Sweet Victory

by Melanie Shawn

  She shook her head slightly, trying to clear it, and pressed on, attempting to sound at least somewhat like the mature adult she was when he wasn't around, “Luke, I honestly don't have any idea why you would think that I don't like you. I like you just fine. You're a nice guy! I mean, come on...everybody likes you.”

  “OK,” Luke tried switching up his tactics, “So if I haven't done anything to make you mad, and you think I'm such a 'nice guy' and you 'like me just fine' – then why is this the first real conversation we've ever had?”

  Sam took a deep breath, cursing his relentlessness. This was not going to be as easy as she had thought it would be. Still attempting to brush it off, she replied, “I don't know. Our paths cross every once in a while, but we just never seem to be in the same place at the same time for very long.”

  “And whose fault is that?” came his almost immediate rejoinder.

  “Hmmm?” Sam mumbled vaguely, pretending not to know what he was talking about.

  Luke smiled, letting her know that he was on to her game, “In my humble opinion, it's probably the fault of the person who hightails it out of the room every single time the other one is in it.”

  Sam scoffed, “Oh, please, it's not like that. It's no one's fault, it just is what it is.”

  Sam was getting irritated with herself. She realized she was behaving like a petulant child, but she couldn't seem to stop. The mature thing, she knew, would be to realize that if they were going to talk about this – which clearly they were, he wasn't going to let it drop – then she should at least take the opportunity to do a little soul searching, to dig deep and really try to discover what the honest responses to his questions were.

  But, yeah. That wasn't going to be happening.

  “So you're telling me that you've never exited a room because I was in it?” Luke pressed.

  “Luke, you're being ridiculous,” she proclaimed, starting to lose patience with his campaign to pin her down. However, as that thought crossed her mind, she was overtaken by a flash of imagination, a mental image of Luke's strong hands pinning her wrists above her head...and suddenly the idea of him pinning her down wasn't so aggravating at all.

  “I'm being ridiculous?” he teased lightly, smiling. He was clearly enjoying watching her reach the end of her reserve of patient resolve.

  “Yes!” Sam cried, desperately wanting this conversation to end before she slipped and said something she would regret – perhaps something a little TOO honest.

  “OK, Sam,” Luke continued in a reasonable tone, “But I would like to remind you that the last time we saw each other, you not only ran away from me, you also punctuated your flight by screaming at me to get out of there. I think it's a pretty clear example of the pattern I'm trying to point out – the one you swear doesn't exist.”

  Exasperated, Sam exclaimed, “I only yelled at you because I was naked!”

  Chapter Four

  Luke and Sam were so wrapped up in their conversation that the low whistle they heard behind them at that point startled them both, causing them to jump in their chairs.

  “Sorry,” Amanda said cheerfully as she crossed the room and settled back into her place behind the desk, “Didn't mean to scare you. Seems I'm rejoining the interview just as it's taking an interesting turn. What did I miss?”

  “Nothing,” Sam said warningly, glaring at Amanda to let her know how serious she was about dropping it.

  Amanda paused, seeming to consider this. Or maybe, Sam thought cynically, she's just pausing like this to torture me. But after a moment, she smiled at Sam and then stood, extending her hand to Luke.

  Shaking Amanda's hand, Luke said, “It was great meeting you. I love your property. I really appreciate your time and consideration.”

  “Luke, it was great meeting you, too. We're seeing several other candidates today, but we should definitely have an answer for you by the end of the week.”

  “Great. Please tell Justin how much I enjoyed meeting him, as well. You guys have quite the operation here, and I hope to be a part of your team.”

  Sam, realizing it was kind of awkward that she had remained seated while the other two were on their feet for their goodbyes, stood to shake Luke's hand. As if she had timed it intentionally, she stood and turned toward him just as he was starting towards the door, causing them to bump into each other.

  The impact caused her to stumble backwards, and the chair she had just been sitting in caught her in the back of the knees. She felt herself start to tumble to the ground.

