Wicked in Winter

by Jennifer Bernard

  Sympathetically, Gretel reached for his arm and squeezed it. “It’s okay. Really.”

  “No, it isn’t, I know he’ll be upset and think I’m breaking up the Ross brothers platoon or whatever. He’ll take it personally. I already told Coach Stern to forget about it. I just wish I could forget about it,” he ended in a wistful grumble.

  Gretel wanted more than anything to give the poor boy a hug. But he’d probably feel awkward about that, so she spared him. “Listen, Zander is a grownup. He can handle it.”

  “But he sacrificed everything to come and take care of us. I can’t just leave.” He knocked his ski pole against a branch, bringing down a shower of brilliant snow crystals.

  “So…you think he can handle boot camp and deployment and everything else involved in the military, but he can’t handle his brother wanting to chase his destiny?”

  Jason twisted up his face. “I don’t know about all that destiny shi—stuff.”

  She snorted. “And you think I can’t handle the word ‘shit’? Dude. What if I talk to Zander? Or we talk to him together? Would that help?”

  He lifted his eyes to hers, revealing a glimmer of hope. “You would do that?”

  “Of course. The coaches said you have to get Zander’s permission, right? That means you’re going to have to talk to him. But I can pave the way. I can try, anyway.”

  “He’d listen to you.” Jason looked a lot happier all of a sudden. “He’s different with you. He smiles more. And he’s lightened up on the chore chart.”

  “Yeah, that chart…” She made a face, and they laughed together. Relief radiated from his young face, all bony cheekbones and a trace of acne.

  What was the best way to handle this? Jason was right; Zander would be hurt. Maybe it would be better if she broke the news, not Jason. He could swear freely that way.

  “I’ll talk to him first,” she offered. “And we’ll go from there.”

  “You think he’ll listen?” He reoriented his skis to continue down the trail.

  She followed after him. “It might take a lot of pistachios, but I think so.”

  He frowned over his shoulder at her. “Did you say pistachios?”

  “Long story.”

  “It was his idea? That little—” Zander wheeled away from Gretel and snapped his mouth shut before he said something he really regretted. “Sneak.”

  “No. Zander. You can’t think of it like that.”

  Gretel had knocked on the door of his workshop and sat herself on one of the handcrafted bar stools he was restoring. He’d been happy to see her brighten his workspace with her sparkly silver dress and argyle leg warmers.

  Until she’d dropped her bombshell.

  “How am I supposed to think of it? He’s thirteen and he wants to go live with strangers.”

  “He wants to ski. It’s not about you. It’s about him. I think…” She paused, causing him to turn around and cock his head at her.

  “Go on. Might as well spit it all out.”

  “I’m just guessing here, but I think he feels normal when he’s skiing. Like his life wasn’t ripped apart by a boating accident. He completely transformed while were out in the woods. He was happy, confident, grounded. That kid loves to ski. He’s passionate about it.”

  “I know that, which is why I spend half my paychecks on ski boots and poles and—”

  “Zander.” Calm and firm, her voice caught him off guard. This wasn’t the lighthearted Gretel, or the sensual Gretel or the magnet-for-a-snowbank Gretel; this was the wise Gretel, the one who had seen all kinds of misbehavior in her lifetime. “This. Isn’t. About. You. He loves you and he’s terrified of hurting your feelings.”

  Those words shot through him like a bolt of lightning. Jason, terrified? Of hurting him? “Go on,” he managed.

  “He doesn’t want to leave the family. You are still his family. But he wants to give himself every chance to be a ski superstar. He’s really serious. Like, a lot more serious than you think.”

  Zander made himself look back over the past couple of years. All the hours Jason had spent in the weight room. The lawns he’d mowed for extra money. The way he’d light up as soon as he fastened his bindings.

  “Fuck,” he said finally. “I fucked up.”

  “Oh Zander, no.”

  “Yes.” He’d let his ego get in the way of Jason’s future. Big fucking fuckup.

  She was shaking her head, wanting to protest some more, but he stopped her with a gesture.

