by Pamela Clare
WHOOMP!
A deep rumble filled the air as the snow on the slope below them shifted.
Kevin grinned. “This slope is primed to slide.”
“So … more charges then?” asked Ben.
“Yep.”
Jesse got to work building more bombs.
By late afternoon, Ellie’s sore throat and fever were gone. Daniel was feeling better, too, judging from the way he bounded around the house in his Superman pajamas, little cape fluttering behind him.
Thank God for antibiotics.
Certain they all needed something healthful and restoring for supper, she decided to make chicken soup from scratch using some frozen chicken stock she’d made during the holidays. Her vision of how the evening would go—the kids playing peacefully in the playroom while she cooked and listened to NPR in the kitchen—was not at all how things turned out.
She’d just begun sautéing an onion when she heard Daisy wail. She wiped her hands on a towel and hurried to the playroom to find her little girl in tears.
“Danny fwoo a bock,” she sobbed, holding her right cheek.
“Let me see.” Ellie kissed her. “You’re going to be okay.”
Then she turned to Daniel, who stood there looking like he might cry, too. “Did you throw a block at your sister?”
Daniel wasn’t yet as verbal as Daisy, which left him at a distinct disadvantage when it came to these situations. “Day boke it.”
“She broke something you built?”
He nodded, despair and tears filling his blue eyes, his lower lip quivering.
“That’s not a reason to hit your sister. You hurt her. See?” She touched her finger to the red mark on Daisy’s cheek.
This was too much for Daniel, who probably hadn’t meant to hurt his sister. He began to cry, too.
Ellie resisted the urge to hug them both and stayed focused on the lesson. “Tell Daisy you’re sorry.”
He managed to get the words out amid his tears. “Sowwy, Day.”
Ellie looked at her daughter. “You upset Daniel when you knocked over his blocks. That wasn’t a nice thing to do.”
Daisy’s lower lip quivered. “It was too taw.”
“Too tall?” Ellie had to bite back a smile. “Daniel can build whatever he wants to build. You don’t get to decide what’s too tall. That’s not your choice to make. Now, what do you say to your brother?”
“Sowwy, Danny.”
And peace was restored.
Unfortunately, she’d left the stove on, and the onion was burned, leaving her to start over.
Ten minutes later, Daniel tripped and bumped his head on the floor. Then Daisy shut her finger in the toy box. No real damage was done in either case—except to Ellie’s nerves. In the end, she did what she swore she’d never do. She popped in a DVD and left Elmo to babysit the kids while she made dinner.
Life as a single mother was anything but graceful.
Jesse dropped down the ridge into Snow in Summer, a dense glade that cut from Eagle Ridge toward the double-blacks below. His skis surfed through the powder, sent it billowing into his face, a cloud of cold white. Face shots and fresh powder. Did winter get any better than this?
Of course, he wasn’t up here to have fun. It was closing time after a long and busy day. His job now was to sweep the double-blacks and glades to make sure no guests were left behind when the slopes closed. He’d already caught a pair of losers trying to make their way uphill outside the resort boundary for one last run. They hadn’t liked him much when he’d revoked their season passes for two weeks.
“You want to break the rules? You gotta pay.”
But now the slopes were empty, not a soul in sight.
Jesse let skis and snow carry him, the day’s tension melting away.
A glimpse of red.
Jesse stopped, then skied off into the trees for a closer look. Someone had probably lost a glove or something.
No, not a glove. It was a boot—and the boot was attached to a leg.
Adrenaline shot through Jesse’s veins. “Son of a bitch.”
He bent down, moved snow away with his hands, and found a young man upside down in a tree well, dried blood on his forehead. He reached down and felt for a pulse, certain the kid was dead.
The lucky bastard was still alive.
Jesse reached for his hand mic. “Forty-two to dispatch.”
Matt’s voice came back to him. “Go ahead.”
“Code 3, Snow in Summer. I’ve got an unconscious man, probably mid-twenties, upside down in a tree well. It looks like he hit the tree with his head as he fell headfirst into the well. No helmet. Suspected head injury, possible internal injuries and spinal cord trauma. We’re going to need a chopper.”
