by Sarina Bowen
“We might die of thirst first. Go.”
He felt her turn toward him in the dark. “I have to throw a flag on that one, mister,” she said. “We’re not trapped in a barn like them, we’re surrounded by water. How about this: I left a pot of chili cooking in my kitchen, and it might burn. Go.”
“New rule,” he announced. “Let’s not talk about food. I’ve been working out since five-thirty this morning, and lunch was five hours ago. Your turn.”
“All right…” Willow sounded as if she was running out of complaints, at least the ones she was willing to tell a stranger. “There is going to be some world-class shoveling to do tomorrow.”
“Well, I have to flag that one,” Dane said. “Because shoveling means snow, and I live for snow. So here’s the real bummer. We’re getting two feet of freshy, and I can’t ski on it tomorrow. I have to travel.”
“The snow will still be here when you get back,” Willow pointed out.
“You aren’t a skier, are you? There’s nothing like first tracks. Flying down a slope in un-tracked powder is the best thing there is. It’s better than sex.”
Willow burst out laughing. “You did not just say that.”
“What?”
“I feel sorry for your girlfriend,” she giggled.
“I don’t have one.”
But that only made her laugh harder. “Sorry, I’m no expert on skiing, so it’s possible that you know something I don’t. On the other hand, it’s also possible that you’re meeting the wrong girls.”
He grinned in the dark. “Fair enough. I think it’s your turn.”
“Ah.” She took a deep breath. “Okay, my ex called today and asked me to sell his motorcycle and wire him the money. As if that would take no effort on my part. Even though he left me in debt.” Her voice quavered a bit at the end. Their little game had turned into a peculiar little confessional. “Your turn.”
“My brother is dying,” Dane bit out. “And I’m supposed to be driving to see him right now.”
Christ. He had no idea what made him tell her that. To say that he wasn’t a sharer was putting it mildly. But the dark and the warm sound of her voice had loosened up his tongue.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
He shook his head in the darkness. “It’s been a long illness. I’ve known it was coming.”
“What’s his name?” she asked.
Her choice of questions made him like her even more. It wasn’t a nosy what’s wrong with him? Instead, she’d asked something much more relevant, something which honored his brother the way Dane thought of him—a happy, laughing man. The father that Dane never had.
“He’s Finn,” he answered. “We’re Finn and Dane. My mother had a thing for Scandinavia.”
Poor Finn.
For almost fifteen years, Dane had known Finn would die. When Dane was a teenager, his brother sat him down and explained it. “It killed mom, and it will eventually kill me, too. But maybe not you, Danger man, you just keep skiing fast, and maybe you’ll outrun it.”
He and Finn were ten years apart. His brother had been twenty-five at the time he received his diagnosis. Poor Finn had started showing symptoms a good decade earlier than most people with the disease. Now Finn was not quite forty, and Dane was about to turn thirty.
And eventually, the symptoms would come for him, too.
No matter what his brother said, Dane was sure of it. He had spent the last fifteen years trying to accept it. And this was Dane’s true secret. The fact that his brother was sick could slip out, sitting next to a silky-haired girl in a dark car…that didn’t matter—not really. But nothing could shake that other truth from his lips. If anyone ever found out about the genetic time bomb that awaited him, Dane would lose his place on the ski team, his endorsements. Everything.
“It can’t be easy,” Willow said, her voice low. “Watching somebody die.”
He lifted his arms behind his head, grabbing the headrest with both hands. “We all go someday, right?” How many times had Dane said that aloud—a million? And always with the unfortunate knowledge that while there are many ways to die, he’d seen one of the ugliest. First his mother, and now Finn.
“I guess so,” she said softly.
“Including your chickens?”
She laughed. “Don’t say that. They’ll probably be fine. I’m just mad at myself for driving out through the storm. I’ve tried to become a country girl, but it just never quite stuck.”
“So you’re not from around here either, like you accused me of a little while ago….”
