Falling Hard (Colorado High Country #3)

by Pamela Clare

  “My Italian mother would roll over in her grave if I used sauce from a jar.”

  She laughed. “Just tell me what you need—”

  He came up behind her, wrapped one arm around her waist, and kissed her cheek, his masculine scent spilling over her. “Unless you keep your pots and pans under your bed or something weird like that, I can handle this. You go chill.”

  Jesse set the salad on the table. “Buon appetito.”

  Ellie slipped a bib over each twin’s head. “You speak Italian?”

  It took him a moment to answer. He had noticed that she wasn’t wearing a bra the moment she’d stepped out of her bedroom, and some part of his mind was stuck on one thought: boobs. “Italian? Just a little, mostly cuss words.”

  Pull it together, idiot. You’ve already seen her boobs.

  And touched them and kissed them and tasted them.

  Damn.

  She grabbed a few paper napkins. “Who taught you to cook? It’s not a skill you picked up in the army. I know that much.”

  “My mother taught me.” While Ellie served the kids, Jesse filled her plate and then his own. “I watched her cook. I like good food, so I paid attention.”

  Also, the closer he was to his mother, the less likely his father was to take a belt— or a fist—to him.

  “Try to eat with your fork, Daisy.” Ellie gave a helpless shrug as both kids began picking up pasta and bits of sausage with their fingers and shoving them into their little mouths. “How did you survive deployment? MREs aren’t exactly gourmet.”

  “You can get used to almost anything, but if I never lay eyes on an MRE again, it will be too soon.” He set a plate for Ellie and one for himself on the table and sat.

  She closed her eyes and sniffed, her lips curving into a smile, her fingers curling around the handle of her fork. “This smells amazing.”

  “Wait till you taste it.” Jesse watched while she took her first bite. He couldn’t remember feeling nervous about anyone eating his cooking before.

  Her eyes drifted shut as she chewed. “Mmm.”

  “You like it?”

  “It’s delicious.” She dabbed her lips with a napkin. “It’s the best homemade spaghetti I’ve ever tasted.”

  A knot of tension inside him dissolved. “You should try my lasagna.”

  Listen to you. Who’s cocky now?

  “Feel free to make it for us anytime. Seriously.” There was a sparkle in those green eyes that hadn’t been there when she’d gotten home.

  Jesse could see she’d been crying. Her puffy eyes told him that. He knew how fucking much it hurt to want desperately to save a life—only to find yourself helpless. And when that life was a child’s…

  Don’t go there, buddy.

  She seemed to relax as she ate, shaking her head at the mess the twins made of themselves, spaghetti sauce on their faces from ear to ear. “Sometimes I wonder if they’re getting any food into their tummies.”

  Jesse glanced under the table. “I can see why you worry.”

  Between the sauce on their faces and fingers—and the pasta on their bibs and the floor—it hardly seemed like they could have eaten enough to survive.

  As they finished the meal, Jesse found himself wondering what it would be like to have a wife and kids, to sit down like this with them for dinner every night, to spend the evening with a family.

  You’re out of your fucking mind.

  He wasn’t a family man. The fact that he’d survived a handful of hours with two toddlers didn’t change that. Besides, no woman in her right mind would want to take him on. He was only here because he had wanted to do his part. In fact, it was probably time for him to pack up his stuff and go home.

  But he didn’t. As the hours stretched on, he kept finding reasons to stay. Helping Ellie with the dishes. Playing dump truck with Daniel while Ellie gave Daisy her bath. Holding Daisy and reading her a story while her brother was in the tub, her blond head resting trustingly against his chest, one little hand wrapped around his finger, the sweet baby scent of her hair putting an ache in his chest.

  He just couldn’t walk away from that.

  When the kids were asleep, Ellie walked back out to the living room, somehow managing to look tired, sad, and beautiful at the same time.

  He stood. “Do they sleep all night?”

  “Usually.” She took his hand. “You did really well with them. I’m impressed.”

