The Right Mr. Wrong

Chapter Three

Maddie woke the next morning to temperatures near zero and snow coming down hard. The kind of conditions when races would have been canceled and she would have been able to stay in bed and sleep the day away. But ski patrollers didn’t have that luxury, and she was on duty this morning. As she padded about the kitchen making coffee, she looked with envy at Andrea’s closed door. Her roommate was off today. Too bad the two of them couldn’t trade places.

At least she wasn’t on the avalanche control team. Those guys were on the mountain at dawn, setting off charges to loosen unstable deposits of snow. Of course, they were all adrenaline junkies who relished the opportunity to legally play with explosives. Testosterone in action.

At the patrol shack near the top of the Silver Queen lift, she checked the duty roster. “Shouldn’t be much happening today,” Scott said, coming up behind her. “It’s a weekday, and the weather is keeping in everyone but the hard-core skiers, boarders and vacationers determined to get every last dollar’s worth from their passes. Main thing is to watch for people getting in over their heads.”

“We should have good skiing with all this fresh powder.”

At the sound of the familiar accent, she turned and saw Hagan filling the doorway of the shack. “I am heading over to Peel.” He nodded to Maddie. “Will you come with me?”

Peel was a lift-served run in the extreme terrain on the front side of the resort. She’d toured the area during her orientation, but had avoided it after that. “That’s okay,” she said. “Find someone else.”

“I do not want to go with anyone else,” he said. His blue eyes offered a silent challenge. “Is it the terrain you do not like—or me?”

After their conversation last night, she could no longer claim to dislike the man. He unsettled her, intrigued her and sometimes surprised her, but she also trusted his skill as a patroller. He was one of the senior members of the team, a man others called upon in the toughest situations. If she was going to venture onto extreme runs, he was the person to do it with. And hadn’t he said last night people could overcome their fears by facing them? It was one of the things she’d joined patrol to do. And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t skied worse in her years on the racing circuit.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll go with you.”

“Be careful,” Scott said. “It’s really nasty out there.”

Wind-driven snow hit them like needles when they stepped out of the patrol shack. Maddie ducked her head and zipped her parka to her chin. Any sane person would be sitting in front of a fire with a cup of hot cocoa now instead of outside on a pair of skis.

“It will be better when we get down in the trees,” Hagan called over the howling wind.

She nodded and followed him down a narrow run between the trees. As promised the wind was blocked here. The heavy dump of snow had buried all the rocks and snags visible the day before and transformed the run into a gentle roller coaster. Maddie relaxed. This wasn’t so bad after all. And they had the run all to themselves.

But as soon as they left the shelter of the trees, they hit whiteout conditions again. Sky merged with ground and it was difficult to tell up from down. Maddie slowed, and fought stomach-churning vertigo. She reminded herself of all the techniques for overcoming this phenomena—bend her knees more, ski close to the trees, focus on landmarks—in this case the back of Hagan’s red patrol jacket barely visible ahead in the swirling snow.

They skied over to the high lift and grabbed hold of the T-bar. They were alone up here today, with the exception of the bored attendant in the lift shack. The normally busy runs were deserted; they might have been the only skiers on the mountain. Ordinarily she’d love the solitude and the chance to fly through the powder. But right now her muscles were rigid with the effort to keep her thoughts focused and not spiral to images of every crash she’d ever witnessed…or experienced.

Maddie tightened her hold on the T-bar and ducked her head against the wind-driven blasts of snow. At the top, she slid next to Hagan. “Only a crazy person would ski in this,” she said.

Hagan nodded. “Some people think only a crazy person would race on skis,” he added.

Right. Maybe she had been a little crazy in those days. She stared out at the swirling snow that obscured the view of the resort and town below. Days like this on the racing circuit almost always meant bad news.

“Is Peel all right, or do you want to hike to Peak or Banana Funnel?” He named two other double black diamond runs.

She shook her head. “No hiking. The weather’s too brutal.”

She looked down the slope, trying to scope out the run, but everything about the place looked different from her visit during her orientation two weeks ago. Then, the best path down had been clearly visible, the tracks of other skiers etched between rocks and trees. Now everything was obscured.

“Then let us go,” Hagan said. Without waiting for an answer, he set off down the run. He disappeared in the swirling whiteness and Maddie followed him. But she had barely negotiated her first turn when she froze, and stared down the steep slope, heart pounding.

“You can do this,” she whispered, and gripped her poles with more strength. But there was no conviction in her voice. Inside her gloves, her hands were slick with sweat.

“What are you waiting for?” Hagan’s voice drifted up to her. She could detect his outline against the wall of snow and saw he had stopped partway down the slope.