She laughed again, and it was a musical sound. He decided he wanted to hear that laugh a few more times before the plow truck showed up. “No, before we moved here, I lived in Manhattan for seven years. I went to NYU, and then did most of a doctorate.”
“So…then you decided to move to the sticks and raise chickens?”
“Ugh. Do I have to tell this part?”
“No,” he said quickly. “Not if it’s painful.”
“It’s just painfully stupid,” she sighed. “I followed a guy here two years ago. He was very interested in the back-to-the-land movement. Unfortunately he was also very interested in a twenty-one-year-old folk singer. So now I own a hundred-year-old farmhouse on fifteen acres, which I cannot sell. I can’t get a decent job, and I can’t finish my graduate degree. I’m kind of stuck, and there’s nobody to blame.”
“Except for the asshole.”
“Except for him. But if I’d been smarter, it wouldn’t have happened. Now he’s in California. He’s gotten smarter, too, I think. She has a trust fund.”
“Christ,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
A silence fell between them. “Excuse me for a minute, I’m going to check the tailpipe,” he said. He opened the door, which brought the dome light on again, and he got another look at Willow’s face. This time she smiled at him, and her big hazel eyes shone. God, she was pretty. In a perfect world he could run his fingers through that hair, taste those perfect lips. Hell, if he was going to dream big, in a perfect world he could go home to something like that every night.
But not this world. Never in this one. He shut the door.
The wind whipped his face as Dane walked to the back of the car. For a moment, he couldn’t see at all. The gust pushed on his chest so fiercely that he put a hand out, his fingers finding the Jeep’s frame. He followed it around to the back, where his taillights revealed that snow was drifting everywhere, accumulating in spite of the wind block he’d tried to make with the skis. He kicked as much snow away from the rear of the Jeep as he could. But it was falling incredibly fast. So much for the comfort of the heater.
Chapter Two
Willow was only alone for a couple of minutes, but they weren’t fun ones. When he’d opened the door, the sound of the storm had been fierce. What had she done, getting stuck out here? It was just another stupid error to add to her lengthy list.
She felt much better when his door opened again, and Dane’s hearty smile reappeared. With the dome light on, she could see how blue his eyes were, and the extraordinary length of his lashes. And that curly hair was delicious.
“Okay,” he said, hopping back into the car and shutting the door. “Don’t panic.”
“Why?” Willow didn’t like the sound of that.
“I’ve never seen accumulation like this in New England.”
“Where have you seen it?” She made the question sound flip, to cover up her fear.
“Tahoe once. And Zermatt.” He turned the heat up to full blast for a minute, rewarming the car. Then he turned the key, causing the Jeep’s engine to fall silent. He flipped off the headlights, and they were plunged into complete darkness.
“What are you, a meteorologist?”
“Only during ski season,” he said.
She took a deep breath. Were they going to freeze? “What is your day job?”
“I’m an alpine skier.”
“That’s a job?”
> He chuckled. “It is if you don’t mind going eighty miles an hour.”
She swiveled her head toward him. “Seriously? You race?” No wonder he’d had numerous pairs of skis in his car, but no backseats.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well that’s fun.” And, truth be told, sexy.
“It is, except when it isn’t.”
“And when is that?”
“When I lose. Or crash. Usually those things happen at the same time.”
She laughed. “What, you never just lose?”
“I’m famous for blowing up. Go big or go home, as the saying goes.”
“Wait…Dane. What’s your last name?”
“Hollister.”
“No way! Danger Hollister. That’s you? The…Olympian?”
“It is. Silly name and all.”
“Did your mother really name you Danger?”
“No. I changed it to Danger from plain old Dane when I joined the circuit.”
“Why?” she laughed.
“Because I was twenty-one…seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“What does it say on your driver’s license?”
He fumbled in the dark for something in a pocket. Then he pressed the dome light with his hand and leaned toward her. “Feast your eyes on this.”
