by Larissa Ione
Dedication
Snowbound, though one of my early works, has always been special to me, sort of “the book of my heart”. It deals with subject matter with which I’ve been more intimate than I’d like. For that reason, I have two very special dedications. First, to my step-nephew, Sean, after whom the hero, Sean Trenton, is named. An Army Ranger who died too young, Sean lived life to the fullest, just like the hero. This is for you, kiddo.
And to my husband, Bryan, who fought the hero’s battle and won, but not without paying a price. I love you, baby.
Chapter One
“What do you mean you’re canceling?”
Robyn Montgomery seethed as she listened to her ex-boyfriend’s lame excuses for backing out of the only commitment she’d ever asked of him. The fact that he was also her boss only compounded her anger.
She held the telephone handset in a death grip, thinking he could have told her the news in person when he’d stopped by the station headquarters this morning instead of calling from the radio station’s promotion party for an up-and-coming rock band. But then, Damon had never been one for confrontation.
“Damn it, Damon.” She lowered her voice so Lisa, the secretary across the hall, wouldn’t hear. “This is more than just your ski vacation and my high school reunion. You’ll be disappointing a lot of people. Mostly kids.”
“Yeah, well, here’s the thing,” he began, and went on about his responsibilities as Chicago’s most popular radio and TV personality, about how as a major stockholder in the international corporation that owned the station he was expected at some upcoming events, and about how…well, she didn’t know. She’d stopped listening.
Eventually, he ran out of excuses, and she jumped in before he invented some more. “I know all of that is important to you, but this is important to me. Please don’t do this.” He said nothing, but the sound of him laughing with someone nearby rang in her ears. How nice that ruining her life didn’t get in the way of his having fun. “Damon? Did you hear me?”
“Sure. Look, backing out is for the best. I’m just not into doing the whole auctioneer gig. I’ll see you when you get back. Have a nice trip.”
She could practically feel her blood pressure blow off the gauge, and she had to clench her teeth to keep from shouting. “You’ve changed, Damon. And not for the better.” Hand shaking, she slammed down the handset. God, she was screwed.
“Robyn?” Lisa popped her purple-streaked blonde head through the doorway. “Do you want me to get Mr. Hardy on the phone for you now?”
“I’ll do it later. He’s probably not in on a Saturday, anyway.” Robyn and Lisa shouldn’t be, either, but with a major cross-promo television-radio event coming up the day after Robyn was supposed to return from the reunion, they’d needed to put in some overtime.
Lisa frowned. “But Damon told me to make sure you—”
“Damon can wait,” Robyn snapped, still furious and teetering on the verge of panic. But to be fair, none of this was Lisa’s fault, so Robyn took a deep breath that did little to calm her. “I’m sorry. I promised I’d get him the interview with Rolling Stone, and I will.”
But she’d take her sweet time. He didn’t deserve any special effort after what he’d done to her. And what was he thinking anyway, asking the secretary to keep tabs on her? Robyn was the station’s music director. She decided what music got played and what didn’t. She handled the music library and promotional materials. Only three people outranked her. Of course, one of them was Damon.
“Okay.” Lisa gave a bouncy shrug. “I’m going to lunch. Want anything?”
“No thanks. I’m not hungry.” Big understatement. Her nerves had been rioting for a couple of weeks now, and Damon’s little stunt was the icing on the cake she wasn’t hungry for.
Lisa gave her abdomen an exaggerated pat. “Ditto. I noshed on way too many of those things you made.”
“The lebküchen?”
“Uh-huh. You have to stop bringing in treats. I put on like, five pounds today.”
If five pounds had gone on Lisa’s model-thin body, Robyn didn’t know where. Lisa glanced at the clock above Robyn’s file cabinet. “If you change your mind about lunch, buzz my cell. Later!”
Ignoring the pile of administrative paperwork and the stack of music singles awaiting placement into station programming, Robyn swiveled her chair away from the desk and gazed out the twentieth-floor window. Freezing rain and wind. Typical Chicago winter weather.