  “Here’s the thing. When I came back here, I was all about ‘protecting the family.’ Like a Marine would. Armed and ready. Then it turned out that wasn’t what the boys needed. They needed someone to do the laundry and remind them about their homework. Just everyday stuff. So I got that part down. But there’s a part I missed.” He tapped his chest in the region of his heart. “I wasn’t paying enough attention.”

  Gretel impulsively threw her arms around him. “Well, join the club because I screwed up too,” she said. “This whole “marriage” was to stop Jason from leaving. I feel like an idiot.”

  “No.” He brushed her hair away from her face. “You’re the one helping to fix it. Jason actually talked to you. You don’t know how huge that is.”

  He could see in her eyes that she was still upset. He couldn’t have that, not when she’d just shone a giant spotlight on what was going on with his brother.

  “Do I have to haul you into the bedroom and show you how glad I am that you’re here?”

  Finally, that Gretel spark reappeared. “Bedroom? Who needs a bedroom when there’s a perfectly good space right here?”

  “You mean a space filled with power tools and dangerous chemicals?”

  “Baby, you’re the only power tool I need,” she purred.

  “And you’re more dangerous than any chemical in this room.”

  He snuck his hand under her dress and stroked her through her underwear. Her breath hitched. “You know, we can’t just solve every problem by having sex.”

  “Of course not.” He found his way under her panties and into the sweet silky nest of her curls. Juicy heat met his fingers and within seconds they were slick with her arousal. “But there’s no harm in trying. Come on, spread those legs apart. A little more. Oh yeah.” Now he could fit his whole hand against her sex, which meant he could rub against her clit with his wrist while he sent a finger deep inside.

  Before long—before he’d had nearly enough—she was shuddering against him, her climax sending a rush of heat over his fingers.

  And that would have been enough—he loved feeling her come apart—but she unzipped his pants and wrapped her arms around his neck and hoisted herself up. Stumbling across the workshop, he found his way to the one piece of wall that didn’t have any shelves or half-repaired furniture. He pinned her against it and speared her with his swollen cock until they both erupted into an intense orgasm.

  They were getting spoiled with those orgasms. But he wasn’t complaining.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The conversation with Jason was difficult, but it would have been a lot worse without Gretel. She let them do most of the talking, but when things got heated, she found a way to bring them back to earth.

  “So you’re a hundred percent sure this is what you want?” Zander finally asked, once he’d gotten the bitter taste out of his mouth.

  “I want to try it.” Jason fiddled with the Alyeska lift pass he refused to remove from his jacket. “If I get too homesick I can always come back. Right?”

  “Jesus, of course you can. This is your house just as much as mine.” How could his brother even doubt that? Maybe he’d been too much of the hardass platoon leader and not enough of the empowering older brother.

  “Do you think Petey will be okay without me?” Jason shoved back his tumble of black curls.

  “I don’t know. Once he finds out he has to do all of your chores on top of his, he might be a little pissed. I’m kidding,” Zander added quickly. “Actually I was thinkin
g of ditching the chore chart.”

  “What? Now that I’m leaving? That’s some bullshit.”

  Zander hid his wince. Hearing Jason say it like that, like it was a done deal—he had to admit, that hurt. For three years, his singular goal had been to keep the Ross family together. This felt like such a failure.

  But it’s what Jason wants, he kept telling himself. Support him. Don’t hold him back.

  Gretel cleared her throat. “I actually had an idea about Petey.”

  He cocked his head at her. You never knew what kind of ideas Gretel would come up with. If it wasn’t getting married out of the blue or holding a talent show at the Wicked Brew, it was painting a mural in the attic or teaching Petey how to dip candles. She was full of ideas from off-the-wall to stroke-of-genius.

  “I’m almost afraid to ask,” he murmured.

  She planted her hands on her hips and looked at Jason for help. “Now is that fair?”

  “Definitely,” his brother agreed with a grin.

