I roll my eyes at her, then kiss her again, because why not? And because I’m pretty much pathologically unable to not kiss her right now.
“Hey,” I say when I finally manage to tear my lips from hers. “You want to do something?”
“What, now?”
“Yeah, now. It’s only nine o’clock. We’re not ninety, are we?”
“What about Logan? Don’t you need to get back to him?”
She doesn’t seem upset by that fact, like a lot of girls would be. Instead, all I see on her face is concern for my brother—which shouldn’t be a surprise, really. Tansy is one of the most compassionate people I’ve ever met. Still, it warms me a little. Makes me feel a little lighter inside.
“He’s with Z and Luc. I’ll check on him, but he should be fine. Besides, we don’t have to be gone long.”
“Gone?” she asks. “We’re actually leaving the resort?”
“Not the resort, just the building.” I guide her out of the bathroom and over to the balcony. “There’s a whole big resort out there that we’ve barely begun to explore.”
“Oh, right. A walk! That sounds like fun.” The fact that she actually believes that makes her all the more endearing.
“I was thinking of something a little more exciting, but—”
“I am not having sex with you in the snow, Ash Lewis.” She gives me her sternest look, which really isn’t very stern but is adorable. “Frostbite on my ass so does not sound like something I want to explain to anyone.”
“Get dressed in something warm.” I drop a kiss on her nose. “I promise there will be no frostbite on any delicate parts of your anatomy.”
She eyes me suspiciously. “How about, no frostbite on any part of my anatomy at all?”
“Yeah, I suppose we could go for that. If you insist.”
“I do. I really, really do.”
“Sledding?” Tansy asks as she stares at what I just rented. “You want to go sledding?”
“You don’t like sledding?” I ask her incredulously. “Everyone likes sledding.”
“I don’t know if I like it or not,” she says after a minute. “I’ve never been.”
I stare at her in shock. “You live in Salt Lake City. How could you have never been sledding?”
“I didn’t always live in Salt Lake. I was born in San Diego where there isn’t exactly a lot of snow. By the time we moved to Utah, I was a little old for a sled.”
I snort. “You’re never too old for a sled.”
She eyes me, and the sled, with extreme misgiving. “I’m not so sure about that.”
“Do you not want to do it?” I try not to be disappointed, though I don’t have a clue why it matters to me so much. “We can go for a walk instead—”
“Are you kidding me? Bring that bad boy on. If I end up dying, at least I won’t be a virgin when I go.”
She shoots me a mischievous look when I laugh, and then she yells, “Race ya,” over her shoulder, right before she takes off toward the forest and the closest slopes.
“Cheater!” I call after her, but I start running.
She’s not going very fast—not used to running in snow, I bet—so I catch up to her easily. I stay behind her, though, because it’s a good view. She might be skinny, but she’s got a really great ass.
She’s out of breath by the time we get to the slope I want to take her down, and I’m a little surprised. She looks like she’d be in pretty good shape, but she’s breathing hard, bracing her hands on her knees as she sucks in air. I start to tease her about it, but there’s something in the look on her face that tells me she’s embarrassed. That messing with her about it will only hurt her feelings.
So I don’t, instead I file the knowledge away along with a question mark. Even as I start planning ways to build her stamina in the back of my head.
“Okay, so sledding is an art form,” I tell her, placing the sled in perfect position at the top of the hill while I wait for her to catch her breath. It’s dark out, but the resort has lamps at the top of each of the three sled runs, plus lights going down the sides to illuminate them. It’s not great visibility, but up here it’s more than good enough for me to make out Tansy’s eyes and facial expressions.
Plus, there’s no one else out here. We’ve got all three slopes to ourselves, which I consider a major bonus.
“An art form?” she asks, eyebrows raised.
“Absolutely.” I pull her over to the sled. “So, you’re going to be in front, and I’ll be in back. Which means, I’ll do most of the steering, but you should still know what to do, just in case.”
