lived.”
“Bailey—”
“I know what I’m doing,” she said, and hoped that was true.
Maybe Aaron and her mom didn’t, wouldn’t, understand, but she knew this was the right thing. Yes, for Carrie and her sons, but also for herself.
She left before the crack of dawn on Saturday morning for Cedar Ridge and got lucky with good weather and clear roads. She parked in the ski lot and made her way to the lodge to take measurements of the wall.
It was a sunny and clear day, and according to her phone it was thirty-two degrees. But the early morning wind put a chill in the air, making it sharp and almost painful to draw into her lungs.
She loved it. Closing her eyes, she tilted her head back and let the high-altitude sun warm her face. From a distance she heard the swish-swish of skis on the snow.
The lifts were running but not open to the public for another fifteen minutes. She’d been watching ski patrol put up roped fencing lining the ski runs and around the lifts to manage lines, though she hadn’t seen Hudson. The few skiers on the slopes were staff as well, and her eyes had caught on one in particular carving his way down the mountain like he was one with his skis.
Hudson.
She couldn’t tell for sure, of course, but the set to his shoulders reminded her of him.
And then there was the way her heart started pounding.
She had no idea what this odd hyperawareness of him meant. She was hoping it was nothing but simple orgasm withdrawal.
Because orgasm withdrawal she could handle on her own.
Probably.
Maybe.
Okay, so the truth was she didn’t know for sure. She had not exactly felt sexual in a very long time, but she’d like to think that would come back now that she had a new lease on life.
A life—period.
Chapter 4
The following weekend, Hud stuffed some food down and pushed himself back out on the mountain. It was a busy day and they needed to all stay alert and awake. Just yesterday, two hormone-driven twenty-year-olds had decided to have sex on one of the ski lifts. Because they were also idiots, they’d left the safety bar up and the lift operator hadn’t noticed.
A gust of wind had come along and swept the poor pantsless girl off the lift, down thirty feet onto a—luckily—soft berm of snow. She’d lived, though she’d do so with a broken leg and frostbite in some pretty private places. Her boyfriend, of course, hadn’t fallen, retained his pants, and reportedly broke up with her in the hospital due to the humiliation.
The story had made the news, but that wouldn’t scare anyone off from trying out other ridiculous stunts. In fact, they could count on the opposite.
Now he was patrolling the mountain, skiing hard and fast, pushing himself because it felt good to do so. He felt his phone vibrate from the depths of his pocket. Stopping on the edge of the run, he pulled out the phone and saw the ID. “You okay?” he asked his mom in lieu of a greeting.
“Of course, sweetheart. Just wanted to know if you cleaned your room yet.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. An hour earlier he’d taken a call from Max, an old friend who’d been in the army and was doing some snooping on Jacob for Hud. Not too long ago they’d gotten intel that Jacob’s unit had taken enemy fire with injuries, but nothing more. No details. Max had reported that it appeared Jacob had been among the injured but had gone back to his tour of duty in Iraq, so all had to be well now.
Or relatively well.
Hud had been losing his collective shit worrying about his brother. The news that Jacob had to be okay enough to stay with his unit was good, but he didn’t have the bandwidth for anything else to happen today.
“Well?” his mom asked. “Did you? Or did you just shove all your stuff under your bed again and call it good?” She laughed. “I’m onto you, you know.”
“I know,” he said, letting out a long breath and staring out into the early morning. A storm was moving in. Half the sky was a clear, crisp blue, and the other half dark and gray, the clouds churning like his gut. “Mom, I’m at work—”
“I don’t mean to bother you. I just wanted to tell you that she’s a good girl. I know you don’t trust her, but I do. And you can. Or at least try.”
He could usually keep up with the quick subject changes, but she’d just lost him. She could be talking about anyone from his third-grade teacher to a random nurse at her home to an actress on TV. His mom mixed up days and years, and she mixed up reality with TV and books, so he waited for a hint.
“It seems like she’s had a hard time,” she went on. “I think she’s just looking for something to give her some joy. So you see, having her paint the mural will give all of us joy.”
Nope, not his third-grade teacher or an actress on TV. Bailey, the woman he’d given far too much thought to all week long. “Mom—”
“She’s very special, Hudson. You need to treat her right. Now I know your daddy didn’t show you how to do that but I certainly did.”
He inhaled a deep breath. “I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later—”
“You with Jacob working the lifts? I know you love it up there, that you’re saving your money up to roam the world when you graduate, but don’t forget, baby, school always comes first, before the resort.”
“I know.” Yeah, they wouldn’t even have the resort if it hadn’t been for their dad, but perversely they wouldn’t be in danger of losing it now for the same reason.