  “No gratitude, no loyalty,” she grumbled. “My idea—though you don’t even really deserve to hear it with this kind of attitude—is to accept one of my mother’s vacation offers. Jason, you don’t know this but she’s constantly trying to lure me away with airplane tickets to exotic locations. But they’re all tropical so you wouldn’t be interested. No snow. Although I suppose you could jet-ski—”

  “Don’t tempt him,” Zander warned. “He has to keep his grades up if he wants to ski.”

  “Good point. Close your ears, Jason.”

  Jason grinned and did nothing of the sort. Now that this conversation had happened, a load seemed to be gone from his shoulders. Maybe he’d do the dishes without complaining now—for the short time that he was still around.

  “Go on about the tropical locations, Gretel,” Zander urged. “You’re welcome to take a vacation, so long as you know that means you lose the winter challenge. I better have a front row seat at your performance.”

  She stuck out her tongue at him. “Oh no. A break is not the same thing as leaving. Besides, you’d come on vacation with me! And so would Petey.”

  He blinked at her. He hadn’t expected that. “But—I can’t—I haven’t—”

  “Yes, I know, you haven’t left Lost Harbor since you came back. But think about it. Petey is going to be sad with Jason gone. This will cheer him up and make him feel special too. Jason has all this ski stuff to look forward to, and now Petey will have something too. We’ll get a little change of scene, almost like a honeymoon-with-an-asterisk.” She gave him a quick wink, just for him. “My mother will get her wish for a mother-daughter vacation.”

  “Uh…with an asterisk.”

  “The best kind of asterisk. A man!” She threw her arms around him, and Jason rolled his eyes. “Please say yes. We can go just for a long weekend so Petey doesn’t miss too much school.”

  “Do you know how long it takes to fly anywhere from here? It doesn’t make sense to go for such a short time. We’d spend the whole time in the air.”

  “Okay, a week. We’ll talk to Petey’s teachers and bring his homework with us. I know the drill. My mother used to take me out of school whenever she wanted to go anywhere.”

  That didn’t surprise him. He’d noticed a few gaps in Gretel’s education—like the entire math part.

  “But what about everything else, my work, I’m behind on those bar stools, and Mrs. Holt wants me to come sort through her collection of antiques and—” At Gretel’s glance, he caught himself. Jesus Christ, he was only twenty-seven and he sounded like an old man. Why was he throwing out objections to a tropical vacation? “I’ll figure it out.”

  There was no reason he couldn’t go on a quick honeymoon-with-an-asterisk with his new wife-with-an-asterisk. Except that he’d gotten so used to duty and responsibility that he wasn’t sure he knew how to let loose on vacation anymore.

  “I thought of something else,” he told Gretel when they were alone that night. She sat on the edge of his bed pulling off her leg warmers. “I thought you didn’t want to take funds from your parents anymore?”

  “From my father. He’s the one who cut me off.”

  “So it’s okay to take money from your mother?”

  “I’m not taking money from her. I’m allowing her to give us a wedding present.” With an impish wink, she snatched up her phone and waved it at him. “She’ll be super-excited. I’m just waiting for your enthusiastic consent.”

  “I’ll show you enthusiastic consent.” And he jumped on the bed and tumbled her over onto her back.

  Her phone went flying and all his reservations right along with it. If he wanted to be with Gretel, he couldn’t refuse to leave Alaska. If he wanted to be with Gretel, he had to go with the fun-loving flow.

  Did he want to be with Gretel?

  More and more, he couldn’t imagine life without her.

  The next day, Zander met with Coach Stern and Sterner at their home.

  They showed him around the spacious house, with its five upstairs bedrooms and three bathrooms. The entire basement area fitted out as a training room. The Ross weight room could have fit in one corner of the space.

  “Pretty nice setup. So would Zander eat with you guys too?”

  “Of course. We usually have a full dinner table, what with ski team members and players we’re fostering.”

  “He’s…allergic to pineapple.” His throat closed up as he said it. Taking care of Jason involved so many little details like that. He hadn’t thought that he would miss that sort of thing. But he did.