Damon might have bailed on her, but she still had a plane ticket that would whisk her away from the never-ending gray days. Her hometown, a sprawling, modern mecca for the rich and famous that sat at the base of an internationally renowned ski resort, promised the perfect break. There was never a shortage of snow and sun. Even with twenty feet of snow on the ground, a person wearing shorts could sit outside and get a tan. Robyn had done that often as a child and even more often as a teen.
Not that having a winter tan had made any difference in how her classmates treated her. Or how she’d thought of herself. She wasn’t sure how she felt about returning for the first time in years to the place where she’d been so miserable, but right now anything looked better than being in the same city with Damon.
“Hey, you.”
Robyn grinned at the sound of her friend’s voice. “I smell pizza.” She spun the chair around, turning her back on the gloomy day and her gloomier thoughts.
Karen Hahn stood in the doorway with two cans of soda and a box from the ground-floor deli. “I had a craving, and no one makes a pie like Antonio.”
“Ahh, Antonio,” Robyn sighed dreamily. “Too bad he’s gay.”
“Maybe we could convert him.” Smiling mischievously, Karen took a seat across the desk from her. “Though Damon might have something to say about your part in that.”
Robyn snorted. “Like he cares. We haven’t been together for anything more than dinner meetings in months.” Which was fine with her. Sex with Damon had been a mostly one-sided experience—his side.
Karen opened the box, and Robyn’s mouth watered at the sight of the pepperoni and fresh garlic pizza. Suddenly, she was famished.
“Maybe the trip will revive things. A little snow, a lot of steam…who knows what can happen?”
So much for the appetite. “Even if I wanted to revive things, which I don’t, it wouldn’t matter. He cancelled.”
“But we fly out tomorrow!” Karen’s gray eyes flashed as she lifted a slice from the box and piled the strings of gooey cheese on top. “That asshole. Honestly, I have no idea what you saw in him. I mean, besides his looks. He’s way too full of himself.”
“Oh, come on, admit it.” Robyn plucked a pepperoni off the pizza and popped it into her mouth. Mmm, heaven. And not on her diet. “He wasn’t a total jerk until he got that TV gig and turned all celebrity hotshot.”
“I guess. But you still didn’t need to make a devil’s deal with him just so he’d help you out with the reunion. You can get another auction emcee, and you didn’t need him as your date. You’re a success with or without him.”
“I know.” Robyn blew out a frustrated breath. How could he have sunk that low? “But now that he’s backed out of the charity auction, we’re going to lose a lot of money and I’m going to look like the same bungling dork I was in high school.”
Karen put down her pizza, and her normally cheery expression turned grim. “I’ve tried to keep my mouth shut about this—”
“You think I’m taking the reunion too seriously.”
“Well, duh. I mean, come on. Those people don’t matter anymore. You don’t need to prove anything.”
Robyn ate another pepperoni slice and chewed until she was ready to talk. Yes, she was going overboard, was being immature, even, but Karen would never understand. She
hadn’t been there, hadn’t lived through what Robyn had.
“You were pretty and popular,” she pointed out. “I couldn’t even get a date for the school dances. How pathetic is that?”
“But you were smart.”
Robyn rolled her eyes. “Which made me look like a loser who studied because I didn’t have a social life.”
And as a loser with no social life, she’d had few friends and had been teased unmercifully about her thick glasses, her frizzy red hair and acne, her weight, her utter lack of athletic ability…basically, if her classmates could tease her about something, they did.
None of them had expected her to move away from her family. None of them had expected her to grow out of her ugly, awkward stage and actually lose her virginity. None of them had expected her to become anything but an employee in her parents’ bakery.
So she’d done the unexpected on all counts. And now, ten years later, she was ready to rub some noses in her success, to show she could climb the professional ladder to the summit and land the guy.
Except, now there was no guy. No fabulous dinner dates. No watching movies while snuggling on the couch. No mind-blowing orgasms that didn’t involve a vibrator.
