Free Fall

Lily didn’t think of the place as exclusive so much as…home. Gwyneth didn’t feel the same way, nor did their middle sister, Sara. That’s because Gwyneth and Sara had lived with their parents in town while Lily, the problem child, had been sent here after a series of “unfortunate incidents” involving some admittedly bad choices on her part. She’d come to Grandma and Grandpa’s resort at age sixteen, as slave labor for “straightening out.”

And boy howdy, how she’d gotten straightened out. It hadn’t been her grandpa’s lightning temper or her grandma’s lectures, either, though both had probably contributed. It had been the mountain itself that gave her a sense of peace and the strength to just be herself. “Bay Moon is completely under control.” She stopped before the huge double wooden doors that would lead her into the glorious Sierra winter and right to the ski lifts that were her own personal wonderland. Before she’d even graduated high school, she’d been an emergency medical technician and certified professional ski patroller—nothing but a disguise on her part, really, one that had allowed her to work as ski patrol on the slopes she loved with all her heart.

Until she’d been given the general manager position.

She was still an EMT, still a certified patroller, only now things were different, more complicated, and she didn’t get out as often as she’d like. In fact, she hardly got out at all.

“Lily Rose, I’m trying to talk to you.”

“No, you’re trying to drive me crazy.” She pressed her temples to keep her brains from exploding. “And you’re doing a fine job, too. I’m asking you to back off.”

“How can I do that? If I didn’t stand on top of you, you wouldn’t get anything done.”

Lily gaped at that. Gwyneth still, after all this time, truly believed it was the nagging that made Lily tick. She could tear her hair out over that, but the truth was, there had been a time when she’d have needed someone on top of her. She’d sneaked out regularly. She’d pulled pranks, such as running the snowmaking machines in July or filling the water tap in the cafeteria with green food coloring, freaking out guests and employees alike. She’d even stolen a vehicle—if you could call it stealing to borrow a snowcat to go four-wheeling beneath a midnight moon…

She’d been a handful, no doubt, but damn it, she’d paid the price. Her family never looked at her and saw a grown-up—even now, they still saw her as that wild child.

She could deal with that. She was dealing with that. “You know I’ve been running this place since Grandma died last year, and without any major snafus.”

Gwyneth crossed her arms. “You say that as though you’ve never screwed up.”

“Right.” Lily had to laugh. “How could I deny it when we both know you remember each and every long-ago transgression?”

Gwyneth sighed. “This isn’t about your past. Wild or otherwise.”

The hell it wasn’t. But she absolutely didn’t want to get her sister going on the subject because it usually took Gwyneth a good long time to list every single indiscretion of Lily’s errant youth. Far too long to be standing still on a rocking January morning when a foot of fresh powder was calling her name. “Tell you what. Let’s call a truce.”

“A truce?”

“Yes. I’m sorry Grandma left Bay Moon to me and not you, and you’re sorry you’re uptight and anal.”

“But you’re not sorry Grandma left Bay Moon to you when she died last year.”

“Okay, you caught me.” She smiled, but Gwyneth did not, making her sigh. “Look, this place is small and perfect the way it is, and Grandma knew I’d keep it this way. That’s all. I’m doing this for her, for her memory.”

Gwyneth drew herself up to her full height of five foot two, the same as Lily. The resemblance between them was considerable. Both had unmanageable, untamable, wavy light brown hair, matching light brown eyes and full mouths that looked great in lipstick.

But only Lily had a ready smile.

Gwyneth’s mouth was turned down in a frown, as usual. “I wouldn’t have gone against her wishes.”

“I think you wouldn’t mean to, but you’d have found a way to justify it. The ski hill’s already at capacity on most weekends and our day lodge can’t handle any more than that. You would need to build another lodge, and then you would want more rooms…It would never end. We’d become one of those big, impersonal places I hate.”

“I’m not a bad person, Lily Rose.”

Lily had to grin at that. “Bad is relative.”

“As you would know.”

“Absolutely. And by the way, there’s nothing wrong with being bad once in a while.”

