Snowy Mountain Nights

Among other things, he called her a pain slut, ready for torture and blood at the hands of a lover. She focused on the tattoo gun in her hand, the red poppies taking shape beneath the needle.

Her nonresponsiveness worked perfectly. He never came by the studio again.

Reyna returned from her reverie to find Garrison watching her closely with his usual unreadable expression.

“Tattooing is not my passion,” she said for want of some sort of barrier between them. “But it’s an amazing thing to walk around the city sometimes and see a client with my work on their body.”

“I can only imagine how satisfying that would be.” Garrison looked down the mountain, and Reyna followed his gaze.

Snow and fresh powder, nothing but cold white for miles. His hobby, or passion. Another surprise between them.

“You should go,” she said. “Don’t waste this. It won’t last long.”

She didn’t know if she was talking about the snow or the weekend or life.

“You’re right,” Garrison said. “Nothing really lasts, does it?” His intent eyes settled on her again. “All the more reason to enjoy it while you can instead of looking ahead to its end.”

Her mouth curled into a smile. “You can think of it that way, yes.”

He nodded as if he’d decided something. “I’ll be seeing you again, Ms. Allen.”

She watched him click back onto his snowboard, pull on his thick gloves and mask and lower his goggles. He seemed alien and untouchable against the landscape that was all sunlight, the cheerful dip of the evergreens, a clear blue sky. All around she heard the joyful shouts of people enjoying themselves in the snow.

“Until then.” She dipped her head in his direction.

He scudded down the mountain, kicking up snow in his wake, the movement of his dark shape on the bright snow pulling an aching cord in her belly. She drew in a breath at the warm feeling. No. She did not want this.

It was one thing to find him attractive. It was another entirely to find herself actually attracted to him. The subtle humor in his long-lashed eyes. His masculine scent. The fact that he wasn’t as boring and arrogant as she expected. Reyna swallowed thickly, and she watched him fly away from her. She had a feeling she was about to get herself in trouble.

* * *

Reyna spent another couple of hours sketching and enjoying her semi-isolation before her friends came back and dragged her from her mountain perch for sledding and impromptu drinks with some men they’d met on the slopes. Ahmed Clark was not among these eligible bachelors, but Bridget was happy enough.

Later on, in the cabin and under the influence of the hot toddies Louisa made, her friends tried to go back to the subject of Garrison Richards. But Reyna steered them toward something else. Louisa smirked, her look telling Reyna that she couldn’t avoid her feelings for the lawyer, or her discussion of them, for too much longer. But whatever respite she had, Reyna would gladly take. Garrison made her feel too uneasy, overheated and uncomfortable for her to talk about him just yet. Even to her closest friends.

They stayed up until late, talking about life and love and everything in between. At a little past three in the morning, the women all pled exhaustion, even Bridget. Reyna, however, was still wide awake. She didn’t need much sleep, and working at the tattoo studio, which was open until 4:00 a.m. some Saturdays, she was used to going to bed as late as six in the morning.

After her friends went to bed, she couldn’t slow down her mind. She couldn’t stop thinking about Garrison and his snow-flecked flight down the mountain. She couldn’t stop thinking about his smell. Spicy and masculine, like a long and back-bending night in a warm bed.

It was as if he was still next to her, body crowding her on the couch, inflaming her late-night imagination with thoughts of what it would be like to kiss him. Wondering what harm there would be to allow him this chase at the resort, allow him to catch her and be with her away from real life in the city.

The more her body marinated in thoughts of having him, the more her brain shouted at her to stop being so stupid. He wasn’t a good person. He was just as bad as Ian, maybe worse.

Her thoughts grew clamorous, too loud and too shameful to be cooped up in the cabin with so many sleeping souls. She got up from the couch and dampened the fire, pulled on her snow gear and stepped out into the cold.

Chapter 4 (#ulink_4024581f-d7cf-57a2-b9ea-b94f3fdd81fe)

Garrison sat in the armchair by the fire, shirtless and wearing jeans. His sock-covered feet were stretched out toward the fireplace. The heat from the flames flickered over his bare chest, warming and sweet.

At four in the morning, the snow was coming down outside, whirling in pale flurries against the dark sky. The fire burned hot and high behind the grate. The heater was on. It was nearly eighty degrees in the cabin, just how he liked it. The book he had started to read lay turned down on his thigh, but his mind was far from immersed in its chapters. Instead, his thoughts were full of Reyna.