  Before she hit the floor in a painful mess of humiliation, though, she was pulled back up by a strong arm around her waist. Without thinking, her hands flew to grasp that arm and solidify her balance. It wasn't until she tilted her head up and found herself face to face with Luke that she fully realized that she was actually in an embrace with Luke Reynolds – his strong arms were holding her, his body was pressed to hers, his lips were within centimeters of her own. The moment she had dreamed about since...well, since she was a nobody in Hope Falls staring at his posters, and he was nothing more to her than a celebrity she crushed on.

  Time stopped. Sam forgot to breathe. She stood completely still, frozen by the sudden close contact. Full body contact. Involuntarily, she felt herself melt against Luke. He felt so good, so strong and solid. She had never been this close to him.

  She inhaled his scent, so fresh and masculine. As she breathed him in, she felt his body tense and his biceps flex under her fingers. She felt his hot breath quicken against her neck, and she began to feel a little faint. She felt goosebumps – that old reliable indicator that Luke was near – began to pop out again all over her skin.

  “Oh, sorry!” She heard an unfamiliar male voice intrude on her trance-like state, “I have an interview at 9, and the door was open.”

  This unwelcome intrusion served to snap Sam out of the spell that Luke's embrace had caused her to fall under, and she quickly pushed away from him, trying to get her breathing under control. Looking up, she saw a young, fidgety guy standing nervously at the office door.

  Sam heard Amanda's voice, even though it still seemed somewhat far away, “Hi, there! No worries. You must be Marcus? Wow, it's nine o'clock already! I'm Amanda, and this is...”

  “Luke Reynolds and Samantha Holt,” the young man interrupted, his face disbelieving and his voice filled with awe, “God, I can't believe I'm meeting you! I'm a huge fan of...well...both of you!”

  “It's nice to meet you, Marcus,” Luke said warmly, in that supremely smooth and confident tone that was his trademark, and shook the nervous young man's hand.

  “Luke Reynolds,” Marcus repeated, almost as if he were trying to convince himself that Luke was actually there.

  Luke smiled and turned to Sam and Amanda, “You ladies have a nice day, now,” he said pleasantly as he walked past Marcus to leave the office.

  Sam settled back in her seat, determined to get her head back in the game, and do a much better job with the rest of the interviews than she had done with Luke's. However, just as she was getting ready to greet Marcus and get a strong start on her new focused and professional persona, she heard Luke's voice from the doorway.

  “Oh, and Sam,” he said, poking his head back into the room for one closing shot, “if you still have those posters, I wouldn't mind signing them for you.”

  Chapter Five

  As Luke climbed back into his SUV and started down the mountain towards Lake Tahoe, he struggled to wrap his mind around what had just gone on that morning. The sequence of events had definitely been bizarre, but he couldn't quite figure out if they were good-bizarre or bad-bizarre.

  He kept replaying the scene over and over in his head like a movie, or like post-race footage, picking apart every step and misstep, trying to figure out what had gone right and what had gone wrong.

  He knew he hadn't handled the situation with his usual ease and charm, that was a given. He admitted that right up front.

  The truth is, he had just not been
prepared to see her! Of course, he had known Samantha had moved back to Hope Falls, which had been a major factor in his application for the job. He just had no idea she'd be working at Mountain Ridge.

  When Stephan, Samantha's coach and manager, had called him the week before to let him know that she was taking a year off and was going to be staying up in Hope Falls, all of Luke's instincts immediately went on the alert. Questions began flying around in his head.

  Why would she do that? She was at the top of her game, or so he thought. Was she OK? Did she have some injury he wasn't aware of? Unlikely. Their world was too small for no one to have mentioned that in casual conversation.

  Could there be some other scenario, something completely unrelated to her career, that made settling down into a quaint domestic life seem like an attractive option? His gut twisted in a knot. Was there someone serious in her life that she was taking the time off for?