Her sister sighed the sigh of a martyr. “I can’t reason with you, you don’t have normal reasoning. And all I’ve ever said about Bay Moon is that with a little expansion—”

“We’d make a killing,” Lily finished for her. “That would be great, but it’d turn into something that Bay Moon was never intended to be.” She was adamant on this. When she’d first been dumped here by her at-their-wits’-end parents, she’d had all rights rudely revoked. No phone, no TV, no car, no friends and especially no boys. She’d been forced to serve the guests and worked the shop, the cafeteria and the lifts, only getting to ski or board as often as she could sneak out.

As a result, no one knew better than she that the best part of Bay Moon was its size and charm. Like the fictional Cheers bar, everyone here knew everyone’s name, their likes and dislikes. Expanding would turn it into another Park City or Vail, where no one knew anyone and it was all about fashion and who the celebrity guests were. That simply was not going to happen. “Grandma knew what you and Sara wanted to do with this place. Just as she knew that as the older, responsible granddaughters, you two were the logical choices to inherit. But the fact is, she left it all to me.” A burden she’d neither coveted nor asked for. Hell, she’d have been happy working ski patrol the rest of her life.

“Yes, she left it all to you,” Gwyneth said. “Even though you’d never held a business or finance position, didn’t balance your own checkbook and had never had so much as a single lasting relationship in your life.”

“And what do relationships have to do with anything?”

“Shows a lack of ability to commit, Lily.”

No, it showed a lack of willingness to commit—a direct result of her bossy, demanding family. Love was a burden, Lily had long ago decided, and an unwelcome one. “Okay, listen. Let’s save my failings for another time. Maybe Thanksgiving, when everyone can join in on the fun. For now, we have jobs, good ones. We make extremely good livings just the way things are.”

“Yes.” Gwyneth dropped her gaze over Lily’s ski-patrol attire. “And I see you’re going to be earning yours screwing off all day.”

She’d already put in two hours at her desk, but hell if she’d defend herself. It didn’t seem to matter what she said to Gwyneth, or how often she said it—her sister just refused to see the hours Lily was spending chained to her desk, the paperwork she was shoveling her way through or the results. Fine. She was done arguing. “Ski patrol is hardly screwing off.”

“We have people for that.”

“Never enough. Safety first,” she said, imitating her grandma’s mantra with a smile, refusing to be baited into admitting that while she loved this resort, the day-to-day running of it had been infringing on her enjoyment of the mountain for some time. Actually, it was sucking the soul right out of her.

“If you’d only listen to reason,” Gwyneth said coolly.

“I don’t have normal reasoning, remember?”

With a frustrated growl, Gwyneth whirled on her heels. “I’ll be in my office.”

No doubt terrorizing Carrie, their shared assistant, as she micromanaged the lot of them.

God, Lily missed her grandma with a physical ache. She missed the simple understanding. Her grandfather had been gone much longer and she missed him, too. Her parents weren’t gone, just not around. Chin up, she pushed open the doors, sucked in the brisk twenty-degree air and stepped down the three wide stone steps to take in the glory around her.

Towering forests of pines heavy with snow, and steep, rocky valleys watched over by the awesome Sierras…it was an amazing celebration of contrasts, she thought, her breath crystallizing in front of her face. With a smile, she dropped her board to the snow and buckled a foot into her binding. The air was cold enough to burn her lungs as she inhaled.

She wasn’t on the schedule to patrol today, just on call. She’d only put on her ski-patrol jacket to get past any siblings, and—with the exception of that little run-in with Gwyneth just now—her plan had worked. She was free.

And free was just what the doctor ordered.

She pushed off and headed down a small incline directly toward Sierra Gulch, the quad lift that would take her to midmountain. From there, she’d get on Upper Way, yet another lift, to the top of the mountain this time. And from there, she’d take whichever run caught her fancy.

She checked in on her walkie-talkie to patrol base. Danny, a patroller, told her to have fun. Not a problem.

It was barely eight-fifteen, and the chairs officially didn’t run until eight-thirty, so there wasn’t much of a line yet. With her jacket, and the white cross on the back denoting her as ski patrol, she was entitled to move ahead of everyone else, but she didn’t. Unless there was an emergency, she didn’t mind waiting in the lines, visiting with the people on what she considered “her” mountain.

She moved in behind a couple and their two young children. Another skier came up on her right. Craning her head intending to say hello, she felt a sudden jolt right down to her toes.

The man who’d caused the jolt smiled at her. And whoa, baby, but the way he did caused a rush of blood through her veins more thrilling than any first run on the slopes could give her.