Make Me Stay (Men of Gold Mountain)

by Rebecca Brooks

  Outside the snow was coming down hard, coating the parking lot in a layer of white. The weather in Seattle was dependably gray. All they’d gotten this winter was rain and more rain and that dreaded wintry mix. She stood in the middle of the parking lot and tilted her face to the sky.

  Snow clung to her lashes and melted down her cheeks. She could see it coming toward her, illuminated by the outdoor lights from the bar, but higher up where the lights didn’t reach everything was darkness. The flakes seemed to emerge straight from a dizzying abyss. She felt Austin come up behind her, the solid weight of him dangerously close. She knew how unfair she was being to him, and how much of her job she was putting at risk.

  But she couldn’t make herself pull away.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said quietly.

  “I know.”

  He pulled out a strand of hair that had gotten tucked in her scarf.

  “Where’s your hat?” he asked. But it was more like a whisper, his lips brushing close to her ear.

  “I forgot it,” she said hoarsely. Her mouth was dry.

  He ran a hand over her hair, smoothing out the snow. “Do you want mine?”

  Sam turned to face him. Her whole life, her whole career, was spent calculating risk versus reward. How much risk could the company assume when they bought new land? How much would they be rewarded for the chance they took?

  She knew not every risk wound up being worth it. But zero risk meant zero gain. Wasn’t that the whole philosophy that had gotten her father’s company where it was? Knowing when to take the plunge. Damn it, Austin was gorgeous, even with a gray wool hat pulled over his ears. And he was funny, thoughtful, kind—

  She wrapped her gloved hands around his scarf and pressed her lips to his.

  There was a pause in which he seemed surprised—was she wrong? Surely he wanted this, too. And then his arms were around her and he was kissing her back. The voice in her head stating firmly that this was a very bad idea tasted sweetness and warmth, and for a moment there was only silence. The world, her mind, even the wind itself had gone still.

  Then a burst of noise came from behind them. A couple walked out of the bar and headed to their car. It was the reminder Sam needed. Nothing about their situation had changed. She couldn’t get caught up in the romance of the falling snow.

  “I should go,” she said, pulling away.

  “I’ll walk you to your car.”

  Sam laughed. The parking lot wasn’t exactly big enough to get lost in. She pulled out her keys and unlocked the Audi. It beeped, and the lights flashed.

  “Oh, no.” Austin groaned.

  “You can’t walk me that far?”

  “Did you forget it’s snowing?” He held up his palms, catching the flakes.

  “So?”

  “So you can’t drive that thing in the snow.”

  Sam glared at him. “I drive that thing everywhere.”

  “Not on dark, windy mountain roads on nights like this. Get in the truck.”

  “Which one?” she asked, looking around the lot. “They’re all trucks.”

  “Exactly. Because people around here know how to drive in winter.”

  “Ugh, what is it about men and cars?”

  “I’m sorry, I’m just not that good at forgiving myself when I find out people I’ve been enjoying a perfectly lovely evening with wind up skidding off the road. Must be a man thing.”

  “Lovely evening?” She raised an eyebrow.

  “I take it back, I’m having a terrible time. Get in anyway and I’ll take you to your hotel.”

  “I have to work tonight,” Sam said pointedly, not making a move toward his truck.

  He smiled. “I’m not inviting myself in.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Austin raised his palm. “Scout’s honor.”

  Sam couldn’t help herself. “Well, that’s disappointing.”

  Austin dropped his hand immediately. “Good thing I was never a Boy Scout, so my promises don’t mean a thing.”

  Sam tugged on his scarf. It was so tempting.

  But she had to back away.

  “I told you I’m not monogamous with my job,” she said. “But it’s still my primary relationship, and it’s expecting me tonight. Let’s go before these papers get wet. I don’t think my bag is waterproof.”

  Austin unlocked his truck and brushed snow off the windshields.

  Don’t invite him in. Don’t invite him in.

  Sam tried to strengthen her resolve as he drove.

