Breaking Her No-Dating Rule

But that wouldn’t have served the point of her making the resolution to begin with. Besides, her inability to articulate exactly what was wrong was part of the problem she needed to figure out. She skated through life, largely flying on instinct and ignoring anything that hurt her to the point that she wasn’t even sure what hurt her any more. For the past year she’d been running from some pain she couldn’t name—because ignoring the reasons for pain didn’t mean she didn’t feel it. It just meant she felt it blindly.

Her quest had led her home, and left her with the understanding that she had something to work on. Banishing men from her life kept her from sublimating with sex, kept her from distracting herself. She’d spent a decade distracting herself with a string of different boyfriends, and she wasn’t any closer to finding enlightenment … or just plain old happiness … than she had been when she’d left home, determined to give her life meaning.

Before things got too deep, before Mira picked up on the melancholy lurking in Ellory’s soul, she shifted the subject back to one she knew Mira couldn’t resist. “So, I’m going to have to come up with a new nickname for Jack. I could make some ‘playing doctor’ references, but that’s too obvious.”

Jack’s timely arrival through the suite door was her cue. “Hey, Loooove Doctor,” she called, and then shook her head. “Nah, that’s not it. I’ll keep working on it. Somewhere else now that we’ve got everything hashed out.” She winked at Mira and brushed past Mr. Mira on the way to the door.

Before she stepped out she turned to say something, and interrupted kissing. “Man, I was going to say that I was totally wrong about the resolution—that it just wasn’t that Jack was lucky to be the fifth dude but that I believed he was the one … and would have been if he’d been number twenty-five or number five. Now I just want to give you a safe-sex talk!”

When they both laughed at her she smiled and cooed at them both while closing the door, “Oh, Number Five, you’ll always be number one to me!”

The door clicked before she could get pelted with bar paraphernalia for her pretend Mira-sex-talk.

The universe did like her. Occasionally.

CHAPTER ONE (#u8bb0576b-c8a5-5e11-acc2-05eda1ac8e1d)

ELLORY STAR HAD never been a sentinel before, and there were good reasons for that.

But this was where her mission to find herself had led. From the hot, life-laden forests of Peru to Colorado in the winter. To cold legs and a head full of static, hair that stuck to everything, and, of course, to trying to find other people. Correction, she wasn’t even out doing the heavy lifting on the finding. She was just waiting for other people to find people.

The universe had a wicked sense of humor.

A tight cluster of yellow headlights flickered in the far left of her field of vision and soon grew strong enough to cut through the gray-blue haze of hard-falling snow.

The rescue team was back!

She turned from the frosty glass inset in the polished brass doors of the Silver Pass Lodge to face the ragtag group of employees she’d managed to round up after the mass exodus. Most lodge employees had families they wanted to get to before the blizzard hit, and nearly all the patrons had left too—the ones who hadn’t left were the ones the rescue team was returning with. She hoped.

“Okay, guys, do the things we talked about,” she said—the most order-like order she’d ever given.

Usually, she was the last person to be put in charge of anything, and that was how Ellory liked it. She had less chance of letting people down if they didn’t expect anything from her. It probably highlighted some flaw in her character that the only time she was willing to take on any kind of serious responsibility was when her primary objective was guarding her best friend’s sexy rendezvous time.

Ellory—gatekeeper to the love shack.

She who kept non-emergency situations from disturbing the resort doctor while she got her wild thing on with Jack, aka Number Five.

Pure. Accomplishment.

She watched long enough to see the first staff member break into motion, placing another log on the already blazing fire and opening the damper so the lobby fireplace would roar to life.

Later she could feel guilty for the amount of carbon she was responsible for putting into the atmosphere today. Right now, her heart couldn’t find a balance between the well-being of people around her and the well-being of the planet.

Some lifestyle choices were harder to live with than others.

Those returning would be cold at the very least, and Ellory prayed that was the worst of their afflictions. Cold she could remedy with fire, hot beverages, hot water, and blankets hot from the clothes dryer—even if all those warm things further widened her expanding carbon footprint and left her feeling like a sasquatch. A big, hypocritical, sooty-footed, carbon-belching sasquatch.