Back in the day, Richard Kincaid, sole proprietor of the then very small Cedar Ridge Resort, had taken advantage of a sweet, innocent eighteen-year-old Carrie on a business trip to Jackson Hole. And when the stick had turned blue, he’d made himself scarce.
They’d later learned he’d had a good reason for that. The man already had a family. This hadn’t stopped him from spawning a total of five children, though, to whom he’d left his Cedar Ridge Resort when he’d run off on all of them—but not before secretly mortgaging it to its eyeballs. He wasn’t exactly a role model.
Hud and Jacob had been left to raise themselves and their mom—who’d started exhibiting erratic behavior early on, like forgetting to make sure the boys ate and went to school. Then things had fallen apart so completely that Carrie, Jacob, and he had come to Cedar Ridge for help from Char, Aidan and Gray’s mom.
At twelve, Hud had thought he’d known everything he needed to know. And what he’d known was that he, Jacob, and Carrie were a tight unit of three that nothing could break. But Carrie had needed to go into a care facility and Char had gladly taken them in.
Suddenly Hud and Jacob hadn’t had to worry about getting them or their mom fed. Or how they’d get to school. Char worried about all of that for them, mothering the hell out of them while she was at it.
It’d been… freeing. And Hud had immediately fallen in love with Colorado, with the mountain. With his half siblings. With Char. With everything. He’d loved it all, and even though he and Jacob had made a pact to get the hell out as soon as they turned eighteen, Hud had always known that he wouldn’t want to leave.
That he’d never want to leave.
He and Jacob had taken jobs at the resort when they turned fifteen, starting out at the bottom as lift operators. Not a bad gig for two punk-ass kids who’d had a good time watching hot girls coming and going.
The best few years of Hud’s life. But eighteen had come all too quickly, and then the fight of all fights with Jacob.
“Don’t forget to get home in time for supper,” his mom said, bringing him back to the here and now. “I’m cooking up something special.”
She’d never cooked. For as far back as Hud could remember, he and Jacob had put together whatever meals they’d eaten. Actually, he’d put together the meals and Jacob had taken care of the house the best he could.
And to make Carrie feel better about it, Hud had always promised her it was “something special,” which usually meant he’d tossed together whatever shit he managed to scrape up. Hud reme
mbered lots of ramen and even more apples and peanut butter.
Throat oddly tight, Hud squeezed his eyes shut and tried to dispel the images before they opened the door to more painful memories. “Gotta go, Mom.”
“Love you, baby,” she said, and disconnected.
Hud shoved his phone away and took a second to get his head together. It was the second Saturday in January, which meant high season. By noon they’d reach full capacity—great for the strained bank account of the resort, great for the shops and cafeteria, and all the other businesses in town.
It was great for everyone who didn’t have to manage a mountain full to the brim with people in day-off mode, which meant a lot of them had short-circuited all good sense and were accidents waiting to happen.
It was the reason that ski patrol was the biggest division on the mountain, and the highest staffed. And that staff all had to be highly trained for… well, anything.
It was a high-stress job, but one Hud wouldn’t trade for anything. Maybe once upon a time he’d dreamed of traveling the world but that hadn’t happened. He was happy here. He got to be on the mountain, and between that and being a cop ten shifts a month, he made enough that he was able to help keep his mom in a place that was good to her and safe. He also got to be with his crazy-ass siblings.
All except for one, anyway.
He was thinking about that, about Jacob, when he caught the flash of a cherry-red knit cap at the bottom near the lodge. He tried to focus in but the sun slanted over the peaks and right into his eyes.
He shook his head. What was he thinking? Bailey wasn’t here. She had no reason to be here. Clearly he was tired. He and his team were scattered across the mountain and had been since oh-dark-thirty o’clock. They’d been avalanche training, which was exhausting. He had a break coming at ten and he was looking forward to taking it stretched out on the floor of his office.
So naturally a call came in over his radio. A snowboarder had just crashed into a tree on White Chute. From where he stood halfway down Home Run, Hudson was closest, with fellow patroller Mitch right on his heels.
They cut through the trees due east, across the runs Stagecoach and Comstock, and came out on White Chute.
“If we made a YouTube video of someone hitting a tree in slo-mo, complete with the sound effects of the head going splat, we’d cut these incidents in half,” Mitch said as the two of them navigated the rough terrain with the ease that years on this mountain had given them.
Mitch was a friend of the family. Like Aidan, he worked at the resort and was also a firefighter in the off season. He was also possibly the world’s second-biggest smartass.
Right behind Hud himself. “Can’t do that,” Hud said, ducking a low-lying branch and snorting when Mitch didn’t duck fast enough and caught it across his helmet. “Our lawyer nixed it. Said it was bad promo.”
They found the snowboarder sitting at the base of a tree halfway down White Chute, bookended by two buddies. Their guy was clutching his leg, not his head—a good sign. Another was that he’d remained conscious.