Garrison had been surprised to see her on the trail earlier that day. It was as if he had been given a gift when he saw her sitting on that rock, removed from the chaos and rabble around her, a queen surveying her lands. He saw her as he came down the mountain then whipped past her on his board. A bubble of exquisite feeling popped to life inside him. It had overtaken the euphoria and freedom he usually felt from being on the mountain with the board under his feet. And he had damn near broken his neck to quickly get down the mountain then back up again to reintroduce himself.

And now, more than twelve hours later, he was still thinking about her. Reyna Allen. The artist. The woman.

Although he wasn’t one for commitments—his career as a divorce attorney forced him to see the futility of those sorts of arrangements—there was something about Reyna that made him want her. Want her badly.

On the mountain, he had only just restrained himself from kissing her. Her lips, glistening and red from the ChapStick or lipstick or whatever she’d applied, distracted and tangled his thoughts. In her presence, all clarity disappeared. All he wanted to do was kiss her and sink his fingers into her hair and make her sigh his name. Even now, the thought of her mouth made the muscles in his belly tighten.

Garrison had never had a vacation hookup before, but the fire in Reyna’s eyes made him want to try something new. A flicker of movement outside the window drew him from his thoughts. The brief flash of a woman’s face under a yellow hooded jacket. Reyna.

Without giving himself a chance to think, Garrison quickly pulled on his cold-weather clothes and rushed out the door after her. His heart raced as the primitive side of him, long buried by an exacting and regimented life, rose up to follow Reyna as if she were his female, scented temptingly on the wind.

The door clicked shut behind him, and snow crunched under his boots. Pale flurries swirled around him in the brisk breeze, melting against his face. The cold night groaned with its particular noises.

Reyna walked slowly up ahead, hands in the pockets of her yellow jacket while the furred hood obscured most of her face and covered her head. He didn’t try to be quiet. But he didn’t call out to her, either. He quickly caught up with her, using his slightly longer legs to his advantage.

“Ms. Allen.”

She turned, startled, her large black eyes widening even more. Dark curls tumbled into her face, and she took a step back.

“Are you following me?”

“Yes.”

She looked surprised again. Then turned away from him to continue walking. Garrison took that as an invitation to fall in step with her. Reyna glanced at him.

“I don’t want you following or stalking me,” she said. “I had enough ruin from you to last a lifetime.”

“Ruin?” He frowned. This wasn’t the almost welcoming woman he’d talked with on the slopes earlier that afternoon. Reyna was acting as if that conversation between them never happened.

“Yes. Ruin.” Her face grew harder, a beautiful mahogany mask under the falling snow. “Ian was not smart enough to think of all those conditions in the divorce papers by himself. It had to be you.” Reyna’s black eyes crackled with anger. There seemed to be some sort of fever burning inside her. She walked faster. “You helped him to leave me on the edge of desperation. After the divorce I had to start over completely.”

Garrison nodded silently, feeling again the weight of the blame for how the Barbieri divorce had been settled. In hindsight, he should have never allowed Ian Barbieri to do the things he’d done to the woman he’d supposedly loved since high school. Reyna hadn’t known what she was getting into. She hadn’t even retained a lawyer of her own, for heaven’s sake! But despite his attraction to her then, Garrison had been too caught up in his job, in the pure facts of the case, to do what was right.

“The divorce left me vulnerable and more alone than I’d ever been.” She slowed her steps, and her harsh breaths steamed the air. Then she looked annoyed with herself that she’d told him that much.

Because of Reyna and her divorce, he’d become more human, more aware of the larger picture where both parties in the separation were concerned. Garrison was almost ashamed to admit that it had been because of his attraction to her that he’d even begun to second-guess the methods that had worked so well for him in the past. Shallow, but true. After Reyna, it was no longer about simply allowing his client to escape a previous romantic entanglement with the most money possible. It was about being fair.

“It wasn’t my finest hour,” he said finally. Inadequately. “And although it means nothing now, please allow me to apologize.”

He’d spent untold weeks and months torturing himself with what he could have done to be fair to her five years ago. Then he dreamed about being the man to come to her rescue and save her from her marriage. Now he simply wanted to be the man in her bed.

He swallowed and fisted a gloved hand in his jacket pocket. The fierceness of his desire for her was almost frightening. Before he saw her on the train that morning, she had existed at the back of his mind as a sort of angel, inspiring him to be a better man. Now he wanted to pull her down in the dirt with him and kiss the innocence from her lips.

Reyna walked quietly by his side, thankfully oblivious to his yearning. She pushed the hood back from her face, and the snow fell on her hair, the white settling in her beautiful black curls. She tilted her face briefly up at the sky. Garrison watched a lucky snowflake melting against her lips. He watched, burning in his thirst, as those lips parted, and her tongue licked away the wet.

“Why apologize now?” she asked. “It’s been five years.”