She eyes me like she thinks I’m messing with her. “You can steer a sled?”
“Absolutely. But you use your legs not your hands.”
“What? Won’t I lose my leg if we’re going fast and I try to steer with it?” Now she really looks like she doesn’t believe me.
“You don’t put it on the snow, Tansy. You just press it out to the side you want to turn toward and the sled will move in that direction.” When she still doesn’t look convinced, I laugh. “Never mind. Just sit down, hang on and enjoy. I’ll take care of the rest.”
I got the big sled, meant for two or three people, but Tansy is so small I probably could have gotten away with one of the smaller ones. I watch as she settles onto the thing, making sure she’s right in the middle so there’s less chance of her getting hurt.
“Are you ready?” I ask after she looks as comfortable as she’s going to get.
She turns to look at me, eyes wide and confused. “Aren’t you getting on?”
“In a minute.”
I bend down, start pushing the sled to give it a good start. Tansy starts shrieking when the things starts moving, which makes me laugh—which in turn, makes it harder for me to jump on the sled. But I manage it, right before we crest the hill and then we’re flying down the slope, Tansy wrapped up safely in my arms as I steer us around a couple big rocks.
She’s laughing now, too, though her hands are clutching my legs in a death grip the whole way down. We finally come to a stop at the bottom of the hill and I wait to see how Tansy’s going to react.
It doesn’t take long. In seconds, she’s bouncing out of my arms, off the sled. “Come on! Let’s do it again,” she calls, already running back up the hill.
I grab the sled and follow her, shocked at how good it feels to just have fun. Logan is back at the lodge, drinking hot chocolate and playing cards with the others and for once, I don’t have to worry about him. I don’t have to worry about anything but not running Tansy and me into a tree—which is a mission I can totally handle.
We try out all three runs, then decide the middle one is our favorite and do it again and again and again. Tansy loves it, says she’s never felt so free, and I can’t help wondering if I can talk her into giving snowboarding a try. If she likes this, she’ll love the way it feels to barge down a mountain on a board.
And I’d love to teach her. Except … after this week, I don’t snowboard anymore. And even if I did, this thing between us is temporary. Just for fun. Once we get back home, we’ll go our separate ways and that will be that. I’ll go back to Logan and working at the resort and someone else can teach Tansy to snowboard.
The thought leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but I shove it away. Refuse to think about what’s going to happen after we get back home. I’m having fun with Tansy here, now, and for once I’m going to let that be enough.
At least that’s what I tell myself as we push off for another run.
We’re on the steepest run now, and we’re going fast—really fast—when I look up and realize that a large huemul is watching us from right at the bottom of the run. Shit. I try to steer around it, but if the stupid deer doesn’t move soon, we’re going to crash right into the thing.
“Ash! Look out!” Tansy calls.
“I’m trying,” I tell her, wondering what the hell kind of deer has a fucking death wish. We’re going too fast to do anything but brace
ourselves, so I wrap my arms around Tansy to protect her and hope I don’t end up getting trampled, or bit, too badly in the collision.
But at the last minute, the damn deer leaps out of the way and Tansy and I, who were still trying to avoid it, go careening into the base of the nearest tree.
We go flying at impact, and I don’t let her go. Instead, I twist to take the brunt of the fall when we hit the packed snow. We land with a pretty solid thud, one that knocks the wind out of me and has Tansy stretched out above me.
“Ash! Ash! Are you okay?” She scrambles into a sitting position, her eyes wide and worried as she runs her hands over my arms and chest, looking for broken bones, I assume.
“I’m fine,” I tell her when I can finally breathe again. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, of course. I barely felt anything with you on the bottom.”
“That’s the first time I’ve had that complaint,” I tell her, brow lifted. “I’ll have to work on it.”
“Ash!” She rolls her eyes at me, but she’s giggling, too. It’s a good sound, one that—combined with the way she’s still straddling my hips—makes me hard.