  “We know,” Sandy Stern told him gently. “It’s in his medical information, from his signup. Zander, please understand that he’s not leaving your family. You still need to be involved, every step of the way. For one thing…” She hesitated, glancing at her husband, who nodded. “We can provide room and board, but his expenses are going to grow the further along he gets in his ski training. I’m afraid that will be a little out of reach for us.”

  “I understand. No problem. I got it.”

  He had no idea how, but he would. The hell if he’d let Jason down.

  “We can work together on finding a sponsor, but he’ll need to win a few races first. And he’ll need you for moral support and cheering section and all of that. We always encourage as much family involvement as possible. That’s why we insisted that he get your permission before we so much as breathed a word about this.”

  He found himself frowning. “So why did—” Abruptly, he stopped. Maybe they didn’t know that Childrens Services had gotten involved. If so, he had no intention of telling them. He liked them just fine. He knew they’d take excellent care of Jason. But they had that upscale, never-struggled look that meant he couldn’t relate to them.

  So how had Susan Baker gotten wind of this? He might never know, and it didn’t matter. He called her himself as soon as he and the Sterns had come to an agreement.

  “Hi, it’s Zander Ross. You said to call you if anything changed. Something has. Jason is going to move in with his ski coaches, Doug and Sandy Stern, while he pursues his Olympic dreams.”

  “I’ll note that in the file. I’ll be keeping an eye on them, of course.”

  “Good. So will I.”

  “Then we find ourselves on the same side.”

  He gritted his teeth. “Lady, I am always on the side of what’s best for my brothers. If Jason doesn’t like living with the Sterns, he can come back. If he loves it there, I guess I’ll just be cheering him on. I’m not some kind of…prison warden.”

  Despite what his brothers occasionally claimed.

  “Well, fine. Neither am I.”

  “Okay. So are we good?”

  “We’re good enough. Carry on. You’re doing a better job than many, so there’s that.”

  Man. She sure was hard to please.

  Jason moved his things over to the Sterns’ house a week later. It hurt to see him go, even though Jason kept saying that he’d be back for the weekend, and back
for their traditional Easter snowball fight, and back whenever they wanted to go sledding.

  Petey and Zander helped him load a few duffel bags’ worth of ski gear and clothing into the truck, while Gretel holed herself up in the attic loft, where she was working on a top-secret surprise for Jason. Not even Zander knew what it was. But he was curious, as they all were, even Jason who was playing it cool.

  Finally she came racing out of the house in her bare feet, carrying a full garbage bag in her arms. As soon as her feet touched the snow, she yelped and hopped back inside. The Ross brothers exchanged amused glances. A moment later she marched back outside in unlaced, clunky snow boots.

  Under his breath, Zander said to Jason, “You’re sure you want to miss all this free entertainment?”

  “Actually, it’s a lot harder to leave now that Gretel’s here. Except that now I don’t have to worry about you.”

  Zander’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead, but he didn’t have a chance to follow up on that “worry” comment because Gretel had made it across the yard to the truck.

  “Ta da!” With a flourish, she handed the garbage bag to Jason.

  “I’m pretty sure the Sterns have their own garbage.” Jason took the bag gingerly.

  “Ha ha. It was the only bag I could find on short notice. Open it!”

  He found the opening of the bag and peered inside. Slowly he pulled out something warm and fluffy and—

  “Mom’s quilt,” Jason said in wonder. “The one Niko tore apart when he was a puppy.”

  “First and only quilt she ever made.” Zander frowned at Gretel. “Where did you find it? I figured it was in a rag bag somewhere.”

  “I found it in the loft, inside a trunk. I saw Jason’s name on it.” She showed them a corner of the quilt, where the name Jason was written in faded orange ink. “I’ve been taking it to stitch-and-bitch so they could help me fix it up.” She pointed to a few inset pieces of fabric that served as patches. It was easy to tell which fabric had come from Gretel; the patchwork pieces were filled with vivid color and patterns—wolves and snowmen and skiers.