  Before he had had a chance to pose any of these questions to Stephan, the older man had jumped in and told Luke that he was aware that Luke had been keeping an eye out for positions in Northern California, and that, interestingly enough, there was a resort in Hope Falls that was looking for a pro, and if Luke was interested, he should apply at Mountain Ridge.

  Bingo! A light bulb went off in Luke's head. In an instant, a plan sprung into his mind fully formed. If he were able to get a contract for the season at Mountain Ridge Outdoor Adventures, then his sojourn there would coincide perfectly with Sam's sabbatical. He remembered Hope Falls from their childhood stops there. It was a tiny place. If he and Samantha were both living there, she absolutely wouldn't be able to avoid him. He could find out for himself what was behind Samantha's bizarre peak-of-her-career hiatus, and, if it was a man, then Luke could at least satisfy himself that the guy was on the up-and-up.

  And, of course, a contract with Mountain Ridge would satisfy the original impetus which had sent him on a job search in the Sierra Nevadas in the first place – a chance to be closer to his family, since the loss of his Dad had driven home the fact that with his family, was the place that he desperately needed to be. It was truly perfect.

  He hadn't even realized the full extent of the kismet of the situation until he had walked into the office this morning and seen Samantha Holt's cute butt parked in that chair and realized that she would actually be working there as well.

  Destiny.

  When she had started to choke on her coffee, he had found himself frozen for a few beats before he was able to do anything to help her, from the sheer force of the shock of seeing her.

  Of course, when he saw that she really was having trouble breathing, it had snapped him out of his momentary trance and he had rushed to assist. The instant he had touched her, he felt a tremor run through her body which then seemed to keep running directly on its path through his own body, and straight to his groin.

  He had just started to relax and think to himself that, damn, this might be the start of something good...when she abruptly pulled away from him and started acting stand-offish. Or, as he liked to refer to that routine, 'pulling a Samantha.'

  He grimaced when recalling that he had reacted to her aloof demeanor with his usual maturity by offering to give her mouth to mouth. Wow. What was he, twelve?

  And then, he berated himself, came the best part. He was miraculously handed the gift of some time alone with her, and had he been charming? Witty? Even just generically pleasant?

  Hell, no. That would have been too easy, made too much sense. No. What he had decided to do was practically brow-beat the poor girl because she was always trying to avoid him.

  And when she had denied avoiding him, did he just courteously and respectfully let it go? Of course not! No, he had actually gone so far as to DARE her to spend time with him. Real smooth, Casanova. I'm sure she doesn't think you're at ALL desperate after that little display!

  OK, yes, so things weren't going as smoothly as he envisioned them going when the plan had first taken shape. But it wasn't all bad. As he saw it, there were a few crucial elements in his favor, as well.

  First of all, if Marcus, the candidate whom Luke had met on his way out of Amanda's office, was any indication of the caliber of the other applicants who would be competing for the same position that Luke was in the running for, he was pretty sure he had a decent shot. Marcus seemed like a nice kid and all, but he was exactly that – a kid. There was no way that he could bring the experience and the name recognition to Mountain Ridge that Luke could.

  Second, he really seemed to have hit it off with Amanda and Justin. They seemed pretty serious about getting things up and running quickly, and they seemed to pick up on Luke's seriousness as well. He may be a party guy in his personal life, but when it came to his profession, he was nothing but serious. He was pretty sure they had sensed that about him, and appreciated it.

  He wasn't sure at this point how much say Samantha would have in the hiring process, since he still wasn’t entirely sure exactly what her position there consisted of. When he had arrived that morning, Amanda had mentioned that they had already hired a pro that would be sitting in on the interviews, he just hadn't realized it was Samantha.

  Third, although he obviously hadn't been able to catch everything the girls were talking about when he was out at the slopes with Justin, the one thing he had heard clear as a bell as they returned was Sam admitting that she had, at one point, had a ton of posters of Luke covering her walls. That had to be a good sign. Right? He definitely wanted a chance to follow up on that juicy little tidbit.