I roll her over then, and kiss her until we’re both completely breathless. But when I go to slide my hand inside her pants, Tansy stops me with a glare.
“We’ve already had this discussion. No frostbite on my ass. Remember?”
I do remember. I climb to my feet, pull her to hers. Then eye the tree we just crashed into. “So, uh, I understand the no frostbite rule. But how do you feel about splinters?”
Tansy follows my gaze then starts to laugh. “I actually feel surprisingly okay about splinters.”
“That’s what I was hoping you’d say.”
Chapter 20
Tansy
“Hey, you ready to go?” Ash’s voice comes through the hotel room door, just as I fasten the last button on my cardigan. We’re doing dinner tonight, just the two of us, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. I love spending time with the others, love spending time with Logan, but getting Ash to myself for a whole meal is more than I would have let myself hope for.
“Coming,” I answer, grabbing my shoes on the way to the door. I don’t want to waste a second of our night together.
Except, when I throw open the door, Ash takes one look at me and bursts out laughing.
“What’s so funny?” I demand, glancing down to see if maybe I’ve misbuttoned something. But no, everything looks like it’s in place—the oxford shirt, the cardigan, the khaki skirt.
“Is that really what you’re wearing to dinner?” he demands, pushing his way into the room and pulling me into his arms.
“I was planning on it,” I answer, pushing at his chest as I struggle against him. He doesn’t get to laugh at me and then kiss me like nothing happened. “What’s wrong with what I have on?”
“Nothing’s wrong with it. It just … doesn’t look like you.”
I stop struggling at that and look up into his eyes. “What do you mean?” How does he know what looks like me when I don’t even know?
“I don’t know. You’re not preppy.”
“I’m not?”
“No, you so totally are not.” He reaches down, unbuttons the pale blue cardigan. “And I don’t think you’re pastels, either. No offense.”
“None taken.” Still … “What are you doing?”
“Getting this thing off you.” He yanks the garment down my arms and tosses it onto the chair next to the door. “Doesn’t that feel better?”
It totally does, but I’m not going to tell him that. “No.”
“Probably because you still have this ridiculous white blouse on.” He reaches for the buttons on the blouse, but I slap his hands away. “I like this blouse.”
“No, you don’t. It’s too plain for you.”
Again, how can he know that when I don’t even know it? “Maybe I like plain.”
He laughs. He actually laughs. “Yeah. That’s why practically every time I see you, your hair is a different bright color. And why when we walk by the shops downstairs, you’re always oohing and aahing over the brightly colored sarongs. And why you always, always play with the colored flowers on the table at dinner. Because you like plain, white, boring stuff.”
I stare at him, thunderstruck. “I never noticed that I did any of those things. Well, I mean, except the hair. That was obviously deliberate.”
His fingers sneak back up to my buttons and he unfastens them quickly, one after the other. Within seconds, my shirt is gaping open and then he’s peeling it off, too, tossing it onto the chair, as well, and leaving me in nothing but a white lace bra and this admittedly ugly khaki skirt.
“That looks much better,” Ash tells me, his fingers toying with the scalloped edges of my bra.
“You just like it because I’m half naked.”
“Well, obviously.” He unzips my skirt, tugs it over my hips and lets it fall to the floor. “There, now you look amazing.”
Seeing as how I’m dressed in nothing but white lace lingerie and a pair of black high heels, I can see his point. However, “I can’t go to dinner like this.”
“Sure, you can.” He walks me back toward the bed. “Haven’t you ever heard of room service?”
“I thought we were going out?” I pout a little as he lowers me to the bed.
Ash stops kissing my shoulder, pulls back so he can look me in the eye. “We can go out, sweetheart. I didn’t realize it meant so much to you.”
It shouldn’t—after all, I have Ash right here with me and that’s all I really wanted for tonight. But I’ve never been on a real date before, with a guy who actually likes me and is attracted to me and who I know will kiss me (and more) at the end of the night. It sounds kind of fun, and since this is just a little midsummer fling, who knows when I’ll ever get the chance again.