  But Austin didn’t give her a chance to turn down any implied invitation.

  “I can drive you back to your car when the streets are plowed,” he said as he pulled into the circle in front of the Cascade and waved off the valet attendant coming to take the car.

  Sam unbuckled her seat belt. “I appreciate it. You’re right, that wouldn’t have gone so well in my car. You’re sure you don’t mind picking me up tomorrow?”

  “Of course not. You have my cell, right?” Austin patted down his pockets. “I think it’s at home now—I’m bad at remembering to keep it with me. But for you, I’ll carry the little monitor all day.”

  It was ridiculous, this mountain man who lived in the woods and went out without a cell phone. But it was attractive, too, the way he gave everything his full attention. Not once had he been distracted from her while they ate. His mind certainly hadn’t been anywhere else when they’d kissed.

  Sam almost leaned over to do it again, her resolve draining away.

  But she wasn’t the wolf for no reason. Before she could make an even bigger mistake, she pulled away, grabbed her bag, and slammed the door. She had no doubt he would have followed her in a heartbeat if she’d asked him to. But she couldn’t. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, and there was no way it would end well.

  Chapter Six

  “Good evening, Ms. Kane.” Philip, the manager who’d checked Sam in that afternoon, doffed his hat to her from behind the front desk. Instinctively, Sam jerked around to look behind her, but Austin was already driving away.

  Forget taking him to her room, where she was afraid she might have left his file strewn across her bed. Just setting foot near the hotel was risky. She breathed a sigh of relief that she hadn’t invited him in.

  Her suite was comfortable, if small. Her company’s plans for renovating the Cascade involved gutting the top floor to create larger rooms, in addition to the new hotels they were going to build. It was exciting, but Austin’s face when he mentioned the Kanes kept flashing before her eyes. Why didn’t he see that her project was going to make this area so much better?

  But she knew the answer to that. Austin didn’t want better. He wanted what he had.

  And, it seemed, he wanted her.

  Which he wouldn’t, as soon as he found out who she was. She could flirt, she could kiss him in the snow, but Sam hadn’t gotten to where she was by being a romantic. She was nothing if not realistic, and she knew it was only a matter of time.

  Still, that kiss…

  She rolled onto her back. Her fingers moved slowly down her body, over her breasts, traveling south to the heat that came just from thinking his name. God, the memory of his thighs in those racing skins, the scratch of his beard against her cheek—the thought of it grazing between her legs instead… She was going to come in seconds, replaying the electricity that had jolted through her as she brushed her leg against his under the table like some teenager thrilled by the most innocent touch.

  But not so innocent—not with how wet she was.

  She was sliding her finger right to the place that would make her let go when her phone buzzed. She imagined Austin’s voice, husky, just breathless enough to make her want to work him up to a pant. He was going to tell her he’d had a wonderful time that night. He was going to say he never should have driven away.

  She was going to tell him, right then, what she was doing while thinking of him.

  But the reminder of the hotel manager wishing her a good night s
topped her fantasy cold. And then she reached for the phone and saw the number. Not five minutes of a good time and work was calling, like those boys in the office could see when she was getting out of line.

  “Kane here,” she said with a cough, trying to sound like she’d been hard at work as opposed to mere seconds from an orgasm brought about by dexterous fingers and dirty thoughts.

  “Samantha, you okay there? It’s Steven checking in.”

  Sam swung her legs around so she was sitting on the edge of the bed, as though her assistant could hear she was getting too relaxed. “Sure,” she said. “Great. Are you still at the office?”

  “Everyone is. As I’m sure you can guess, the board is buzzing about your trip.”

  “What are they saying? How do they even know?”

  Sam knew she could count on Steven to be honest, and he was. “Jim started the rumors, and it took off from there. Half of them think it’s unprofessional. The other half are reserving judgment until they see if it works.”

  “In other words, the half that want to keep their jobs if I’m successful, and the favor of the board if I’m not.”