“I—I’ll be down in a minute,” she said. She hoped he’d mistake the quaver in her voice for an effect of the wind. She planted her pole and told herself this time she would ski down. Straight to him without stopping. Yes, the slope was steep, and there was little room for error in the narrow chute, but she’d skied steeper and narrower before. She had the skills to do this.

She leaned forward, ready to go, and a wave of dizziness made her lurch back. The image of herself falling, bouncing like a rag doll down the slope, filled her head. The sickening sensation of having no control vibrated through every nerve. Nausea gripped her, and she clenched her teeth until her jaw hurt.

“Is something wrong?” Hagan asked.

Yes! she wanted to shout. I can’t do this. She had the skills, but she no longer had the nerve. That’s what her coach had told her when she’d tried to rejoin the team after her recovery. You’ve lost your nerve, Maddie. It happens after a bad injury sometimes.

She’d wanted to race so badly, but all the desire in the world couldn’t overcome the fear that left her shaking and weak.

“Then get down here!” Hagan shouted. “There is no other way off the mountain unless you want me to call Scott and tell him to send a snowmobile for you.” His tone was teasing, as if he was dealing with a reluctant tourist.

She shut her eyes. No! She’d be a laughingstock among the patrollers if she had to ride a snowmobile down the mountain. She was a skier, dammit! And as a patroller, she was supposed to be able to ski all the terrain. If she couldn’t ski, what else could she do with her life? Skiing was all she knew.

She took a deep breath, and shoved off, then half-skidded to the next turn. At every turn, she stopped and repeated the process, all the while fighting nausea and the sensation that she absolutely was going to fall, and maybe even die, before she got to the bottom.

“What are you looking at?” she demanded when she stopped beside Hagan. Though she couldn’t see his eyes behind his goggles, his mouth was set in a frown.

“Are you sure you are okay?” he asked.

“Leave me alone and ski!” She wanted to hit him over the head with her ski pole, but that would mean lifting it off the ground and risking losing her balance.

He opened his mouth as if to reply, then turned and raced down the run. She stared after him, envious of the perfect form with which he executed turns and maneuvered in the narrow chute. Guys like him made it look easy. She’d been able to do that once. Until the accident, when all confidence had deserted her. That loss hurt more than all the pain of her physical injuries.

She made it down through sheer determination, fighting panic the whole way, her heart pounding and her limbs shaking. Hagan was waiting for her at the bottom, but she slid past him, not wanting to hear any more of his cutting remarks.

On less steep terrain now, she poured on the speed, anxious to get off the mountain altogether. Let Hagan write her up or fire her or whatever he wanted—there was no one here she might run into and she needed to burn off the adrenaline that left her shaky and sick to her stomach.

To his credit, he kept up with her. “Maddie, wait!” he called, but she ignored him. She had nothing to say to Mr. Hagan Ansdar. She’d fallen apart in front of him and no doubt the news would be all through patrol by tomorrow. She’d be lucky to have a job, much less any chance of salvaging her pride. Just when she’d thought she’d sunk as low as she could go by working as a patroller, she’d proven to herself that she didn’t even have the guts to do that. Her life as a skier was over.

HAGAN WATCHED Maddie race away, confusion warring with anger. She had looked like a different woman up there on Peel. Gone was the graceful skier he had admired, replaced by a shaking, hostile amateur. If that was the true Maddie, she had no business on the mountain let alone on patrol.

She skidded to a halt outside the Gothic Center cafeteria, clicked out of her skis and hustled inside. Zephyr was emerging from the building and stared after her, then turned to Hagan. “What happened to her? She looked a little green.”

“We went up on Peel to check out the powder,” he said. “We got to the top of the run and she freaked.”

“You took her down Peel? No wonder she flaked on you.”

“What do you mean?” He brushed snow from his shoulders and frowned at his friend. “She ought to be able to ski double black. She was supposedly an Olympic-caliber skier.”

“Yeah, but she had that horrific accident.” Zephyr shook his head. “I bet it’s like post-traumatic stress or something. You know, where soldiers flash back to battle and relive horrible stuff? She was probably up there remembering her accident.”

Hagan stared at Zephyr. The man had such a stoner-rocker-boarder image he forgot sometimes that Zephyr was actually pretty smart. “I knew she had an accident. Was it really that bad?”

“Dude, it was sick! The video’s on YouTube somewhere. You should take a look.” He glanced toward the door where Maddie had disappeared. “Truth? I’m surprised she ever got back on a pair of skis again.”

HAGAN DID NOT SEE Maddie the rest of the day. He suspected she was avoiding him. He alternated between feeling guilty about talking her into skiing Peel, and anger that she had not spoken up and told him she was afraid to ski the steeps in these conditions.

Of course, in the same position, he would not have admitted he was afraid. But she was a woman. They were supposed to be better at admitting their true emotions, were they not?