Free Fall

Impressed that he didn’t ask her a million questions about her past, she watched him kneel in the snow and shift through his pack. “Granted,” she admitted. “I had more stupid moments than most.”

“Because you got caught?” He pulled out an elastic bandage.

“It wasn’t difficult that time. I forgot to set the emergency brake, and when I got out to sit on the cliffs to smoke and watch the moon, the truck rolled down the mountain.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “And now I’m that stupid kid forever, no matter how many years I put between me and my…indiscretions.”

“I take it you’re the baby of the family?”

“Unfortunately.” She eyed him as he came close once again, tossing the bandage up and down in his hand. “And you?”

“The oldest.”

“Ah.” She smiled. “So are you an impossible, cold, hard know-it-all?”

“Undoubtedly.”

Slowly she shook her head. “You might be impossible, and the know-it-all part remains to be seen, but I don’t buy the cold.”

He ignored that and nodded to her leg. “What’s with the knee?”

“See? Cold wouldn’t have even noticed.” She came clean when he didn’t give up an ounce of the intensity. “Ancient injury.”

Crouching before her in the snow, he pulled her Gore-Tex pants up to her thigh while she silently thanked herself for shaving that morning. Then he bent his dark head. His breath danced over her skin. With his index finger, he traced the six-inch scar that rounded her kneecap in a half circle. His finger was warm and callused.

“It’s old,” she said.

“Not that old. Want the wrap?”

What she wanted wrapped was his body around hers, but she wasn’t too stubborn to admit the bandage would give her the support she needed to get down the hill. “Please.”

Tipping his face up, he smiled at her in a way that suggested he knew accepting help from anyone went against the grain. Still holding her gaze, he tugged his gloves off with his teeth, an oddly erotic thing all in itself. Then he peeled her ski sock down.

She hissed.

He went still. “Hurt?”

“Your hands are cold.”

He flashed a grin. “Suck it up.” With efficiency, he wrapped her knee, then pulled her sock back up and her pant leg down over her boot. “You should soak it when we get back. Do employees get to use the hot tub?”

“Actually…” She stared down at him, into those amazing eyes. It was unusual, and it made no sense, but she wanted him to know the truth. She wanted him to know her. “I’m not quite an employee.”

He straightened, standing a good head taller than her. “No?”

“No. I, um…” She smiled wryly. “I own the resort. Inherited it, actually.”

He didn’t even blink. “So I’m taking it you get access to the hot tub.”

She stared at him, then laughed. Still no ridiculously invasive questions, not a single joke, none of the usual stuff that always so completely and totally irritated her when she revealed that she, a twenty-five-year-old punk, owned a ski resort.

“Can you board down with your knee?” he asked.

As her other option was lying in a litter while a pair of her patrollers took her down the mountain, she nodded. Though she went slower this time, he didn’t try to pass her or continue their race. Instead, he followed, presumably to help her if she needed it. And though she’d skied with plenty of men she’d planned on sleeping with over the years, she’d never felt so…aware of one as she was of Logan.

The slopes were filled with skiers heading down to the lodge on their last run of the day as the sun began to sink. Halfway back, her walkie-talkie chirped again. It was Chris this time, with a new emergency on the east side. A boarder had fallen out-of-bounds. He was uninjured but unable to climb back up the sheer rock to safety.

“Just shoot me now,” Lily muttered, then lifted an apologetic gaze to Logan. “Fun’s over. Again. I have patrollers on their way, but I’m going over to help.”

“Whoever you were talking to sounded worried.”

“It’s going to be a little tricky getting him back up. It’s getting dark. And where he went over is sheer rock, covered in two months' worth of ice, topped with some powder.”

“Avalanche waiting to happen.”

“You got it,” she said grimly. “There are signs making it out-of-bounds for exactly that reason.”

“Maybe I can help.”

“No.”

“I have ten years’ climbing experience.”

She let out a breath. He’d fixed her binding. With duct tape. He’d wrapped her knee when most wouldn’t have even known she’d been hurt. Mr. Safety and Security, she’d give him that, and yet he willingly threw himself into any risk.

Damn if that wasn’t unbearably sexy all by itself. “All right, fine. You’re hired. Let’s go, ace.”

“Okay, Lily Rose.”

She arched a brow. “Use my middle name again and you’ll be the one left out-of-bounds.”

His laughter rang out in the snow-filled air and made her smile.

4

LOGAN WATCHED LILY’S PETITE form glide down the steep incline in the snow, doing so far more purposefully and carefully than she had earlier. He wondered just how badly she’d hurt herself.

He could hear Wyatt now…You can take the man out of the SAR team but you can’t take the SAR team out of the man.

Yeah, yeah, sue him. After a lifetime of watching after his two younger siblings for his overworked father, and then working search and rescue, taking care of others was nothing but pure instinct for him.

Granted, she was tough as hell and damned up-front and practical to boot, and could undoubtedly take care of herself—but that didn’t stop him from wanting to make sure.

And then there was the searing heat that shot back and forth between them like a Ping-Pong ball with every glance, every word. She might not be the drop-dead beautiful ski bunny Wyatt had had in mind for him, but she had a secret sort of try-me smile and a way about her that was far more sensual than any woman he’d been with in a long time.

They got to the lift they needed to take and headed back up again. In less than ten minutes they were standing at the lip of another dizzy drop-off where their skier had fallen, with four other patrollers who were dealing with the victim’s freaked-out friends, all of whom were eventually convinced to go wait at the lodge. The patrollers had already determined that their victim, down the precipice about forty feet, wasn’t hurt. Now they were trying to figure out where the out-of-bounds signs had gone.