  “Something like that. What should I report back?”

  “I’ve made contact with Mr. Reede,” she said, eyeing herself in the mirror across from the bed. Her hair was undone, her cheeks flushed, her nipples peaked. That was one way of putting it.

  “So he’ll sign?” Steven asked.

  Sam paused. “We didn’t broach that yet.”

  “I’ll tell them you’re working on it.”

  “Be clear that we’re in touch and moving forward. I have his cell phone, we’ve met once already, and we have plans to sit down again tomorrow. That ought to buy me some time.”

  She gave Steven the number for their records but told him she’d be the one to call. Previously the plan had been to show Mr. Reede the full weight of the company Sam carried. Now, she told Steven, she thought the personal approach would be better. “Show him we’re regular, well-meaning people just like him.”

  She wasn’t sure he’d buy it. She wasn’t sure she bought it. But Steven simply verified that she wouldn’t be in the office tomorrow and moved on.

  “I think the board needs to hear directly from you that everything’s proceeding as planned,” he said.

  “Once Aus—Mr. Reede—signs, I’ll go straight to the Hendersons to finalize the last of the sale in person. One more day, maybe two, max.”

  “Good,” he said, “because the Hendersons won’t sign away their portion until everything else is set, and we can’t get the ski resort without them. I’ll let the board know that’s coming by the end of the week.”

  Sam’s stomach tightened to hear Steven’s timeline. That meant barely any time to see Austin again as someone other than his opponent. But she said, “Thank you, Steven, I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “Are you sure you aren’t going stir-crazy? We all know there’s nothing to do up there.”

  That had been one of the common refrains in the office, that they were finally going to breathe some life into such a tired part of the state.

  Sam forced a laugh. “I think I can handle a day.”

  She hung up, told her nipples to calm down, and looked over the blueprint again. There was the Cascade, and the lines marking the proposed expansion. There were the condos meant for Austin’s land.

  The condos that would go where her father had planned, she corrected herself. She’d told Steven her course of action for tomorrow. Now she had to follow through.

  It had been fun to be out of the office, but her real life took place far away from here. Not even the taste of Austin’s lips was reason to stay.

  …

  Austin racked his brain, reviewing every step of the night. The kiss was good, right? And she was the one who’d initiated it. She would have asked him to her room if she’d wanted to. Yet she very clearly had not.

  What he wanted to know was who stayed at the Cascade, anyway. Corporate types, which it looked like she was. No wonder she wasn’t outraged at what the Kanes were doing to him. She actually thought the development might be okay. She clearly wasn’t the right one for him.

  But he wasn’t talking about the right one. He was talking about the right one for tonight. For a few hours to find out what was beneath that sultry smile as he tasted the snow off her skin.

  He couldn’t believe she’d been able to say good night to him without a second thought. Surely she hadn’t gone straight to bed without thinking maybe she’d made a mistake in letting him go. Not after the way she’d drawn her foot up his leg and fixed her eyes on him at dinner.

  There had to be a chance she’d changed her mind.

  He checked the kitchen, his bedroom, trying to remember where he’d put his phone. As he’d told Sam, he didn’t use it very often. He tried to bring it when he coached, but even then it was haphazard. When he’d left Colorado after finishing rehab, he’d needed distance from his old life. His knee had shattered in a way that called to mind clay pots, broken china, glasses so smashed they were nothing but shards. It was too hard to hear his mother’s voice, crying and guilty, begging him to come home. It got to be so that he couldn’t stand to hear his cell phone ring and only called her when he felt prepared.

  Because that was the one thing he’d never do. He would ski again, despite the doctors’ prognosis. But he’d never go home.

  He used to call his uncle sometimes, but he’d wanted to talk about the injury, and Austin was trying to heal, not relive the pain. He got so busy with school in Washington and his new life away from the pro-skier circuit that he stopped calling back. It wasn’t until he found out his uncle had passed away from a heart attack that Austin understood how much his stubbornness had cost.