“Copy that. Patrollers are being dispatched via snowmobile to help prepare for chopper transport. Hang tight. Do what you can.”
“Forty-two out.” Jesse shucked off his pack, reached inside, and pulled out the emergency blanket. He didn’t dare move the kid by himself. All he could do until other patrollers arrived was try to keep him warm and monitor his pulse. He wrapped the blanket around him as best he could and listened for the sound of the approaching snowmobile.
By the time Ellie got the kids fed and bathed, read them bedtime stories, and got them to sleep, she was exhausted, the lingering effects of illness leaving her sapped.
She was about to retreat to the sanctity of sleep when the phone rang. It was Claire, her younger sister. A massage therapist, Claire lived in Boulder with her husband, Cedar, a computer engineer.
“Hey, sis. Mom says you’re having one hell of a weekend. What’s going on?”
Ellie told Claire the whole story—how Daisy had caught strep and passed it on, how the car had died in the middle of the snowstorm, how Jesse Moretti had given her a ride, how Dad had gotten the car towed to the garage and arranged for a rental. “He was out there at five this morning, shoveling my walk.”
“Dad needs to watch it. At his age—”
“Not Dad. Jesse Moretti. I heard a scraping sound and looked out to find him shoveling my walk.”
“Oh. Oh! I want to hear more about this guy.”
Ellie knew what her sister was thinking. “It’s not like that. Jesse is just my neighbor.”
A tall, good-looking, thoughtful neighbor, but Claire didn’t need to know that.
“Oh, well.” The disappointment in her sister’s voice almost made Ellie laugh. There was a moment of silence. “But is he single?”
Hope sprang eternal with Claire where Ellie’s love life was concerned.
“Yes—at least I think so.” He hadn’t mentioned a wife, and there’d been no ring on his finger. Yes, Ellie had looked. “He’s with the Team and works as a ski patroller. I heard he used to be an Army Ranger.”
He had that military bearing—an intensity, that constant awareness, a hint of aggression. She had noticed that despite being sick.
“So he’s brave, ripped, and super athletic, but broke. Hmm.”
“Claire, he’s my neighbor.”
“So much the better. He won’t have far to go when you hook up.”
“We’re not going to hook up.” Even as she said the words, Ellie’s pulse skipped, an image of Jesse standing shirtless at the reservoir flashing through her mind.
The man was blazing hot.
“It’s been almost four years, sis. Four years.”
Ellie tried not to get irritated with Claire. Her sister had been her rock after Dan’s death, flying to Kentucky, staying with her for six weeks. She’d helped Ellie make the funeral arrangements and held her hand through the service when Ellie had been broken with grief. She’d helped Ellie put her house on the market. Once the house had sold, it was Claire who’d dealt with the movers.
“You don’t think I know that? But if I were going to get involved with someone, it wouldn’t be a man who does risky things for a living. I lost one husband. I couldn’t survive losing another.”
“We all lose
the ones we love, and they lose us. If you stop caring about people, you’ll miss out on happiness. If you could go back in time, would you avoid getting together with Dan?”
“No, of course not! What a stupid question.”
“I know you miss Dan, and I know you love those kids, but you need some adult time—if you know what I mean, and I think you do.”
Oh, yes, she did.
Sex.
She hadn’t been with a man since the night before Dan deployed that last time in 2013. His death, her pregnancy, and the birth of the twins had made sex the farthest thing from her mind. But lately…
Still, the idea of getting naked with some random guy held no emotional appeal. Dan had been the love of her life. When she imagined having sex with another man, it only made her miss him more. She wasn’t even sure she’d be able to enjoy it. Her heart just wasn’t in it. Apart from sexual frustration and the love she felt for the twins, she had long since gone numb.
“Maybe you should invite Jesse over for dinner—you know, just to thank him.”
Yeah … no. That wasn’t going to happen.
But she did need to call him or send a thank-you card.