“I’m sure you’re worrying for nothing.” Karen cast Robyn a concerned glance. “He didn’t do anything crazy like cancel our room, did he? We still have a place to stay?”
Robyn nodded and gave silent thanks that she herself had booked the room she and Karen were sharing at the ski lodge. Thanks to the upcoming ski competition and world snowboard championships, every hotel in the county would be full, and they’d have been forced to room with one of her siblings while her parents were remodeling their house. Talk about a nightmare. Her oldest brother, Greg, was a slob who decorated his walls with pickles from fast-food hamburgers, and Joe had so many roommates he needed a turnstile instead of a door.
“Good. Then Damon hasn’t ruined everything.” Karen pushed a can of cola across the desk to Robyn. “Just don’t forget you promised you’d ski with me.”
“You know I hate skiing.” Well, she’d loved it as a child, but a lot had changed since then.
“I’m not letting you back out. Besides, it’ll be good for you.” Karen’s eyes glinted with excitement. “Ooh, and now that Damon’s out of the picture, we’ll find some hunky ski guys to play hide-the-mitten with. We’ll have a blast! You’ll see. Snow, crackling fires, hot toddies—”
“Okay, okay,” Robyn said, laughing. “I’m not sure about the hunky ski guy, but I’ll make an effort to get on skis again. Just for you.” She raised a curious eyebrow. “And I’m afraid to ask about hide-the-mitten.”
Karen waved her hand dismissively. “We’ll get a gorgeous man to help you out with that one. A fling with a hot non-celebrity will do you good. And I’m sure you’ll find a last-minute replacement for the auction. You’ve got connections.”
“I hope so, or I won’t be able to show my face back home again.”
The pizza in her stomach suddenly turned sour, and the panicky sensation she associated with failure gripped her like an icy band around her chest. Why hadn’t she thought to secure a backup emcee in the event that something happened to Damon? Now it would to be next to impossible to find anyone else willing to volunteer their time, and paying someone wasn’t an option.
But she’d do it. She had to. Besides, there was a bright side to all of this. “At least I won’t have to spend the next two weeks with Damon.”
No small relief there. They’d broken up months ago but had remained friends, and they’d made a deal. She’d been his no-strings date for business and social events despite the fact that she hated public life with all the schmoozing and falseness and women who threw themselves at Damon’s feet. In return, Damon had agreed to escort her to the reunion party and to emcee the charity auction sponsored by her graduating class—a charity auction she’d been stupid enough to volunteer to organize.
Now it looked like she’d be dateless, emcee-less, and never free of her past. On the upside, she was free of egotistical celebrities.
Admittedly, that silver lining was paper thin, but at this point, she’d take what she could get.
“Ski good or eat wood.”
At the top of Suicide Run, Sean Trenton jammed his ski poles into the snow and squinted in the bright sunlight at his patrol partner. “What?”
“Ski good or eat wood,” Todd repeated, pulling his goggles down over his eyes. “We were talking about Patrick on the lift up here. That’s what he said. Right before he slammed into a tree and cracked a rib three years ago.”
“No way.”
“Yup.”
Sean laughed. “Can’t think of anyone who deserved it more.”
“No doubt. The guy’s an ass. Good thing he retired last year or we’d still be listening to his bullshit.”
“Yeah,” Sean said, smirking. “Now I only have to listen to yours.”
Ignoring Todd’s sputtering curse, he shoved off, cold air blasting his face as he shot down the slope. His K2s glided over the foot of fresh snow they’d gotten last night, scratching out quick turns and delivering bursts of speed in the straight lines.
God, he loved this. The biting sting of the wind, the smells of pine and fir and snow, the sound of his edges carving the ice. Life on the slopes was in his blood, his soul. He never felt more alive than when he was on skis. The moment he stepped out of his boots, the world bled out from Technicolor to fuzzy gray.
“We should be coming up on the victim!” he shouted back to Todd. They’d been sent out after a snowboarder in possible trouble, and as Sean rounded a bend, the guy came into view.