  “They’re sweet kids.” He was a little surprised to realize he meant that.

  She stepped into his arms. “You were my hero today.”

  Part of him was pleased by this. At the same time, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be anyone’s hero. He’d tried being a hero before—and had failed.

  She looked up at him. “Do you want to stay for a while?”

  What he wanted was space, a little air, some time alone.

  He drew away. “Not tonight. I’ve got to be up at four.”

  “Oh. Right. I probably ought to go to bed soon anyway. Thanks to a certain someone—that would be you—I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  So he wasn’t the only one. He liked that.

  Jesse tried to run, whitewater crashing against his thighs, dragging him down, making it almost impossible to move.

  The child screamed, arms flailing, her terrified eyes looking into his for a moment before the creek rolled her over like a toy and swept her beyond his reach.

  He ran as fast as he could, but it was so hard, water slowing his legs, making him fight for every inch. He reached for her again—and again the creek took her.

  “She’s dead,” Megs said from the embankment behind him.

  No. She couldn’t be. He wasn’t going to let her die.

  Goddamn it!

  He kicked against the water, fought his way through it, searching.

  Ellie did some quick cleaning Thursday morning, then packed the kids in the car and drove down the canyon to Claire’s house. Flowers and stuffed animals sat at the intersection where the school bus had been hit, but Ellie tried not to look. The roadside memorials reminded her of people she’d known or cared for and lost.

  She didn’t often take the kids to her sister’s condo. The place was modernist with floor-to-ceiling windows on the west side that offered a beautiful view of the Flatirons, but it was also completely un-childproofed.

  Ellie shut the bathroom and bedroom doors to limit the amount of damage the kids could do to themselves or her sister and brother-in-law’s property, then settled the kids in the living room with the box of toys Claire kept for them.

  She plopped down on the sofa across from Claire, who sat in the recliner where she could keep her injured leg elevated. “Dad said you’re scheduled for surgery at St. Luke’s Friday morning.”

  “I’m dreading it. You know me. I hate needles. I asked if they could skip the IV, but the doctor said no.”

  “I wish I could be with you.” Ellie worked on Fridays, and St. Luke’s was in Denver.

  “Cedar is taking the day off, so he’ll be with me.”

  Ellie realized Daniel was about to dig into the dirt of Claire’s potted ficus tree with a plastic toy screwdriver. “Daniel, no! Don’t dig in Auntie Claire’s plant.”

  Claire told Ellie what the surgeon had said—how long she would have to be on crutches, how important physical therapy would be to her recovery. “Cedar and I are going to my office tonight to see whether we can adapt the treatment room so that I can give massages from a rolling saddle chair.”

  That didn’t sound like it would be easy.

  “Do you have a chair like that?”

  Claire shook her head, pointed to Daniel. “We saw some online. They’re not too expensive.”

  “Daniel, stop. No.” Ellie got to her feet, picked Daniel up, and pulled him away from the plant once more. “If you do that again, I’ll take the screwdriver away.”

  Daisy, meanwhile, was playing with a little toy that made animal noises, moos and quacks and oinks holding her at
tention.

  Claire got that sly look on her face that usually meant she was about to meddle in Ellie’s life. “Mom told me that Jesse babysat for you yesterday.”

  Ellie sat again, unable to keep a smile off her face. “He did a great job. When I got home, he had Daisy’s tiara on his head. He’d forgotten it was there.”

  “Oh! I like this guy.”

  “He even made us dinner—spaghetti with homemade meat sauce.”

  Claire gaped at her. “He cooked for you? Please tell me you slept with him.”

  Ellie glared at her sister. “Could you maybe not talk about it quite so openly? Daisy repeats everything these days.”

  “Oh, sorry. Did you F-U-C-K yet?”

  “No! But I wanted to.” Ellie told her how she’d invited Jesse over for a glass of wine—and how that had led to other things. “He is the most amazing kisser. He really knows how to use his mouth.”

  “How far did you go?”

  “Just second base.”