“On that note… ” Ellie got up from the sofa and started toward her bedroom. “I need to get some sleep.”
She thanked her sister for checking on her and ended the call, then brushed her teeth, tears filling her eyes when she met her own gaze in the mirror.
Almost four years. It felt like an eternity.
Oh, Dan.
Chapter 3
The next day turned out to be the strangest in Jesse’s short career as a patroller. It started out normal enough. He responded to a few injury calls—two skiers with knee injuries and a snowboarder with a dislocated shoulder.
Nothing strange about that.
Then, shortly after noon, he helped evacuate a teenager who had wiped out getting off the ski lift and couldn’t get back on his feet. It took Jesse all of two seconds to realize that the kid wasn’t injured. He was stupid drunk.
From there, the day took a dive off the deep end.
Jesse was patrolling Aspen Glow, one of the double-black diamond trails, when a man ran out from the cover of the trees, barefoot and buck naked, flapping his arms and making weird bird-like noises.
What the fuck?
Jesse called it in, then did his best to restrain the guy, who was at risk for hypothermia and even frostbite, but the man fought like a wildcat, seemingly impervious to the cold. By the time Jesse managed to subdue the man, he was winded, his face inches from the guy’s junk. It took him a moment to realize what he was hearing.
Cheers.
Jesse looked up to find people on the lift applauding, some even filming him or taking photos with their smartphones.
Shit.
He focused on his job. “Don’t fight me, buddy. I’m not trying to hurt you. Let’s get you warm.”
Whether the man understood him, Jesse couldn’t say, but the fight seemed to leave him. Jesse wrapped him in an emergency blanket and waited for what felt like an eternity for a rescue team to show up with a toboggan. A crowd gathered on the slope around him.
“Don’t block the slope. The show’s over, folks. Move along.”
But the show wasn’t over. When the team arrived, the man started to fight again, yapping and howling like a wounded animal. It took four men to move him to the toboggan and strap him down.
While the others gathered up the man’s clothes and gear, which lay in a pile among the trees, Jesse was given the honor of skiing down with the toboggan, its passenger yipping and whooping all the way back to the lodge and the waiting ambulance.
“Psilocybin mushrooms,” one of the EMTs said. “We see this shit a lot.”
Jesse shook his head. “Why the hell would anyone want to take a drug that makes them stupid?”
“No clue.” The EMT closed the ambulance doors. “Thanks for bringing him safely down.”
“Just doing my job.”
By the time Jesse finished his last sweep that evening and headed back to the locker room, he was bone tired. Most of the patrollers were already there, sitting around, unopened beers in hand, their parkas and boots still on. No one took off their gear or cracked open a beer until all the patrollers were safely down for the night.
“Hey, Jesse.” Ben grinned. “I heard you got into an MMA match with a naked dude on Aspen Glow.”
This made everyone laugh, except Amanda, who had apparently missed the call.
“What?” Amanda stared at him. “Seriously?”
Jesse ought to have known he’d be ribbed about this. “The guy ran at me from the trees, whooping and flapping his arms. The EMTs said he was tripping on mushrooms.”
Amanda shook her head. “Just when you think you’ve seen everything…”
“There’s a video on Facebook,” Steve held up his smartphone. “Check it out.”
Jesse went to sit near his locker, shaking his head at the sight of his fellow patrollers bending over a cell phone to watch him wrestle a naked guy.
“Full-frontal male nudity, and I missed it,” Amanda said.
Travis laughed. “I guess that’s one way to freeze your balls off.”
“Whoa!” Doug glanced over at Jesse as the video came to an end. “You trying to sixty-nine him, Moretti?”
Jesse flipped him the bird.
Then Kevin stepped inside, snow on his boots, cheeks red from the cold, his appearance initiating the pop of a half dozen beer tabs and bringing the day to an end.
Matt got to his feet. “Thanks for your work today, people. And, hey, Jesse, the parents of the kid you found yesterday called. They wanted to thank you and to let us know that it looks like he’s going to make it.”
A warm rush of satisfaction cut through Jesse’s fatigue. “That’s good news.”