He was sitting in a drift just off the run, his head lolling back against a tree. His board lay at an angle beside him. Sean braked a foot away in a spray of powder.
“Hey, buddy, you okay?” The mohawk-haired twenty-something started to push to his feet, but Sean placed a gloved hand on the guy’s shoulder. “Stay still. If you’re injured—”
“Oh, no, dude,” the snowboarder replied in a California surfer drawl. “I stopped to take a leak. I needed a smoke after I drained the vein.” He held up an extinguished cigarette butt. “No need to save me from a cracked head.”
“I’d say we’re a little late for that,” Todd muttered, just loud enough for Sean to hear.
Ignoring his partner, Sean bent closer to the boarder. “You sure you’re not hurt?”
The kid jumped to his feet and grabbed his board. “I’m cool. Thanks for checkin’, though.”
Todd radioed dispatch and notified them of the situation as the guy slid away.
“Wanna head in?” Sean asked, after Todd replaced the radio on his belt. “We’re off the clock in a few minutes.”
“Beat you to the lodge.” And Todd was gone.
Cursing, he pushed off, his friend’s challenge burning in his veins. Todd had some good moves and a head start, but Sean had speed and pro experience and not a small amount of recklessness going for him.
And he hated to lose.
A rush of adrenaline pumped into his system as he tucked and accelerated, heating his body, prickling his skin, his scalp. Yes. This was life, the high he lived for. The ultimate snowgasm. Nothing compared; not money, not cars, not sex.
Well, maybe sex, but not lately.
The distance between Sean and his partner closed as he ripped turns and slammed over bone-jarring moguls. Oh, yeah. He was there. He took a jump and flew past Todd with a “see ya” wave.
At the bottom of the run he dug in his edges and slowed, careful not to wipe out any unsuspecting skiers. He slid across the flat through the crowd and arrived at the lodge with Todd on his heels.
“I’ll beat you one of these days,” Todd grumbled.
Sean peeled off his goggles and snapped out of his bindings. “Keep on dreaming.”
They locked their skis and poles into a rack near the lodge wall and started up the steps to the ski patrol office, stomping their boots to break the snow
loose. Sean tugged off his gloves and shoved them into his jacket pocket. “Want to hit the Moose and get something to eat?”
Todd glanced at his watch. “Sounds good. We can check out today’s selection of ski babes. Get you out of your slump.”
“Slump? Nah. Remember Jenny?”
“Dude, Jenny was months ago. And you had what, one date?”
One date that had ended in disaster, but no way in hell he’d tell Todd that.
“So it’s been a while.”
“A while? Monks get laid more often than you.” Todd clapped Sean on the back as they entered the patrol office. “Don’t worry. I’ll get you back into prime playboy condition.”
“Thanks, I think.”
Todd grinned. “Shouldn’t be a problem. Chicks fall all over you even when they don’t know who you are, and there’ve been hordes of hot women on the slopes lately.”
“There always are before a ski competition.” Always. Women came in droves hoping to land in one or more of the athletes’ beds. He knew firsthand how it worked, had once considered groupies a perk of being the best of the best.
They punched their timecards and stowed their gear, and then clomped to the Moosehead Pub just off the cavernous main lobby. Six fires blazed in the tri-level, open-floor establishment, and he shivered as his body began to thaw after three solid hours on the slopes.
The bar was packed, but several barstools stood empty, so Sean and Todd took root at two that allowed the best view of the busy ski runs. The bartender, Earl, slapped napkins on the polished oak bar top.
“Hey, boys. What can I do ya for?”
“The usual,” Sean said. “Cocoa and a burger.”
“Coffee for me. Strong coffee.” Todd raked his fingers through his shaggy blond hair. “I need some serious juice.”
Sean raised an eyebrow. “Got a date?”
“I wish,” Todd muttered. “I’m on duty at the station tonight.”
“Man, I don’t know how you manage two jobs.”
“I can’t afford to only do EMT work in the summer.” Todd gave Sean a meaningful look. “Unlike some people.”