Harlequin Special Edition November 2013 - Bundle 1 of 2

by Lilian Darcy

  He didn’t comment on that last bit. Hearing it play back in her head, she thought it sounded too abrupt, like a warning. If she could have a do-over, she would have softened it a little. Alyssa was the one who was single and planning to stay that way.

  Me, I’m not set in stone about it. That’s not the way we’re similar.

  “So where are you going?” Mac said, after a moment. “Where in Europe, I mean.”

  “Oh, Val d’Isère, Chamonix, Sestriere, a couple of other places.”

  “Pretty hectic.”

  “It will be.”

  “Are you looking forward to it?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’ll miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you.”

  He sat up on his elbow, coming dangerously close to hitting the glass of wine. “You’re allowed to say it differently, you know. You don’t have to choose the exact same words that I did.”

  “I was happy with your word choice.” She dived in and rescued the glass, before he knocked it with his elbow and ruined the rug. Then she stayed close to him, because it was always, always nice to be close to him.

  “I’ll try to be more creative next time,” he drawled.

  “I said I was happy with it,” she pointed out, distracted by what the drawl did to the shape of his mouth. It made it better, and it was pretty shapely to begin with.

  “Happy isn’t good enough. I’m going for happier. I like to win, remember? Haven’t we discussed this?” Now the mouth was tilted up at one corner, inviting her to kiss it straight.

  “We have,” she answered solemnly. “I like to win, too.”

  “So you should have tried to outdo me. I’ll miss you. You’ll miss me wildly.” Now he was openly smiling.

  She couldn’t stop herself from grinning back. “I’ll miss you wildly, Mac.”

  She was a little afraid that it was true.

  He leaned toward her. Her action with the wineglass had brought her well within reach—a place she was very happy to be. “Much better. Wildly. I like it. You said it with such feeling, too.”

  “I’ll miss you madly. Excruciatingly. Hopelessly.”

  “Not hopelessly. It’s only three weeks. But keep trying.” He rolled an inch or two, and his chest weighed against her side.

  “I’ll miss you with every fiber of my being.” She touched his upper arm, where he had a really nice hard muscle that she could never resist.

  “Still room for improvement.”

  “Yeah, really?”

  “You gotta show it, not tell it. Better get some practice.” She knew that look. He was about to kiss her. Good! She nestled closer, to make it easy for him. “There’ll be a test on this material next week,” he warned.

  “Next week, I think I’ll be in Zermatt.”

  Chapter Five

  Next week was still several days away. Or rather, several nights. Mac spent three of those nights at her place, and they had lunch together twice, both times at the top of the mountain, where everything was overpriced and not that good for you.

  “Shall we watch the snowboarding while we eat our giant hot dogs?” Lee suggested on their last day together. He wasn’t staying over tonight, because she and the squad were flying out early tomorrow.

  “Sure. What is it?”

  “Men’s Superpipe Elimination.”

  “Those guys are crazy.”

  “Says the man who told me in bed the other night that it was ‘fun’ skiing through an avalanche.”

  “Yeah, but that was a double-edged ‘fun.’ You do know that, right? I was being all manly and tough. At the time it was pretty scary.”

  “These guys get scared.”

  “They like that. I don’t.”

  “No?”

  “I’m all about risk minimization.”

  “They wear helmets.”

  “Not good enough.” Mac gave a quick smile, but there was an edge to the words all the same. Some people had a fierce loyalty to their own preferred winter sports, and were very dismissive of everything else. Mac was a skier, not a boarder. She put it down to that, and forgave him for it. It wasn’t all that important, since she wasn’t a boarder herself.

  “Hey, I just thought it might be nice to watch some impressive rides, instead of sitting in that crowded place. But if you don’t want to...” she offered.

  “No, it’s fine. Really. You’re right, they’re impressive.”

  They put on their skis and stuffed their wrapped hot dogs into the fronts of their jackets to keep them warm while they skied a hundred meters down the hill. There wasn’t a huge crowd for this round of the competition, so they found a good vantage point close to the action and ate standing up with skis on.

  Mary Jane and Daisy thought their middle sister was crazy to love a life that contained moments like these, but Lee did love it—loved the clean air, loved the feel of having a fit body, loved the rawness of the whole experience...and then the bliss of a hot bath or an open fire, and curling up with a book before sleeping like a log.

