Snowy Mountain Nights

“God! This place gets more and more beautiful every year.” Louisa sighed as they drove past a grove of naked trees. Their barks were a dark brown against the white landscape, branches covered in snow and stretched out above them like lace.

Reyna agreed with a silent nod, staring out her own window.

“Hopefully there’ll be hotter guys up here this year,” Bridget said as she freshened up her bright lipstick with the help of her compact. “Last year was a bust.” She pressed her lips together then snapped the compact shut.

A woman who always did whatever she wanted, Bridget was more than willing to have a fling at the resort and never look back after the weekend. Reyna could never do that. Sleeping with a man at the place that had become her sanctuary from drama just seemed like a very, very bad idea.

“I hear that Ahmed Clark might be up here this year.” Marceline shared the information with the slightest of smiles.

At one time or another, the women had all drooled over the rising basketball star. Unlike his teammates, who they all thought were freakishly tall or had too many tattoos, Ahmed was just perfect. He was six and a half feet tall, wore a wide and frequent grin while on the basketball court and regularly gave money and time to charity. His body wasn’t half-bad, either.

Bridget chuckled. “I guess I know who I’ll be hooking up with this weekend.” She pouted her freshly reddened lips and winked.

“If rumors are reliable.” Louisa raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“If he’s up at Halcyon, that man will be under me before the weekend is through,” Bridget said.

Reyna laughed and shook her head at her friend. If only Bridget was that relentless about figuring out her life, she wouldn’t still be living at her parents’ place and steadily burning through her trust fund.

“Honey, why do you have to make this weekend about sex?” Marceline looked as if she was only partially joking. “It’s supposed to be about us, remember? You and your girls.”

“Yes, but you girls like to sleep, and I don’t. I have to fill the time somehow.” Bridget gave Marceline a saucy wink then started fiddling with her phone.

They arrived at the resort a few minutes later. The lodge where they would check in, eat, drink and socialize was a big and beautiful old-fashioned log cabin straight out of a mountain woman’s dream. The two-story lodge contained a restaurant upstairs and the shop and front desk downstairs. The restaurant’s wide glass windows overlooked a dizzying view of the mountains.

Far back and behind the lodge, although they couldn’t be seen from the main path, sat over two dozen log cabins, each with two to four bedrooms, a fireplace, wireless internet and a kitchen in case anyone was intrepid enough to cook.

After Reyna and her friends checked in at the front desk, another driver chauffeured them in a covered golf cart down the snowy path to their cabin. They tumbled into the heated cabin, stretching and groaning from the long morning of sitting on the train and then in the SUV. The driver dropped their bags, complete with ski equipment, by the front door before quietly leaving with his tip.

“This isn’t our usual cabin.” Bridget looked around, hands on her hips.

“You’re just now noticing that?” Louisa grabbed her bag and walked toward one of the bedrooms.

“It’s fine, Bridg.” Reyna patted her friend’s shoulder and headed for the other bedroom. “There aren’t any bad cabins up here anyway.”

The frown didn’t leave Bridget’s face when she followed Reyna into the room. But she quickly forgot her dissatisfaction when Louisa appeared in their doorway wearing a teal ski suit, complete with furred hat and boots. Very black Russian sex kitten.

Louisa posed in the middle of the bedroom. “Who’s ready to go check out the place?”

“That’s not fair!” Bridget said, eyeing Louisa’s clinging and questionably warm outfit. “I want to be sexy, too.”

Reyna groaned. “Then change already. There’s a glass of hot apple cider waiting out there for me.”

After Bridget got sexed up to her satisfaction, the four women made their way to the lodge. As their booted feet crunched through the snow, Bridget teased Marceline out of her funk while Reyna and Louisa walked behind them.

“So who was that guy you were checking out on the train?” Louisa asked.

She kept her voice low, but at a conversational level so the other women wouldn’t think she was trying to hide anything from them.

Reyna shrugged. Lying about Garrison Richards’s identity would be a waste of time. Louisa was smart and had a husband named Google. If those resources failed, her brother worked high up in the FBI and could get her any information she wanted. Sometimes she was a little scary.

“He’s someone I knew years ago,” Reyna finally said. “From the divorce.”

“Ah.” Louisa grinned, her eyes sparkling as if she’d just found out a secret. “That explains why you didn’t look exactly glad to see him.” She squeezed Reyna’s waist. “But you couldn’t look away from him, either. I don’t blame you. He’s a sexy beast.” She growled playfully.

