by Dani Collins
He was in his element this morning, having her captive for his latest educational lecture.
“It’s quite a team effort. Chasing the snow, lugging fifty snowboards to New Zealand with trainers and coaches and the rest. Wikinger sponsors him, of course. He competes on the U.S. team—”
“Oh, so he’s a real athlete, not some guy who boards on the weekends.”
“He’s won medals in all the major games. His brother Rolf is a champion. He mostly trains in Europe, but his mother is American. He said his father had wanted to develop a training facility here in the U.S. with a proper ski school and the other bells and whistles that go along with that sort of thing. He bought a resort fifteen years ago.”
“In Montana,” she surmised and took another big sip as the plane’s engines ramped up.
“Exactly.” He snapped his fingers at her like she was the smartest kid in class. “Then an avalanche leveled the place.” He cut his hand across the air. “Sounds like that might have killed his father. He had a massive heart attack a few years later. I take it Trigg was quite young and things were in disarray for a time, until his older brother retired from skiing and took over the company. Trigg thinks it’s time to resurrect the idea. He said there were some moguls he’d have to get around. Those are the bumps that form in the snow—”
“Yeah, I know, Dad.” She rolled her eyes.
“It was a play on words.” He touched his nose. “He was referring to his brother, who I understand is a tough nut. I said, ‘What, he’s not on board?’” He nudged her, smirking with pride. “He got a kick out of that. Apparently, they have quite a rivalry over skis versus boards.”
Oh dear God. She looked upward for deliverance, but only caught a faceful of blowing air from the overhead vent. She took a deep swig of her champagne.
“I was so inspired by his determination, the way he goes after what he wants and everything he’s accomplished at such a young age.”
“It’s not really rags to riches, though, is it? I mean, I’m sure he puts in the time with training, but it sounds like his father’s company foots his bills. Success comes a little easier when you’re born with a stake in the industry.”
Her father frowned a scold. “This cynicism you’ve developed is the reason we both need a change.”
“I’m fine.” She drained her champagne.
The plane began rolling, picking up speed.
“I told him, ‘If only I were young again, I’d go after some things I had always wanted.’ Trigg said, ‘You’re not that old. What’s stopping you?’ That’s when I realized your mother wasn’t here.”
“Dad!” If he had smashed off the top of his glass and plunged the jagged stem into her neck, he couldn’t have hurt her more.
He made an impatient noise. “You’re taking that the wrong way. I’m only saying I lived my life a certain way because we were married. Now I can make different choices.”
She narrowed her eyes. “How different?”
The plane lifted off with a tiny bounce.
“Teaching was never my dream. Surely being your mother’s secretary was never yours.”
“Business manager,” she muttered, not admitting that the secret of what she really wanted to do was stuck in the middle of her chest, barely voiced inside her head.
She turned her face to watch the view of concrete and bare trees and the gray waters of Puget Sound grow indistinct as the plane ascended into the ceiling of clouds, disappearing behind a field of white.
Blank emptiness surrounded her.
“I told him I had always imagined myself running a bed and breakfast after I retired.”
“Okay. See? You never told me that.” Relief washed through her as she glimpsed a way out of several problems. She had been having mixed feelings about continuing to live with her father. She was overdue to start her own life, but he seemed to need her. This would be a perfect transition. “We could totally rent some rooms at the house. I could find my own place and we could redo my bedroom and Mom’s office. Put some ads online…”
He would have endless people to talk to and quit trying to engage her all the time.
“No one comes to Seattle to stay in the ’burbs. No, I want to go big or go home. Or rather, go to a big, new home. Hmm?”
She winced at the pun, but, Wait. He wasn’t suggesting a move to Montana?
She considered making a scene so the plane would have to turn around and she could be removed and—fingers crossed—incarcerated, rather than continue down this path of paternal madness.
“We’ll have another round, sweetheart.” He handed their empty glasses to the flight attendant as she appeared.
Glory didn’t bother telling him again that he had to quit calling women ‘sweetheart.’
“Okay.” Her patience was stretching thin, but she hung on to it. “Go back to how you were inspired by Trigg—” Seriously, what kind of name was that? “—and his pursuit of his dream to be a world champion or whatever. How does that turn into buying a lodge in Montana? Why there? You know what you should do? Look for someone selling a B & B that’s already established. I’d bet there’s something on Whidbey Island or up in the San Juans. That would be perfect. I could still visit you…”
“We’re doing this together, Glory.”
“No, Dad, we’re not. Whatever you’re planning is for you. I’ll look after myself.”
“You need a proper job. You keep saying the golden goose is not immortal. That you’ve mined your mother’s backlist as far as you can go.”
“Because I don’t want you to think the money will flow indefinitely! Not because I want you to find me a new job.” She pinched the bridge of her nose.
“You like people, same as me.”
“I don’t. I really don’t.”
“You’ve been holed up in your mother’s office so long, you don’t know what you like anymore. But you like to organize and get things done—”
“I do those things because you don’t.”
