sensuous game warden yelled at them from the slope, about twenty yards off. He was skiing toward them, and he luckily distracted Adrian so she could reattach her skis and head toward Gabriel Verona.
Gabriel waved like a giant upright bear. He swished to a stop before the two of them. “A skier up at Camp Walden saw me putting up a flier. He told me about a cougar in a cage trap that he saw around the same time, day before yesterday out on Tropic of Capricorn Ridge. That’s two ridges over, about a forty-minute drive in an SUV,” he clarified for Brooke. His expression changed abruptly. “You know, you look familiar. Where might I have seen you before? Are you a Furry?”
Brooke frowned. “What the hell is a Furry? No, I’ve only been at the lodge a couple of weeks. I’m from Charleston, South Carolina.” She had a feeling she knew where Officer Verona had seen her before, but didn’t want to bring it up. Men always got hard-ons when she talked about her modeling. She didn’t want these men getting hard-ons because her sister would get angry, but she was very interested in the cougar. “The same one you said people saw earlier?”
Gabriel shook his head. “Can’t be the same one if it was trapped forty-eight hours ago. Adrian, I’ll have to bail on that dinner. I’ll have to go find that trap, see if it’s tagged, then stake it out, see if the poacher shows up.”
“You do that for animals?” Brooke blurted. “That is beyond sweet. That’s downright caring.”
She noted Adrian’s eyes flickering, perhaps with jealousy. “You’re kidding me, Verona. You sit all night long next to a goddamned trap?”
Gabriel frowned. “Well, it may not be as glamorous as your jet-setting lifestyle, Kinsey. But it’s what we do. We’re the last line of defense between these critters and extinction.”
Gabriel turned and began skiing off, across the bowl toward Camp Walden, where the gondola took visitors back to the Triple Play. “Wait!” cried Brooke, skiing off after Gabriel. “I want to help you with the critters! Let me come with you on the stakeout. At least I can keep you company—keep you awake.”
“Wait,” echoed Adrian. He skied on the other side of Gabriel, all three of them furiously striding ahead through the powder. “You don’t need a massage therapist sitting surveillance with you. You need someone experienced in ISR.”
Brooke flashed Adrian a look of ingratitude. “What’s that?”
Gabriel answered. “Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. You’re right, Adrian. I could use you. But don’t you think Brooke here will help us stay awake? I intend to wait and see if the jerk comes back to check his trap. By law they have to check their traps every forty-eight hours so captured animals don’t suffer. I want to see who he is, find out more about him. I suspect him of being the deer poacher.”
Brooke skied abreast of the men. She cast Adrian meaningful glances. Suddenly she wanted to go on this stakeout more than anything. She knew she was an impulsive girl, but her life had always been full of adventure that way. She had to give up her former wild life, she knew, but did it have to be replaced with empty desks and mindless chitchat with guests? She was in the great outdoors now. Such a place should be rife with adventure.
Adrian nodded. “Of course,” he said, somewhat reluctantly. “Female company would be greatly appreciated.”
“Yes!” cried Brooke, practically fist-pumping in her excitement. “You guys won’t regret this. I’ll get Leif to give us some appetizers to go.”
“You don’t need to bring your makeup and your hair dryer,” Gabriel cautioned, but Brooke knew there was a glint of mischief in his eyes.
Oh, holy shit. Here I go again. She was blowing off responsibility to have an adventure with two relatively strange men. Joy surged in her chest. It struck her as odd that it felt like much more than the usual lust for the men, or lust for life in general.
She genuinely wanted to make sure Gabriel got his poacher. She genuinely cared.
Chapter Five
“There was a proposal recently,” Gabriel said cheerfully, “to change the mandatory trap check law from forty-eight hours to one week. Some said forty-eight hours isn’t enough time for a hunter’s scent to leave the trap, so they weren’t bagging the coyotes they hate. It was voted down as unethical.”
Adrian couldn’t believe he was sitting in a damned SUV at midnight—actually hiding behind an enormous sandstone steeple, parked in a pocket canyon, watching a cougar trap with night vision binoculars. This was not the type of surveillance Adrian was accustomed to. Why didn’t he have anything better to do? He seriously needed to get a life.
Why had he been so eager to volunteer for this mission, anyway? Adrian couldn’t explain why he seemed to have fallen so hard for the brutal game warden who had fucked him with his police baton after handcuffing him and threatening to arrest him. How did Gabriel know that Adrian had really enjoyed it? For all Gabriel knew, Adrian was a die-hard, militant straight man who would knock his block off at being handcuffed, sensually or not.
Well, maybe it had been Adrian’s attitude, his reaction that had given Gabriel the go-ahead. A guy who was truly protesting wouldn’t swivel his hips erotically while his prick exploded in another guy’s mouth, that was for sure. Adrian had no doubt that Gabriel wouldn’t have cuffed him in the first place without knowing intuitively that Adrian was amenable to his treatment. His unflagging prick was probably a dead giveaway.
That was another thing. Why had Adrian responded so ardently to such treatment by another man? He’d never even participated in a circle jerk before, much less savored the ministrations of another man’s mouth. It had taken a few minutes for it to sink in that another man is making love to me with his mouth, and that’s when the panic attack had set in. Being bound and unable to struggle had freaked h
im out, reminded him of Damascus. He’d been chained to the ceiling and beaten for information about his company. That’s why he’d whaled upon Gabriel. It was much too soon after his prison experience for him to be chained up again.
But even then. They’d ridden back to the lodge together and had been constant companions ever since. Well, Adrian liked Gabriel. He was so noble in his pursuit of poachers, his love for animals and the outdoors. Who could find fault with that?
Not Brooke, apparently. “I should say it’s unethical! Imagine a poor animal suffering in a trap for an entire week! I know from listening to my stepbrother Doug how much coyotes are hated for their livestock attacks, but the traps must also snare other critters that aren’t so heinous. Like the cougar we just released.”
The big cat had walked into the live trap to eat the bird bait. His weight had tripped the sensor and the cage door had closed on it God only knew how long ago before the skier had seen it. They had released the cougar, but Gabriel wanted to wait around and see if the poacher returned to check the trap. They had no idea who he was, since the trap wasn’t tagged. They could confiscate the trap because it was untagged, but the best case scenario would be citing the asshole who set the trap.
Gabriel said, “Ethical cattle ranchers just trying to get coyotes would let the cats go and shoot the coyotes with a twenty-two. These slimy poachers, they set so many traps they can’t possibly run around checking them all within forty-eight hours.”
“It’s too bad you can’t arrest the asshole,” Brooke said heatedly. She sat between the two men on the bench seat of the SUV. As in Adrian’s wildest imaginings, she was the perfect snow bunny in a hooded, fur-lined parka. Her hot breath came in little icy puffs, as it was probably below freezing inside the truck.
“Not unless he’s a habitual offender, which I suspect he is. A week ago I found a broken glass meth pipe next to one of the deer carcasses, and poaching and drugs often go hand in hand. Chances are he’s got prior drug offenses if he’s our man.”
Woman on Top [McQueen Was My Valley 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 4