Reyna paused, surprised that Louisa didn’t throw around any of her usual adjectives for people she found appealing: hot, handsome, fine. Maybe because Garrison was none of those things. He was too stern, too cold, to be anything but sexy. And a beast. She swallowed thickly at the thought.

While in that conference room with him five years ago, she hadn’t paid any attention to his looks. He had been all shark, cool and efficient. Presenting her with the facts of her impending divorce after drafting the awful document that allowed her ex-husband to toss her out on the streets with nothing. Admittedly, she had been young and foolish, naively relying on Ian to do the right thing.

Reyna sighed. “Yes. He is sexy. If you like that sort of thing.”

“That sort of thing? Girl...” Louisa chuckled. “What man-loving woman with a working libido wouldn’t be into that sort of thing?” She fanned her face and grinned.

Reyna had to silently agree. Garrison’s understated dress only emphasized the belly-quivering masculinity of him. The subtle swagger in his walk, the way he appeared to see clearly everything around him. Those small details made her wonder wicked things. Like what kind of focus he would have in bed. Would he please his woman first and take his own pleasure at the end of a long and sweat-dripped night? How would it feel when his...? She cleared her painfully dry throat.

The fur on Louisa’s hooded jacket fluttered around her face as she laughed. “You don’t fool me one little bit, honey.”

At the lodge, they found their usual table near the window and beneath one of the heater vents. Unwilling to wait for table service, Bridget went to get them a round of hot apple cider. Reyna stretched her legs under the table next to Marceline’s, more than ready for the relaxing weekend.

The lodge’s restaurant, which could comfortably hold at least fifty people, was already a quarter full on that Friday morning. Conversation wound through the airy space, mixing with laughter and the clink of cups and saucers. The guests were a mix of couples, singles and groups all gathered at their tables to enjoy the morning and the beginning of the weekend.

“Here you go, ladies.” Bridget came back to the table with a silver kettle and four matching cups on a tray. “The first round is on me.”

A collective sigh of appreciation went around the table. At first, Reyna thought it was for the apple cider, then she noticed that none of the women were paying any attention to the drink. Instead, their gazes were fastened on something over her shoulder. Ahmed Clark, Reyna guessed without looking. But she was wrong. Instead of the basketball player, it was Garrison Richards who had walked through the door.

She drew a breath of surprise. What was he doing here? She thought he had... Reyna shook her head. It didn’t matter. All she knew was that her friends were acting like hormonal teenagers.

She wanted to slap them all. But while pouring a glass of cider for herself, she snuck a look at Garrison from under her lashes. Yes, he was sexy. There was no denying that. There was also no denying that she should stay away from him. It took a ridiculously long time for her friends to stop staring at him like vultures at the sight of new carrion.

Louisa poured drinks for the rest of the women and slid Reyna a private, provoking glance. “He’s a nice specimen,” she said to Marceline. “Maybe that’s just what you need to get over your broken heart this weekend.”

“I’m pretty sure Reyna has dibs on him already.” Marceline’s voice seemed tinged with regret.

“Hmm,” Bridget chimed in. “He is a cutie! Isn’t that the guy from the train?”

“Most definitely.” Louisa grinned. “And I don’t see a ring.”

She was the most perceptive of them all, but was also the most cruel, using her insight to play games that most people were not ready for. Louisa gave Reyna another annoying look, but Reyna didn’t bite. She only shrugged and tasted her cider. It was perfect, the heated cinnamon, sugar and apples coating her tongue with delicious flavor. Just the perfect thing on such a cool and spectacularly beautiful day.

Reyna kept her eyes on the cider and not on the man her friends refused to stop staring at.

“You know that a ring doesn’t mean much these days,” Bridget said, picking up from Louisa’s earlier comment. “Some married men travel without theirs just to pick up some stranger before going back home to the wife.” Bridget nodded in Garrison’s direction, although he was far from the only man in the lodge. Reyna was willing to bet, though, that he was the most...appealing. With the gray heads, men who were obviously with their lovers and the immature-looking boys, Garrison was unfortunately the hottest thing in the room.

“Yeah, what’s that about?” Marceline muttered. “I know plenty of girls who would love to land a married man. If he had on a wedding ring, it’d be like catnip.”

“Maybe they don’t realize exactly what they’re trolling for,” Bridget said. “Territorial women can be vicious.”

Louisa gestured with her cup. “That’s not the only thing they have to watch out for. Some of these hot-ass married men have diseases they’re ready to pass on to anyone, including their wives.”