  Today, even the hot dog wasn’t bad.

  The spectators whooped at the tricks and the height, while the commentator reeled off the moves. “Cab 7... Frontside 1080... Double alley-oop rodeo—wow, that’s been tried in competition only a handful of times—but doesn’t nail the landing... Backside 9... Frontside 5...”

  Lee whooped a little bit, also, in between bites of gluey bread, rubbery hot dog and dripping ketchup. The boarders shot ten or fifteen feet in the air above the lip of the pipe and swooped back down. Mac didn’t whoop, just hissed in a breath every now and then, or said, “Whoa!”

  “I know,” she agreed, after a massive backside 1080, nailed perfectly.

  “They weren’t doing stuff like this a few years ago, were they?”

  “No, they get better every year. You never watch X Games comps?”

  “Nah, not really. Not my thing.”

  “Sorry, then.”

  “No.” He turned to her, frowning. “Don’t apologize. Just personal preference, okay? If you like it, it’s fine. We’re not joined at the hip. Which is...convenient, right?” He did that thing with his eyes that she loved, sweeping a look down her body and then back up, mentally stripping her, claiming her with the glint of his smile.

  “Very convenient. Or we’d have to be double-jointed or something. You have ketchup on your face. Right at the corner of your mouth.”

  “Wanna get it off?”

  So they missed an especially impressive frontside inverted 7, and Lee decided maybe Mac was right, watching snowboarding didn’t rate with certain other lunchtime treats. When it was time to head down to pick up their classes for the afternoon, he told her, “Text me from Zermatt,” and they parted with Lee feeling incredibly happy and lucky that they’d met.

  * * *

  Zermatt, Sestriere, Claviere, Chamonix, Val d’Isère...

  The kids had a great time, and their ski racing skills improved by leaps and bounds, with the challenge of new terrain and varied conditions. Most of them were well-behaved, and the two sets of parents who’d accompanied the team provided very helpful discipline to support Lee and senior coach Everard.

  But it was exhausting.

  Lee fell into bed every night and disappeared into a black hole of deep sleep, and sometimes when she woke up, she couldn’t remember what country she was in, or what day it was. She’d bought a cheap European phone with prepaid credit so she and Mac could speak to each other without racking up huge charges, but they ended up mostly texting, because they never seemed to be free to talk—or awake—at the same time.

  By the time she’d reached Geneva airport for the flight home, she had to tell him, via text as usual, Home around nine tonight Colorado time, but will need a couple of days.<
br />
  She had to turn her phone off during the flight, and didn’t see his answering text until they landed in Denver. No problem. We’ve discussed this before remember I like you awake.

  For the next week, jet lag pulled Lee awake at some strange times, and Mac didn’t seem to mind if she woke him up, too. At three in the morning, by stealthily running her hands over his body until he stirred and then sighed and then rolled over and grabbed her and groaned and buried his face in her hair. At four in the morning, by spooning him from behind and kissing the warmth of his neck and shoulder. At five in the morning, by simply whispering to him, “Mac, are you awake?”

  “I am now.”

  “Are you happy to be?”

  “Depends what you’re offering....”

  “Well, the usual.”

  “Then I’m happy.”

  She’d been back for ten days when it was his turn to be away. He had an interview scheduled, at short notice, for a management position at Barrier Mountain in Idaho, and had decided to spend a few days with his family while he was up there.

  “Are you hoping to move back to Idaho?” Lee asked him, when he told her about the interview and the extension to his trip. They were grabbing lunch in the usual huge, noisy place at the top of the mountain, where the floor was wet with snowmelt from skiers’ boots and the menu had less sophistication than a roadside diner.

  “I’ll go where there’s a good job. This one came up very fast.”

  “What’s your definition of a good job?”

  “Permanent, year-round, in a nice town, with scope for really achieving something. Ecotourism, new snow sports, better summer programs, on-the-ball risk management. But if I can get something in Idaho, yes, I guess that’s a plus.” Someone bumped his chair while threading between the tables and gave a quick apology.

  “So you like your family,” Lee said.

  “I do.” He shifted his chair a little closer to the table, bringing them within easier range for this conversation, which had turned far too serious for a fifteen-minute lunch between ski classes. “How about you? Would you ever move from Aspen? Move back east?”