  He didn’t want to be like that anymore, disconnected, alone, absent when somebody called. He went tearing through his house as Chloe stared at him, head cocked, thoroughly confused. He lived down from the peak, tucked away from the main road that ran in and out of town. It was a small house, but not when he was looking for an even smaller cell phone. It wasn’t until he found it under a cushion in the living room that it occurred to him he’d have heard the thing ringing if Sam had called to tell him to come over tonight.

  He looked at the blank screen and tossed it on the couch. He shouldn’t have let himself get carried away.

  He stood in front of the sliding doors in the back of the house and watched the snow fall over the yard. There was just enough of a clearing for Chloe to run in before the woods began, the same woods that rose up the sides of Gold Mountain and spread across the peaks. The same woods Kane Enterprises wanted to take from him and tear down.

  “We’ll figure it out,” he said to Chloe when she came up next to him, looking through the glass as the snow filled in their tracks from earlier that day. He wasn’t sure if he was talking about Sam or the Kanes. They had nothing to do with one another, but everything from the evening was confused in his mind. He just wanted things to work out.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about her as he lay in his bed. The fall of her hair, the way she smelled when she leaned in close and crushed her lips to his. He’d felt the curve of her body, so much possibility pressing into him.

  He rolled over and groaned. God, he was so hard, and all he’d done was kiss her. And even then barely, in the parking lot, not even a peck in the car, such a tease when what he wanted was more.

  What was she doing right now? Was she lying there peacefully, no thoughts of what they could be doing tormenting her sleep? Was she up, too, tossing and turning like he was? The thought made his breath catch, the fantasy that she might be as twisted in longing as he was, might need to bring her hand where he longed to press his own…

  He slid down his boxers, cupped his balls in one hand, and wrapped his other fist around his shaft. The images in his mind weren’t even fully formed. They came in fragments from the day—her smile, the way her eyes lit up in the sun, the snow in her lashes that nig
ht. And over and over again, the memory of her breasts pressed against his chest in the parking lot. Her foot sliding up the inside of his calf under the table, sending electricity straight to his cock.

  He worked his hand up and down, his legs clenching, eyes squeezed shut. He came quickly, with a gasp as though surprised by what his mind, and his body, had done.

  It was just a fantasy—she hadn’t even invited him in.

  And yet it didn’t feel like a fantasy, something that heated him up and then, when he was done, faded away. Even after he’d cleaned up and rolled over, he still couldn’t sleep. For the first time since he’d moved here, he wished he were up at the Cascade and not home alone with his dog.

  Chapter Seven

  Austin awoke to a world turned white, a perfect layer clinging to the trees. As soon as he opened the back door, Chloe went charging, rolling around in the fluff. It clung to her black and copper fur, stinging her nose as she tried to lick it off. He checked her paws to wipe ice from the pads and set her loose in the woods.

  It must have stopped snowing shortly after dawn, but the clouds were low. Cloudy days in the winter were always warmer than clear, and he sweat as he jogged, Chloe nipping at his heels. When they came in, he fed her and changed into his ski clothes. The phone rang when he was halfway out the door and he tensed, expecting it to be the Kane offices again. But they didn’t leave a message. Probably a telemarketer.

  Austin had the first shift of ski patrol. Usually he liked to arrive early to get in a few warm-up runs. But he found himself taking the long route to the Cascade and parking at the lift closest to the hotel. He looked around the lobby, the base lodge, the bottom of the lift. He checked his cell phone. Of course he’d remembered it today. He’d even turned the ringer up and slept with it on his nightstand. It was a terrible idea—he’d probably wind up no longer interested as soon as Sam started to get close. But he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  Why hadn’t she called? Didn’t she need her car? It was possible she wasn’t awake, but that seemed less and less likely as the morning wore on. He kept his eyes peeled for her as he combed the mountain, checking to make sure people were skiing and riding safely, answering any calls that came in over the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt.