Katie stood at the base of the mountain looking up, up, up to where the ski lift vanished just over the peak, and swallowed hard. The ski resort looked like a European Alps village, pretty and quaint, full of old-school charm and character, and if she hadn’t been scared to death about making her way down the steep, steep mountain looming over it with two skis strapped to her feet, she’d have happily explored the shops and restaurants to her heart’s content.
Cam had given her a lift pass, which hung around her neck. She was holding her poles while he held both his board and her skis. With ease, she might add, using all those muscles she was so fond of looking at. At the moment, however, she wasn’t looking at him but the terrain, so white against a shocking blue sky. The wind was blowing a white mist of powder snow from the very tip of the mountain into the air. It was gorgeous, and terrifying.
Cam laid out her skis for her. She stepped into the bindings while he locked one of his boots into the bindings on his board.
When he glanced at her, she pasted a smile on her face and let him guide her closer, up the small hill to the lift. The young woman running it wore a ski cap low over her eyes, hair flowing to her waist. She was chewing gum and looking bored, until she saw Cam and her entire face lit up. “Hey there, you!”
“Heidi. How are you doing?”
“Good. Better now.” To prove it, she threw herself at him. “I’m so happy to see you!”
Katie would have liked to obsess over the full-body contact Heidi was managing to get with Cam, but she was too busy struggling to stay on the incline without rolling back. There was ice beneath her skis. In serious danger of slipping backward into the line of people behind her, she desperately used her poles to hold herself in place, making her biceps tremble with the strain, threatening to give out while Cam just stood there listening to Heidi babble all over him.
“I’m just so glad you’re back,” she was saying cheerfully, arms still loped around his neck.
Or at least that’s what her mouth was saying. Her eyes were saying, I want to lap you up like a bowl of ice cream.
Katie struggled harder not to kill everyone in line behind her, but any second now she was going to slide backward.
And then, it happened. Her poles slipped, and with a gasp she began to go-
Cam’s warm hand settled at her back, miraculously holding her in place, easily nudging her forward and off the ice patch.
She gritted her teeth. “You could have done that a lot sooner.”
“I was never going to let you fall.”
“Now you tell me. My arms are already killing me.”
“Do you exercise?”
“It’s on my to-do list.” At the bottom, but still…
“I’d give you the your-body-is-your-temple speech, but your body…” He paused to look her over from head to toe and back again, causing certain portions of her anatomy to flicker to life. “Well, I’d worship as is.”
Her knees wobbled. “Stop that.”
“Really?”
“No.”
He out and out grinned, and the rest of her body acted fairly predictably.
“Are you ready?”
She took a look at the lift coming around for them at what seemed like the speed of light and gathered her courage. “Ready,” she whispered, and willed it to be true.
Chapter 12
Cam watched the lift come toward them with a heavy dose of his own nerves. His first time back on a board…He’d have wallowed in that, but he caught sight of Katie’s fierce going-into-battle expression, and he managed to forget about himself. “You okay?”
“I think so.” She glanced at him, then frowned. “Are you?”
“Always.”
“Because you look-”
“Scoot a little closer,” he said as the ski lift came around to scoop them up.
Suitably distracted, Katie gave it her all, but the seat of the lift hit her in the back of the knees, ripping a startled “Oh!” out of her and then a cry of distress as she began to go down.
Cam snagged the back of her jacket as he sat on the lift, holding her up as he did, pulling her onto the seat next to him.
“Ohmigod,” she gasped, clutching his arm to her br**sts as the lift took off, lifting them up, up, and farther up. “Ohmigod.”
“I’ve got you,” he promised, but she continued to grip his arm with the force of the jaws of life. “Don’t worry, you’re not going to fall now.”
Neither of them was.
“Okay.” She gulped in air, and he felt a little like doing that, too, but then he realized her eyes were closed. “Hey, Goldilocks.”
“Yeah?”
“You’ve got your eyes closed.”
She cracked one open. “I forgot something.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t like heights. Which in hindsight is really, really going to get in the way of my adventures. After this, I’m going with things that don’t require height.” She closed her eye again.
“Hate to break this to you, but mountain climbing requires heights. And to backpack in Europe, you’d have to fly.”
“Good points. I have a backup plan.”
“Like?” He planned to keep her talking so that she’d forget they were now fifty feet up, zooming across the terrain to the top of the peak. Yeah, that was all he was thinking about, keeping her comfortable. It had nothing at all to do with him needing his own distraction. Good thing he wasn’t nearly as honest as she was.