Hud dropped to his knees at the guy’s side. Mitch was on the radio, directing the patrollers on their way with a sled to get the guy down the mountain if that was needed.
“I’m going to die,” the guy said to Hud.
“You’re not going to die,” Hud said, visually assessing the situation. No visible injuries—which meant zip. “What’s your name?”
“Sean.”
“Okay, Sean, can you let go of your leg?”
“No.” Sean shook his head, pale and waxy.
His friends looked the same so Hud didn’t know if they were skiing on hangovers or if something was really wrong. “I’m going to open your boot,” he said.
“Dude, no!” Sean shook his head vehemently. “If you take off my boot, my leg’s going to fall off!”
Hud and Mitch exchanged a look. Sean and his buddies all had a certain scent to them that said they’d been smoking weed. Apparently they’d skipped the munchies and gone straight to paranoia. “I’ll be very careful,” Hud assured Sean.
“It’s okay,” Mitch told him. “Hud here hardly ever has legs fall off on his watch.”
Hud had been very carefully loosening the guy’s boot to get a look while Mitch spoke. And… shit. Sean had a compound fracture and it wasn’t pretty. Blood had filled his boot.
“I’m going to die, right?” the guy asked, panicked, breathing erratically.
Hud met Mitch’s gaze again and Mitch immediately reached for the radio. They were going to need more than just a sled. They needed a heli ride stat, straight to General Hospital Trauma Center.
“Oh, God, it’s happening,” Sean moaned.
“Listen to me,” Hud said, leaning over him to make sure he had Sean’s full attention. “You’re not dying.” As long as they got him to the hospital before shock set in or he bled out. Hud and Mitch went to work on that.
When the sled arrived and Sean was about to be loaded, he yelled, “Stop!”
Everyone stopped.
Sean slapped a set of keys into Hud’s hand.
“What’s this?” Hud asked.
“My car. It’s a ’68 Camaro, man. I want you to have it, so I bequeath it to you. It’s in the lot.”
Hud shook his head. “You’re not dying.”
“Just take the fuckin’ keys, okay? Don’t let these two assholes get their hands on my baby,” Sean said, gesturing to his two cohorts, who were huddled together looking higher than kites. “The last time they did, they blew the engine and I had to rebuild her. So I’m begging you, keep her safe. You got me?”
Wanting to keep Sean calm so his heart rate didn’t skyrocket more than it already had, pumping too much blood through his body, Hud nodded. “I got you,” he said. “But you’re still not dying.”
They skied Sean down to the bottom, where the resort’s resident nurse and a trauma crew met them. In less than twenty minutes from the original radio call, Sean was airborne, bound for the trauma center.
Now officially on break, Mitch headed for the cafeteria for food. Hud stood amidst the lunchtime chaos outside the lodge and found himself once again looking around for that cherry-red hat.
But there was no sign of her. Telling himself he was good with that, even if he’d given her way too much thought over the past week, he pulled out his buzzing cell phone.
“Cafeteria,” Aidan said in his ear. “Family pow wow.”
“Busy,” Hud said. And by busy, he meant he had that ten-minute nap on tap.
“Penny said to tell you please.”
Shit. Hud had no problem refusing his brothers Gray and Aidan whatever they thought they needed, but Gray’s wife Penny was another thing entirely. She had big warm eyes and was the sweetest tyrant he’d ever met. “Sure,” he said. Sucker.
He headed over to the lodge and stopped short at the sight of a ladder against the north wall. A very bad feeling came up from his gut and he strode inside. Gray, Penny, Kenna, Aidan, and Aidan’s fiancée Lily sat at a table having a late breakfast.
“Told you he’d come if there was food involved,” Gray said. “He thinks with his stomach. That’s because he’s single.”
“What part do you think with?” Penny asked him.
Gray waggled a brow suggestively.
Penny rolled her eyes. “And I put up with you why again?”
“I’ll remind you after breakfast,” he told her, voice husky.
“Eww,” Kenna said. “Old people shouldn’t talk about sex.”
“I’m thirty-two,” Gray said.
“Old,” the twenty-five-year-old said.
There was an empty seat waiting for Hud. A plate had been loaded with his favorites: bacon, eggs, hash browns, sourdough toast, and… a big, fat blueberry muffin, the top of it dusted with sugar.
His mouth watered. “Who died?”
Penny laughed. “No one, you big lug. Sit down and enjoy.”
It was hot as hell inside. Making a mental note t
o have someone check the thermostat and make sure they weren’t bleeding money with a heater cranked up too high, he dropped his jacket, hat, and gloves. He unzipped his sweatshirt and sat. Then he looked at Penny, aka the sweet tyrant.
“What?” she asked innocently.
Shit. He knew it. The plate had been a misdirect and he’d