  But the most encouraging development of the day, by far, had been what transpired when Samantha had fallen into his arms. God, she had felt so RIGHT pressed up against his body. The way that she had melted into him had nearly been his undoing. He could have stayed that way all day long, arms wrapped around her, feeling the soft heat of her body pressed all along the length of his, inhaling her scent...he could have stayed that way forever and been a happy man.

  Yes, he concluded, today may not have been his finest hour. He wasn't at his smoothest or his most charming. But there was, undeniably, something there he could work with.

  --- ~ ---

  Sam dug her fingernails into her palms to keep herself focused and awake as the candidate in front of her droned on and on about his many accomplishments. It was all for naught, though. When he finally finished rattling them off and sat back with a self-satisfied smile, Sam would have been hard pressed to name even one of the achievements he'd listed, of which he was obviously so proud.

  Of course, although he was a little pompous and he definitely liked the sound of his own voice far too well for Sam's liking, it was far from being entirely his fault that she was having such a monumentally difficult time tuning into what he was saying.

  Try as she might, she absolutely could not stop mentally replaying the day's first interview. The Luke Reynolds interview.

  She knew that, logically, there was no such thing as a magic clock she could use to turn back time and NOT act like a big dork, but she really wished that there was. An Anti-Dork-inator, if you will.

  Yeah, she told herself, if other people feel anything even approaching the level of misery I feel right now when they make idiots of themselves, I can guarantee there would be a huge market for a device like that.

  During the last three hours she had sat through four separate mind-numbing interviews and even if her life had depended on it, she was fairly certain that she wouldn't be able to recite even one of the applicant's names. It was all just passing in a blur.

  Two of them had wanted to take pictures with her, which of course she did. One of them had wanted to talk shop, which she could do in her sleep. That was a lucky thing, too, because that was kind of what she felt like she was doing. She felt as if she was walking around in some bizarre, dream-like, Twilight Zone version of her life, and maybe she hadn't even woken up yet.

  Maybe in ten minutes, her alarm would go off and she would hop out of bed to start getting ready for
her first day of work at Mountain Ridge, laughing at the silly nightmare she’d just had about what her first day could have been like.

  By the time the last applicant was seated and Amanda had begun her spiel, Sam was torn between dreading the interview being over and looking forward to its end, in equal measure.

  On the one hand, she knew Amanda was going to have a heck of a lot to say about her behavior with Luke, and she was certainly not looking forward to that conversation. She didn't know what Amanda and Luke had actually been talking about before they came into the office that morning, but Sam was beginning to suspect that they'd taken that time to form the Torture Sam With Endless Questions and Don't Drop It or Let It Go No Matter How Much She Begs club.

  On the other hand, she was truly eager to have a chance to be alone and sort through her feelings about Luke's appearance in Hope Falls. There were so many unresolved questions. What if he stayed here? What if Amanda decided to hire him? God, what if? Sam simply could not work with him, side by side, each and every day.

  She would simply have to tell Amanda that she had to hire someone else, and that was all there was to it. Amanda would listen to her...she hoped.

  But, good lord, if they didn't hire Luke, who would they hire? None of the other applicants could even come close to his experience and expertise. Just having his name associated with Mountain Ridge, especially in conjunction with hers, would bring in a ton of business.

  Samantha knew in her heart that, while she was confident that, in the end, Amanda would do anything for her, she could never ask her friend to give up something that would benefit the resort the way that having Luke on board would.

  And hey, she reasoned, maybe it wouldn't actually be such a bad thing if she did finally force herself to face Luke and the effect he had on her, to get to the bottom of why she had such an overpowering reaction to him, and always had. Sam was at the point in her life where she was ready to make some big changes, to take charge of her own destiny. What better way to do that than taking ownership of her crush-obsession-infatuation-whatever with Luke and facing it head on!