  “Awesome. Wait. Is second base…” Claire made a wanking motion.

  “That’s not second base. That’s third base. Isn’t it?”

  “I thought third base was, you know…” Claire stuck out her tongue and wiggled it—at which point the conversation seemed so absurd that they both burst into laughter.

  “We sound … like we’re back … in high school,” Ellie managed to say.

  When the giggles subsided, Ellie lowered her voice. “We kissed and got under each other’s shirts.”

  “And?” Claire looked at her expectantly.

  “And what?”

  “How was it?”

  “It was incredible. Truly. I didn’t sleep all night. I haven’t felt this alive since…”

  The words “since Dan was killed” hung, unspoken, in the space between them.

  “When are you going to see Jesse again?”

  “I don’t know.” Ellie and Jesse hadn’t talked about it. “Soon, I hope.”

  Jesse skied slowly down Ashes to Ashes, towing a toboggan and doing his best to avoid the bumps that made the snowboarder he was evacuating scream. Travis skied down behind him, making sure Jesse didn’t cut across the paths of other skiers.

  “Traverse!” Jesse called out.

  “Clear!”

  Jesse snowplowed into the turn and cut back across the slope, using the edges of his skis to keep his speed under control, the weight of the toboggan pushing him down the fall line.

  He hit a small bump.

  “Goddamn it.” The kid had taken a nasty fall off the halfpipe in the terrain park, and Jesse was pretty sure his radius was fractured.

  “Sorry, buddy,” he called back.

  It had been a busy day so far, which was just as well. There’d been two calls for knee injuries, one for a fight in the lift line, and another about a couple fucking behind the ski patrol cabin at the top of Eagle Ridge. It had kept Jesse’s mind off things he didn’t want to think about—like Ellie, like the nightmare.

  He’d had it again last night for the first time in maybe four months and had woken up covered in cold sweat, his pulse racing. He’d thought he was done with that shit. Hearing about the bus crash and that little boy’s death had probably triggered it.

  Hell, he didn’t know.

  But Esri would. She’d been the one who’d stopped the nightmares before. He couldn’t go back to the way he’d been this past August, when he’d had that same nightmare four and five times a night, so he’d made an appointment with her this evening. He was probably overreacting, but he’d rather take action sooner than later.

  He got the victim down, helped him out of the toboggan and walked with him into the First Aid Center. “They’ll take good care of you.”

  He glanced at his watch. It was after one.

  Time for his lunch break.

  He skied to the Ski Patrol chalet, stepped out of his bindings, and stowed his skis in the rack, then walked in and cleared his break with dispatch. He took advantage of his time off the slopes to call Nate West and set up a day to practice skijoring. They quickly settled on next Wednesday—his next day off.

  “I’ll see if we can’t create a mini-skijoring course up here to give you a taste of what it’s really like,” Nate said.

  Jesse would be impressed if they could pull that off. “Terrific.”

  “Matt tells me you served with the Rangers.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So did my father. He did two tours with the Seventy-Fifth during Vietnam. I imagine you two could find a lot to talk about.”

  “I bet we could.”

  “Matt also says you’re a natural-born athlete, that you learned to climb and made the Team in a handful of months.”

  “Matt has a big damned mouth.”

  That made Nate chuckle. “We’ll see you up here next Wednesday. I’ll text directions to the ranch.”

  “Thanks.” Jesse ended the call, feeling a little lighter.

  Jesse walked into Esri’s office, which occupied a set of rooms on the ground floor of an old Victorian-style home on Second Street across from Food Mart. The waiting area was decorated in shades of green, tan, and soft blue—calming colors, he supposed. It had a little fountain in the corner, the tinkling of water mixing with Japanese flute music. A mezuzah hung just outside the front door, a cross hanging on one wall, a dream catcher on another, while a smiling golden Buddha sat on the coffee table surrounded by magazines.

  Esri had all the bases covered. Or maybe she saw it all as part of her heritage. What did she tell him she was? Tibetan and Jewish?