“I’m getting something done right now. And this is perfect for you, especially now you’re an expert on websites and such. You can take care of that side of things.”
“You mean run a business from a laptop, exactly as I’m already doing? What a career shift. What will you do?”
“Don’t underestimate the value of a good host.” He sat straighter in his seat.
“Don’t overestimate my love of admin tasks.”
The flight attendant turned up with their refills and Glory knocked hers back.
“This is exactly the kind of thing that drove Mom crazy. You know that, right?”
“Your mother. Not you,” he said pithily, as if he had any idea who she was these days.
Whose fault is that?
She sighed, not even sure she knew herself anymore.
“Look, if you want to do something together, fine. Let’s plan a vacation. Because I know for a fact that I don’t want to run a lodge in Montana.”
“What do you want? Hmm? You said you’re not going back to school. Are you anxious to pick up your career steaming milk at an espresso bar?”
Point to him. That’s where she had discovered her hatred of people.
“I can expand my V.A. work,” she mumbled. She already offered the kind of work she had done for her mother to other authors, but more as a favor to a select few. She didn’t love it.
“This way you won’t be a virtual assistant, you’ll be a real one. I’m not letting you waste the rest of your life hiding behind a screen.”
“I’m twenty-six, not six. How I live my life is not up to you.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it? You’re not living your life.”
She eyed him. Did he know how fearful she was that she was living in her mother’s shadow, stepping in Kathleen Cormer’s footprints instead of walking her own path?
Glory smoothed a fingertip along her eyebrow. She was desperate for someone to talk to, but she had no one. Her peers, the few friends she’d made in high sc
hool and college, had dropped away while she’d been ‘holed up’ with her mother. Those women had married and started families, moving on with their careers and lives, while Glory had stalled at ‘introverted adolescent.’ She hadn’t even achieved spinster librarian, having dropped out of university before starting her masters.
Her social circle was as virtual as her job, built online from fans and author friends of her mother’s. They were lovely people, but none were the sort of deep friendships she would feel comfortable leaning on.
Her father was no help. Her mother’s career had been a threat, something he tolerated, rather than supported. He came from a tree of academic snobs who hadn’t approved of his wife’s career as a romance author. When is she going to write a ‘real’ book, was their favorite refrain. Her mother’s family hadn’t approved of the marriage, which put Glory on her back foot defending her father every time she spoke with them.
The flight attendant offered another full glass of champagne.
“Thanks. Wait. Which one of us is driving?” Glory asked her father belatedly. “Are we renting a car or something?”
“They’re taking us in by helicopter.”
“Who?”
“The Johanssons. The avalanche that took out the lodge and the lifts also washed out the road during the melt that following spring. Insurance took forever to assess the damage. When they did, Wikinger took the payout and left things as they were. No fatalities. The hill was closed when it happened. I asked. Bit of a pity. A haunted lodge would add some appeal, don’t you think?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Dad.” She slugged back another mouthful of bubbles. “Wait. Are you saying—Is this lodge not even on a main highway? It’s on a ski hill that no longer exists? Wow, when you said ‘dump’ Mom’s money, you meant like take it to a landfill, didn’t you? For an educated man, you’re falling for quite the snow job. Get it?”
“Maybe slow down.” He frowned at her half-empty glass. “The Johanssons are bringing the ski hill back online. The facility will be the draw with its elite trainers and such. Top-shelf athletes and their entourages will want to come to this resort. They’ll host world events. We’ll be the next Tahoe.”
Glory thought she might throw up a little bit. Even more than the purchase of a jalopy that he didn’t have the skill to rebuild, or the time-share it had taken her mother years to unload, this scheme had the potential to bankrupt him.
“Do you remember how long the bathroom reno took? Months. Do you think this ski hill is going to be up and running anytime soon? No. It will take years.”
“Exactly. And where will the workers stay as they come and go? There’s not much in Haven, which is the nearest town, and it’s fifty miles away. I’ve worked it out with Trigg. His brother doesn’t want to renovate and run the lodge—”
“Gee, I wonder why?”
“But he needs accommodation for his workmen. They won’t mind rough quarters and sawdust while we remodel. He’ll let rooms for the workers he brings in which will give us the cash flow for the renovations. We’ll have the place up to scratch for when the ski hill is operational and that’s a win-win.”
She shook her head. “I can’t even—No. When we get back to Seattle, we’re going straight to your doctor. I think your blood pressure meds are making you loopy.”
“When we get back to Seattle, I’m listing the house. I’ve already talked to Francis.”
Her mouth dropped open. Francis had been in treatment with her mom. She was a real estate agent.
“I wanted to let you have a last Christmas in the house, Glory, but you have to admit it was depressing as hell. It’s time we moved on.”
She couldn’t bear that look in his eyes. Her own filled. She felt six, without a voice as her parents made her leave her old school because her father had got something called ‘tenure’ and they had to move. She had never fit in at the new one and—
She gasped as something else hit her.
“Did you quit your job? Is that why you haven’t gone back since December? I knew you were supposed to have classes this week!”
Finally, he had the grace to look uncomfortable.