Still, it’s silly to whine about it when I’ve got Ash right here, ready to kiss me and a whole lot more. “It’s fine. We can stay in.”
Again, he pulls back, looks at my face. Then smiles. “Nope. Sorry. I don’t know what kind of guy you think I am, but you’re definitely going to have to take me to dinner first.”
I burst out laughing. “Oh, really? You’re that kind of date, huh?”
“I am.”
“Well, we seem to have a problem, since you’ve divested me of all my clothes.”
“I’m sure you have other clothes. Better clothes than that ridiculous getup,” he says with a snarl.
“Wow, you really didn’t like the preppy clothes.”
“I really didn’t.”
I walk to the closet, pull out the short black skirt that Anna slipped into my suitcase, and a silky green blouse with a deep V-neck. Then, under Ash’s watchful eyes, slip them both on. The skirt only comes to mid thigh and the blouse shows a little more of my very microscopic chest than I might have originally intended, but the look on Ash’s face makes me feel good. Makes me feel beautiful despite the port scar that the shirt doesn’t quite hide.
“Better?” I ask.
“So much,” he says, his arms winding around my waist. “You look like Tansy now.”
Curious, I glance in the mirror, try to see what he sees. I have to admit, I like the way the color brightens up my skin, the way it shows off my eyes. So much better than the boring white and baby blue I was wearing earlier. Huh. Maybe I am figuring out who I am, one step a time. It’s a good thought. Even better, considering Ash is somehow a part of that discovery.
Reaching for him, I get on my tiptoes and kiss him hard. “Thank you.”
He looks baffled. “For what?”
For so many things that I don’t know where to start. So I settle for the most important one, the one that has had me waking up with a smile on my face every morning since we got here. “For being you.”
“Umm, okay.” He looks even more confused. But that’s okay. Because Ash may recognize parts of me before I do, but I’m finding out that I can do the same for him, with parts of h
imself that he’s lost these last seven months. And the parts of Ash Lewis that I’ve found so far? Pretty. Damn. Impressive.
Chapter 21
Ash
“I thought you were really great, Ash!”
I turn to smile at Timmy, despite the fact that we both know I totally bailed on my first run. My momentum was shit, I biffed two separate tricks and ended by doing an asspass right through the end of the pipe. Not exactly star snowboarder material.
“Thanks, Timmy. But I think the next run’ll probably go better.” Especially if I keep my head in the game and my eyes off Tansy’s ass. She showed up just as I was getting ready to roll and watching her bend over, messing with her boots, shot my concentration all to hell. Of course, Luc and Z had seen the whole thing and have been giving me shit about it for the last twenty minutes. Hence the reason Timmy feels the need to defend me.
He shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. I just like being out here with you guys. It’s awesome.”
Fuck, how can this kid be dying and still have such a sunny attitude? It doesn’t make any fucking sense to me, but it sure as hell makes me feel totally bunk. What the hell is wrong with me that I can’t keep it together when Timmy—who by rights should be a total fucking basket case—can smile like he’s got the whole fucking world at his feet?
“We like being out here with you, too.” I hold up a fist and he bumps it, then we turn and watch as Cam just fucking smokes the pipe with a run that is totally Broadway. It’s the same run she used to pull down the silver medal in Sochi and it looks better than ever. The girl has sick skills.
Luc starts getting ready for his run, and I glance back at Timmy just in time to see him staring at the half-pipe with a faraway look on his face. I know the look—have seen it on thousands of faces through the years—including my own. Timmy, for all his sickness, is a daredevil. He wants to be out there, riding the pipe with the rest of us.
Suddenly, an idea comes to me and I almost blurt it out before I can stop myself. I don’t, though—I have to check with his parents first. The last thing I want is to disappoint Timmy—or to put them in the role of bad guys. God knows, I’ve had to play that part with Logan often enough in the last seven months. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else.