  He sat, uneasy to be here again. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Esri. She was kind. She was smart. She was also cute—maybe five-two with a feminine face, shoulder-length dark hair, and big brown eyes. But when he was with her, he felt transparent, naked.

  He hated that.

  The door to her inner office opened, and she stepped out, wearing an oversized sweater that emphasized how petite she was.

  She smiled when she saw him. “I didn’t hear you enter. Come in.”

  The inner room where she met with clients was cozy, its walls a shade of ivory, the carpeting white, the plush armchairs a soft shade of gray.

  She sat and waited for him to do the same. “How have you been? It’s been more than four months since our last session.”

  “I’ve been good. Ski season has been busy. I helped save a skier’s life last week after an avalanche buried him.”

  “I heard about that. It’s not often you get a happy ending with an avalanche.”

  “No. It isn’t.” It wasn’t natural for him to talk about feelings. Maybe some guys found it easy, but he didn’t. Still, he’d had training for post-traumatic stress and knew damned well that there was no shortcut here. “I had the same nightmare last night—the one I used to have all the time.”

  “The dream where you try to save Kayla Fisher, and she gets swept away?”

  He nodded. “I thought if we talked about it right away, maybe it wouldn’t go back to being a nightly thing again.”

  God, he didn’t want that.

  “I don’t know that we can guarantee that, but I think you made the right decision.” She gave him a reassuring smile.

  “There was a bus crash yesterday. A friend of mine—a woman—she’s a nurse. She got called in to help with the casualties. A little boy she was taking care of died. I heard about it afterward. I wonder if that’s what triggered the dream.”

  She seemed to consider that. “It could be. There are some similarities between what your friend went through and what you’ve been through.”

  That’s exactly what he’d thought.

  “I have a question for you. What kind of emotions do you feel when you’re stuck in that nightmare?”

  Jesse didn’t have to think about it. “Helpless. I can’t move fast enough. I just feel—yeah, helpless. And desperate. I would do anything to save her, but I can’t.”

  That’s how it had been in real life, too.r />
  “I think anyone who’d been there, who’d gone into the water after her, would feel the same way. So there’s nothing out of the ordinary about your emotions, either in the nightmare or in real life.”

  “Yeah.” They’d talked about this before.

  “What else has been going on in your life?”

  “I kind of met this woman. She’s got twins—a boy and a girl—that are almost three. Her husband was a pilot and was killed in Iraq.” Hell, he’d probably told Esri enough for her to know which woman he was talking about.

  Scarlet Springs was a tiny town, after all.

  If she knew, she didn’t give it away. “Are you dating?”

  “I don’t know that I’d call it that. I’ve never wanted to be a father. I’m not into kids, and she has kids, so that kind of rules out anything serious.” He told Esri how he and Ellie had met, how Ellie had invited him over for a glass of wine, and how he’d babysat for her yesterday so she could help at the hospital.

  “You babysat?” Jesse had never seen surprise on Esri’s face—until now. “That’s really stepping out of your comfort zone, isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “You could say that. Toddlers, little kids—they’re so helpless.”

  Helpless.

  The word echoed, reminded him of what he’d said a few minutes ago.

  “What is it? You’ve got a faraway look on your face all of a sudden.”

  “Do you think babysitting could explain the nightmare?”

  “What do you think?”

  Until yesterday, he’d have said that the idea of babysitting was a nightmare, but it hadn’t been that bad.

  “It was strange. I could’ve gone home after she got back from the hospital, but I didn’t. I grabbed some stuff out of my fridge—we’re neighbors—and made dinner for them. I could have gone home after that, but I didn’t.”

  “What does that tell you?”

  “I don’t know. That I really need to get laid?”

  “Maybe it says that you were enjoying yourself, that you were getting something out of spending time with them that you didn’t expect.”

  He remembered how it had felt to hold Daisy, to sit on the floor playing dump truck with Daniel, to see Ellie’s face when she inhaled the scent of his meat sauce.