Every time he helped save a life, he felt an indescribable sense of relief, as if all were right with the world—at least for a few minutes. Esri, the Team therapist, had wanted to explore this with him, but Jesse thought she was being ridiculous. Didn’t everyone who did rescue work feel that way after a good call? She was making an issue out of nothing.
Travis called over to him, shouting to be heard over so many voices and the clunking and slamming of gear and locker doors. “We’re heading to Knockers. Want to join us?”
Named after the legendary Tommyknockers that supposedly dwelled in the mines above town, Knockers was Scarlet Springs’ answer to the brewpub craze, but with a twist. It had a climbing wall—and the best damned pizza in the state.
Jesse wasn’t hungry—and he had plans. “I’ve got to get to a Team meeting.”
He packed away his gear, clocked out, and headed to his Jeep.
He drove down the mountain and straight to The Cave—Team headquarters—where the parking lot was filled to overflowing. This wasn’t just a meeting for primary members. Megs had also called in secondary Team members—those who provided support services—as well as provisional members who hoped to become primary members one day.
Jesse stepped inside and walked toward the operations room, the day’s tension slipping away as he crossed the large bay that held the Team’s two rescue vehicles and all of its climbing and rescue gear. As much as he enjoyed his job as a ski patroller, this was his home away from home.
In the ops room, Megs had already started roll call, her shoulder-length gray hair tied back in a ponytail, bright red reading glasses perched on her nose. “Nice of you to join us, Moretti. Heard you had an exciting day.”
Jesse stopped and stared at her. “Not you, too.”
“It’s all over the Internet, man.” Creed Herrera held up his smartphone, a shit-eating grin on his face. “You took down that skinny naked guy like a boss.”
Laughter.
“That skinny naked guy was tripping and a lot stronger than you’d think.” Jesse got himself a cup of coffee then sat between Eric Hawke, the town’s fire chief and one of the Team’s best climbers, a
nd Herrera, who until this moment had been Jesse’s best bud. He started to remove his parka, but felt strangely cold and so left it on.
Megs continued her way down the list, using full names despite the fact that they’d worked together for years and probably knew each other better than they knew their families. “Malachi O’Brien. Isaac Rogers. Gabe Rossiter … is excused. Jack Sullivan.”
That was the thing about Megs. She was a perfectionist who never cut corners. That quality had helped her become a legend back in the days when rock climbing was a fringe sport dominated by men. Sometimes her nitpicking got on Jesse’s nerves, but that attention to detail and refusal to take shortcuts had given the Team its reputation as the best search and rescue team in the nation. Jesse could respect that.
“Nicole Turner. Austin Taylor. Lexi Taylor … who is looking very pregnant.”
Lexi, the Team’s accountant and wife of Austin Taylor, the Team’s best lead climber, ran a hand over her rounded belly, a smile on her pretty face. “Only ten weeks till my due date.”
Roll call completed, Megs set her clipboard aside and pulled her glasses off her nose. “Okay. Glad to see all of you here. We’ve got a few pieces of business tonight, and then you can go waste time staring at your TVs or your phones or do whatever it is you do. The first item on the agenda is SnowFest.”
“It’s that time of year again,” said Chaska Belcourt, who was as good a climber as he was a mechanical engineer. The son of a Lakota Sun Dance chief, he’d come to Colorado to study engineering and had stayed for the climbing. His sister Winona, a vet who ran a rehab clinic for wildlife, had joined him.
Megs went on. “I don’t need to remind you—or maybe I do—that the Team gets about fifteen percent of its annual operating budget from SnowFest proceeds. We’ve been asked to volunteer again this year, and I expect each and every one of you to sign up. Hawke is the only person who gets a pass because he has to play fire chief all weekend.”
All eyes turned to Hawke, who nodded. “It makes up a chunk of the fire department’s budget, too.”
Megs held up a printout. “We’ve got the usual events—ice climbing, the polar bear plunge, a snowman competition for kids, the snow sculpture contest for adults. Knockers is sponsoring a new shotski event—”