And those kinds of thoughts were not helping. She had no room for negativity today. She had a job, she had a plan, she’d see it through and not let anyone down—especially the only one with any faith in her.

One of them should be having wild monkey sex with someone, and as she wasn’t having any she’d defend Mira’s love shack to the last possible minute. Be the standin Mira today, and do the very best she could for as long as she could. At least until she knew exactly what Mira would have to deal with when it got to be too much for her to handle.

When she looked back at the headlights, they’d grown close enough for her to count. Six sets, same number as had gone out. Good sign.

She fastened the coat she wore, crammed a knit cap on her head and pushed her hands into her mittens. Her clothes might be ridiculous since she hadn’t yet augmented her wardrobe with Colorado winter wear, and her bottom half might freeze when she went out to meet the team, but at least the places where she kept her important bits—organs, brain—would be warm.

As the snowmobiles rolled to a stop in front of the ornate doors, she took a last deep breath of warm air and pushed out into the raging winter. Wind whipped her gauzy, free-flowing skirt around her legs and made it hard to keep her eyes open. With one hand shielding them from the blast of snowy, frigid air, she counted: ten people, one dog.

Should have been eleven.

Another quick count confirmed that all the six rescuers in orange had made it back, which meant one of the lodge’s patrons was still lost in this storm that was forecast to only get worse.

Oh, no.

She’d have to disturb Mira.

People were already climbing off the snowmobiles, rescuers in their orange suits helping more fashionably dressed and slower-moving guests from the machines.

“How can I help?” she called over the wind, approaching the group.

The large man paused in his task of releasing a big snowy black dog from the cage on the back of his snowmobile, turned and pointed at Ellory. “Get inside now!”

Real yelling? Okay … Maybe it was just to get over the wind.

He unlatched the cage and his canine friend bounded out. The sugar-frosted dog didn’t need to be told where to go. Ellory made it to the outer doors behind the massive canine and opened it for him, then held it for people.

It wasn’t technically a blizzard yet. It was snowing hard, yes, and blowing harder, and of course she was cold, but she wouldn’t freeze to death in the next couple of minutes while she helped in some fashion. And she needed to help. Even if all she could think to do was hold the door.

As the man approached, he lifted his goggles and sent a baleful stare at her, stormier than the weather. With one smooth motion he grabbed Ellory’s elbow and thrust her ahead of him into the breezeway, “That wasn’t a suggestion. Get inside now. You’re not dressed for the weather.”

“I didn’t offer to make snow angels with anyone,” she joked, looking over her shoulder at the angry man as he steered her inside.

Stumbling, she pulled her elbow free and pushed through, intent on getting some space between them.

Good grief. Up close, and without fabric covering the bottom of his face or the goggles concealing his eyes, the fact that he was working some kind of rugged handsome look canceled the effect of winter and made her feel like she was dipped in peppermint wherever she touched him.

Ellory didn’t get those kind of excited feelings for anyone ever, not without really working at it. Must be the cold. And now that she was inside, she had things to do besides tingle and lust after Ole Yeller.

A specific list of things, in fact, to look for when checking these people out.

As the group gathered around the fireplace and the hats and goggles came off, she got a good look at how beaten down they all were. Exhausted. Weak. All of them, both the rescuers and the rescued. But those who didn’t do this for a living, the ones who’d been helpless and still had a missing friend, looked blank. It was the same shell-shocked expression she’d seen on the faces of victims of natural disasters—earthquakes, mudslides, and floods. Being lost in a snowstorm probably counted …

Her people stood around, waiting for her. Follower to leader for one day—no wonder they didn’t know what to do. She was supposed to be leading them. Her list of things had hypothermia at the very top as the most important situation to remedy.

“Okay, guys, we need to help everyone get out of their snow suits and boots. Get the hot blankets on them. And hot beverages. Hot cocoa …” she corrected. Everyone liked cocoa, and it was loaded with calories they no doubt needed after their harrowing day.

While the employees did as she asked, Ellory backtracked to the Angry Dog Man. He seemed much more leader-like than she felt, so he got the questions.

In hushed tones, she asked, “Where is the other one?”