She belly laughed. DANGER HOLLISTER was spelled out. She looked up at him, and his blue eyes flashed with humor. Willow relaxed a little then. She was stuck in a Jeep with no heat, in a blizzard. But sitting next to him, it was almost fun.
He shut the light off again. “That plow is taking its sweet time.”
“They usually do a pretty good job on this road,” she said. “The ski hill is the only reason why. The rich people have to be able to get to their vacation condos.” Then she realized her mistake. “I’ll take my foot out of my mouth now.”
“Nah, I think you called it pretty well,” he said. “But those rich people keep me in business. Ski races don’t bring in money for the little mountains. But we need the little mountains to keep the sport alive.”
“What are you doing here in Hamilton?” she asked him.
“Training solo for a while,” he said, “between races. It puts me here on and off until spring.”
Willow rubbed her hands on her arms. With the car’s engine off, it was getting cold. She reached for the hood of her jacket, but it wasn’t to be found. Willow had unzipped it last week and left it in the mudroom of her house. “Of course.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing,” she sighed. “Just marveling at my own stupidity again. I do that on the half hour.”
“Are you cold?” he asked. “Wait…” He reached around between their seats. “Can’t reach it…” He swiveled his big frame to lean back between the seats, finally emerging with something bulky. She heard a plastic click, and then a wad of what felt like a comforter unfolded between them.
“You keep a sleeping bag in your car?” she asked.
“For emergencies,” he said. “I drive around in a lot of bad weather. But usually I pull it out for crashing on other people’s hotel-room floors.” She heard the sound of a zipper. “Here,” he said. “Hold this corner.”
She met his hands in the dark and took the corner of the comforter. He pulled the zipper all the way around. “There,” he said, pushing his end under the steering wheel. Then he reached below his chair to slide the driver’s seat backward. “We might as well wait in comfort.”
“True. And thank-you, by the way. I’d be shivering in my truck right now.”
“Don’t mention it,” he said.
Her heart beat rapidly, and she didn’t even know why. There was something intimate about sitting there with him under the sleeping bag. After only an hour in his company, she had a crush on him. She reached for the bar under her seat and slid herself back a bit, too. “Now if only we had a movie and some popcorn,” she said. “It would be like any other night at my house.”
“You mentioned food again,” he complained. “Cut it out, woman.”
“I do make good popcorn. The trick is coconut oil and just the right amount of salt.”
“You are killing me right now.” His laugh warmed her.
* * *
They fell silent for a little while. Dane listened to the sound of Willow’s breathing, only a few feet away. He tried on the image of watching a movie at home—a quiet night with a girl like her. It wasn’t very often that he allowed himself to think like this, to marvel at the strangeness of his life. Half the men in New England were probably, at this very moment, snuggled up on sofas next to women, watching a movie on TV. That’s what people did during blizzards.
People who were not Dane.
Relationships of any kind were off the table for him. So he never snuggled up to anyone, never tucked his feet onto a coffee table alongside a woman’s, never rolled over in bed to find another warm body there.
He wasn’t a monk, of course. Fucking was different. He did plenty of that. But because he maintained a strict policy—one-night stands only—he’d never slept with anyone in the literal sense, never fallen asleep next to a lover. Not since he was a teenager, anyway. After he’d truly understood that his life would never have a happy ending, he never had a girlfriend. He would never be married. No woman would say “I do” to that—to watching him deteriorate, to wiping the drool off his face.
On the racing circuit there was always a female skier—or fan—willing to open her legs for him. Dane always stated his terms clearly ahead of time. And even then, he’d rarely been refused, especially since he’d begun winning World Cup events. Gold medals were a potent aphrodisiac. There was one skier in particular—Kelli—with whom he’d shared multiple one-night stands. And yes, there was such a thing. A few times a season, when the pressure of the tour got to him, he’d request a second hotel room key card from the front desk. A Swede, Kelli knew only slightly more English than he knew Swedish—which was almost none. When he offered her the card, wordlessly of course, she always took it.
