After Midnight

“Juice?” Lindsey asked, arching one eyebrow. “Champagne for me.”

The waitress set their drinks in front of them, and then they were each given a hat. For him a top hat. For her a tiara. She promptly put it on her head and turned to bat her eyelashes at him. “Do I look like a princess now?”

“The queen should be afraid you’re after her title,” he murmured.

“As if. I’m not after anything. You’re lucky, Carter. Lucky that you still have snowboarding. Life is very strange when you don’t have to get up every day and train,” she said, taking a sip of her champagne.

Not exactly what he’d been hoping to hear. “I think you’re supposed to wait for the toast to drink that.”

She smiled mischievously. “Going to tell on me?”

He shook his head. “Your secret’s safe with me, Linds.” How could he possibly deny this woman anything? She enchanted him. And he had to admit, she was a total mystery. He’d teased and cajoled her for his own amusement but had never really taken the time to get to know her. Tonight was showing him that all the preconceived notions he’d had were wrong.

She wasn’t the ice queen she’d always been on the snow. She was real and fragile and so damned tempting...

* * *

LINDSEY HAD NEVER worn a tiara before. Even though this one was plastic with fake gems, she was still thrilled to be wearing it. It made her feel girlie. “This is my first real New Year’s Eve party. Pitiful, isn’t it?”

“Not really. Your life was focused in a different direction.”

“Yeah, but you were training and still found time to party,” she said.

“I’m good at multitasking,” he replied.

“Most men really aren’t.”

He gave her a cynical look. “Really? You want to do the whole ‘battle of the sexes’ thing? Tonight?”

She didn’t. She wanted to enjoy the fact that she felt like a normal girl instead of someone apart from the mainstream. The Ice Queen, the media had labeled her. But the truth was, she had gotten so used to keeping her feelings hidden it was hard for her to actually show them.

“Of course not. I had no idea your ego was so thin,” she teased.

“It’s not. But you should know if you throw down what you’re going up against.”

“What? That you’re the boss?” she asked, trying not to smile. Carter had been flouting rules and tradition since the moment she’d met him. She found it really hard to believe that he’d have some hard set-in-stone ideas about anything. But she did believe that if he got into a fight, he’d go full-out and leave nothing.

She was used to winning and knew how to get what she wanted on the slopes but, one-on-one, she had a gut feeling he’d beat her every time. Hard as it was to admit, she just didn’t know how to play a game like this.

She sighed.

Who was she trying to kid here? She wasn’t going to be any different in the New Year than she’d been before. When had she ever been anything other than a stick-in-the-mud, tall, outdoorsy girl who would rather talk about skiing than anything else? Even her own family found her boring at times. Though they were kind about it and would listen to her talk about a new position or when she liked to shift her weight, she’d known they probably weren’t really all that interested.

“Want to dance?” Carter asked, bringing her back to the present. “One last spin around the dance floor to ring out the old year.”

She nodded. “I’d like that. And I’m kissing you at midnight.”

“Should I be on guard?” he murmured, stepping down from the high table and offering her his hand.

She took it and stumbled a little in her high heels. Bracing one hand on his chest, she whispered, “Not really. I know you want to kiss me.”

His blue-gray gaze slowly drifted over her lips before he locked eyes with her once again. “I’m having performance anxiety now that you mentioned it. It might not be that great.”

“I doubt that,” she said. “You never have that.”

“I wish I was as confident as you seem to think I am.”

“Aren’t you?” she breathed, reveling once again in his brisk masculine scent. They were pressed close together due to the crowds streaming in to hear the last song of the year. “You walked into a boardroom filled with executives you ticked off by campaigning to make them let you snowboard on their slopes, and then convinced them to back your charity event. You’ve got nerve, Shaw.”

He had more than that. He seemed to embrace his life in a way she only had when she’d left the gate and started down the slope. She knew people thought what she’d done was dangerous, but to her it had just felt natural. It was a tightly controlled run down the mountain, and she’d spent her lifetime training. So she didn’t credit that for anything other than being something she was good at.

She wanted to throw herself out of the gate of life, too. But she was getting a little nervous now that midnight was approaching. Carter had kissed lots of women; she knew that for a fact from all the gossip in the athlete’s village at the winter games, and from firsthand accounts from other Alpine skiers over the years. As for her... Well, she hadn’t kissed that many men. And the few sexual encounters she’d had were hurried affairs that had left her feeling cold and wanting more.

She didn’t want Carter to be the same. She’d sort of set him on the sex-god pedestal in her mind a long time ago. What if he wasn’t?

Or worse yet, what if he was great and she was the dud?

Ugh! This was what happened when she stepped outside her nice, safe, little zone. Carter stared down at her with those intense eyes of his, and she hoped she looked intriguing or inviting but was afraid she might just seem confused.

“What?”

“We don’t have to dance,” he said softly.

“I want to.” She had in her head an image of New Year’s Eve, and it involved her looking glamorous, which, thanks to the beautiful dress she wore, ticked that box. And she had a very handsome, sexy man who’d just asked her to dance.

She took his hand in hers. It would be too much for the band to play “The Way You Look Tonight,” but in her mind she wanted them to. Instead they danced to “Wrecking Ball.” Something that didn’t speak well for love.

But this wasn’t about love.

This thing between her and Carter had always been about pure lust. And tonight she was finally going to cross the finish line. Get the kiss he’d been taunting her with since they’d met.

The funny thing was, she was just as scared about that today as she had been when she was seventeen. He held her close, and for just a second she rested her head on his strong shoulder. Pretended they were that couple in her mind. The couple who could gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes at midnight and share a kiss so profound it would rock both their worlds.

But then Carter squeezed her hip and slid his hand up the middle of her back.

She tipped her head back to look up at him.

“The countdown is starting.”

It had already begun, Lindsey thought. It had started ten long years ago, and now it came down to this moment.

She licked her lips and couldn’t help but focus on his mouth. Those chiseled, full lips nestled in that closely shorn stubble.

“Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five...”

“Ready?”

“Three. Two. One.”