Her brain spun. Oh, she was mad, then. And scared. All she could see was her mother’s gaunt face, her bald head wrapped in her purple scarf. “I would leave everything to you, Glory. You know I would. You’ve more than earned it. But I don’t know how he’ll manage. You’d only wind up looking after him. This way, he has something to fall back on. It’s not all on you.”
But it was all on her. She already knew it was.
“What about your pension?” she asked her dad.
“It wasn’t much. Not worth another nine years of my life.”
“I’m not even speaking to you anymore.” She looked out the window, where the sun shone brilliantly over a blanket of fluffy clouds.
“To paraphrase someone who shall remain nameless, I am fifty-six, not six. I can do what I want.”
“Yes. You can. So why drag me into it?”
“Because you’re lost, Glory.” His voice was gentle and the hand that covered hers was firm and warm.
She wanted to snatch her hand away, but could only sit there, arm aching under his touch. She worked to hold her mouth tight, trying to keep her lips from trembling. Her throat was so constricted it radiated a relentless throb into her chest.
It wasn’t just grief. It was an absence of goals. Direction. She was lost.
“I’m fine,” she insisted, blindly keeping her gaze out the window. The white of the clouds was so bright, it made her eyes water.
“I want you to come with me.”
He wanted her to do the work for him. He needed her to. Marvin Cormer was an academic who could barely cook an egg. Glory had tried to show him how to pay the bills online. He was hopeless, forever asking her to input his grades and reprogram the PVR, somehow blowing up the printer on a regular basis.
Him, run a lodge? Not likely. He would run through her mother’s money and, as her mother had predicted, it would be on Glory to look after him.
She had to talk him out of this.
And somehow get him his job back, but she wouldn’t think about that right now.
Maybe she could reason with this Trigg dude. Explain he was taking advantage of a middle-aged man who might appear to possess all his faculties, but was actually going into a mid-life crisis brought on by the recent death of his wife.
We have reservations about this, she could say.
She smirked, tempted to tell her father that one.
She might have, if this was funny, but it wasn’t. What a nightmare.
The pilot came over the P.A. to announce they would begin their descent. The flight attendant took their glasses and Glory continued staring out the window, biting her nail. It was a childish habit she’d returned to when the treatments had stopped working and they’d all had to face facts.
Her ears popped. Beyond the window, the clouds began to dissipate like torn cotton. The earth below was coated in snow, sparkly and blinding with a few dark dots and lines. No city, just a sparsely populated town, a handful of low buildings and long, empty roads.
And there were the Rockies.
She cocked her head, telling herself she wasn’t that impressed. The Cascades were just as beautiful and they were right there, in Seattle’s back yard. Plus, Seattle had the ocean, not that she spent much time at the beach. There were an awful lot of critters on saltwater beaches. Stanky kelp and sand fleas. She never swam there, not quite trusting the waves, especially if they washed foam all over the shoreline. She was a freshwater gal.
Seattle stayed green pretty much year-round, though. This monochromatic scape of hills and valleys looked like a crumpled piece of newspaper.
The plane was landing in earnest, nose-diving her into this world she didn’t want to enter even for an afternoon.
The next Tahoe. Her father truly was a first-class dreamer.
The real Tahoe would be a good setting for a book, though. She
bet there were all sorts of adorable cottages there with snow-covered gables. Inns that were overbooked for the holidays… Great place for a romance take on that classic Christmas story about no room at the inn. That would mean a pregnant heroine, which was always tricky, especially if there was a Christmas theme. She’d learned that from editing her mother’s books. Would the hero be the father? How could he not be?
What if he thought he was, but wasn’t? She could already hear the hero when he found out who the father was. “I never saw myself playing Joseph to some rock god’s baby…”
The plane bumped down, shaking her back to reality.
She touched her throat, trying to steady a pulse that was suddenly pounding. Her spine felt prickly and her nostrils tingled as though scenting something sharp.
“What’s wrong?” her father asked.
“Nothing,” she murmured. Just that the voices—one voice—had come back. That hadn’t happened in ages. At least a year.
She sat very still as the plane taxied to the gate. She resisted the urge to explore her own mind like prodding a broken tooth with her tongue. Muses were shy—that much she knew. If hers was finally showing herself again, she didn’t want to scare her away.
Shhh.
But there was one other thing she knew. If she was able to write, there was no way she was moving to Montana to run a lodge with her father.
Chapter Two
As Glory staggered off the plane, the alcohol doubled down in her system, making her feet heavy and clumsy, as though she waded through molasses. Day drinking. Such a dumb idea.
They were immediately confronted by a smartly dressed young woman wearing a bright yellow safety vest. She held a sign that read ‘Cormer.’
“I’m Marvin Cormer. This is my daughter, Glory.”
The woman said her name, which Glory missed because she was searching her bag for a protein bar, hoping to belatedly sop up some of the booze in her stomach.
“I’ll take you to the helipad.” The woman used her I.D. to take them through an Authorized Only door and down to the tarmac where they climbed into a golf cart.