Late in the night—which was around eleven for an elite skier, since their days began early—she would enter his room silently and shed all her clothes. They would suck and nibble and slam each other for an hour or two. And when they were sated, she always disappeared again without a word.
She was perfect for him.
But now here he was, sporting a hard-on in the seat of his frigid Jeep. And all because he was sitting beneath a sleeping bag—with a very pretty girl, but still—like any dope. The racing life was plenty exciting, but tonight it didn’t feel like enough. At that moment, he wanted what dudes with beer guts and bald heads had. He wanted the pretty girl to lay her head on his shoulder and ask him to please change the channel or to bring her a drink.
He shucked off his gloves and rubbed his face with his hands.
“What’s the matter?”
I’m stupid, too, he wanted to say. “My blood sugar is crashing,” he said instead. “If we’re lucky, you might find a couple of energy bars in the glove box.”
He heard her opening it, then fumbling around inside. “Score,” she said. He heard the crinkle of plastic. “Here.”
Dane held out his hands in the dark. She found him, and a gloved hand fumbled two bars into his palm. He dropped the bars into his lap, and then caught her hand before it moved away. “Hang on,” he said, pulling her glove off, then clasping her hand in both of his. Her skin was soft, and it was difficult to let her go. “Okay,” he said. “You’re not too bad off.” He put her glove back into her hand.
* * *
A tingle went up the back of Willow’s neck as two giant hands released hers. “What was that for?” she asked, voice husky.
“If your hands aren’t cold, then your core is warm enough,” he said, his voice low.
“Oh,” she whispered.
“It’s basic cold-weather safety. Do you want peanut butter or oatmeal raisin?” he asked.
Her cheeks flushed, and she was glad for th
e dark. “You go ahead and enjoy them,” she said.
“No way. I insist on sharing this feast.”
“What a gentleman,” she remarked, smiling. “Surprise me.”
“Good choice, because I can’t read the labels.” He cracked one package open. “Hold out your hands.”
She did, and his found them again. She tried not to be overly conscious of his touch in the dark as he put an energy bar carefully into her palm. “Thanks.”
He didn’t answer. She only heard him open his and chew.
They ate in silence, and Willow tried to stomp out her unlikely attraction to this stranger. But something in his delivery really spoke to her. His smoky voice in the dark hinted at secrets. She wished he would reach for her hands again, and this time forget to let go.
“So,” he said after a time. “How was he an asshole?”
“Oh, my boyfriend? He…” He never loved me. “I fell hard, and he didn’t. And I lived that way for two years, hoping things would get better. But he only wanted a fan club. And a house to live in.”
“That’s rough,” Dane said, his voice a pleasing rumble. Silence descended on them for a moment. And then he said, “Do you hear something?”
She strained to listen. And between gusts of wind she did hear something—an engine.
Dane turned the key in the ignition, and the car hummed to life. He put on the hazard lights, the headlights and the windshield wipers. As Willow watched, a thick blanket of snow was swished off of the glass in front of her. “Wow,” she said as the headlights slowly became visible. “You weren’t kidding about the accumulation.”
Dane whipped around in his seat, trying to see out the back, where another wiper had cleared off the rectangular rear window. “It’s back there,” he said.
“Yay,” Willow said, but she was a liar. As ridiculous as it sounded, she wasn’t quite ready for their peculiar tryst to end. Her darkened farmhouse was drafty and lonely.
“We need more light,” Dane said, hitting the dome light over his head. “Getting hit by the plow would not be the best way to finish this evening.”
She spun around to watch, too, and their heads were nearly touching. The glow of headlamps grew faintly visible. Though it still had to be a hundred yards away, Willow thought she could make out the yellow-orange flasher that sat atop municipal vehicles. “He’ll definitely stop for us, won’t he?” she worried.