  It shocked her.

  Not so much the question, but her own response. “I’ve always assumed not.”

  “So you don’t like your family.”

  “No, I do. A lot.”

  But I like my space, too.

  She liked her space more?

  He looked at her as if he was waiting for something. A “but.”

  I like my family, but they don’t understand me.

  I like my family, but they drive me crazy after two days.

  I like my family, but I love my independence. I never want to lose sight of who I am. I always want to be sure about what I’m doing, and why I’m doing it.

  “So?” Mac prompted.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “If there was a reason to move back...”

  “Like one of your parents was ill, or something?”

  “My parents have just moved to South Carolina. But, yes, that kind of a reason.”

  Someone else bumped into them—Lee’s chair this time. They’d finished their burgers and their break was almost over.

  It had begun to snow thick, dry flakes that would bring visibility down to near zero and make teaching a challenge. Outside, in the midst of the silent, half-suffocating fall, Mac planted a quick, cold kiss on her mouth and they trapped fluffy flakes between their bodies. It was too cold for the flakes to melt.

  “See you when I get back,” he told her.

  “Talk to you before that.”

  “Yes.”

  They put on their skis, waved at each other and went separate ways.

  That night, via a thought process that started with the calendar and the fact that she would miss him for the next four days, and then jumped through several more steps, it finally occurred to Lee that she hadn’t had her period in a while.

  “Not to panic about it, or anything,” she told the Narmans’ enormous two-door refrigerator—because yes, she still spoke aloud to an empty room when Mac wasn’t around.

  She leaned her elbows on the granite counter and thought it through. Should have happened in Sestriere. Or possibly Chamonix.

  Three weeks late.

  She was so out of the habit of thinking about things like this. She’d never noted dates on the calendar, being somewhat irregular and always getting plenty of warning rather than a potentially embarrassing flood. When it started, she always thought, Oh. Right, and took the necessary action.

  Three weeks.

  And it was currently nine o’clock at night.

  She wasn’t having any noticeable symptoms, either premenstrual or pregnancy, so there was no guide in that department. She decided to worry about it in the morning, if nothing had happened.

  In the morning, nothing had.

  She decided to pick up a test on the way home that night. She had no idea how they worked. Something involving pee and plastic sticks, pink lines or blue crosses, or something. It took her a while even to locate them in the drugstore aisle, and then there seemed to be a bewildering array of brands, each promising a faster process and a more accurate result than the last.

  She chose one eventually. Didn’t do that thing women always seemed to do on TV, of buying a whole boxful of tests and taking them all in succession. One was enough. Lee felt as if this was a game more than reality, and she was relieved to see that a young girl she didn’t know was working the checkout counter. Also relieved that Mac was up in Idaho, so she didn’t have to hide this silliness from him.

  Or reveal it.

  She honestly expected to find that her period had started before she even took the test out of the box.

  It hadn’t.

  Which probably meant she should move from Step One, Buying the Test, to Step Two, Taking It.

  “I’ll be laughing about this in five minutes.”

  Well, laughing on the other side of her face, as it turned out.

  “What does that even mean?” she asked her reflection in the Narmans’ ornate bathroom mirror, with the plastic stick still in her hand, bearing its two pink lines.

  Then she really did laugh, because this didn’t feel real or believable or even possible, and maybe that was why she was talking to herself more than usual. It was the sixth of March. She’d known Mac for ten weeks and now she was having his baby.

  The idea sat in front of her like an ornate cake she hadn’t yet cut into, and had no idea where to start, or whether she even liked cake.

  She dropped the test in the bathroom wastebasket and wandered out of the room and through the house, glad of its vastness.

  This wasn’t real yet.

  Not at all.

  And the only thing she could think right now was, Thank heaven Mac is away. Thank heaven I’m not seeing him till Sunday.

  And that was wrong, wasn’t it? Shouldn’t she want him here? Wouldn’t any normal woman be in floods of tears because he wasn’t?

  But his absence gave her time, and that was good.

  Time for this to sink in. Time for it to turn into something that was really, actually happening to her, instead of being like some kind of dream state, like taking a vacation in someone else’s body, someone else’s life. This wasn’t her.

  She had four days to find out where this fitted into her life, to become herself again—or a new version of herself—and decide what she was going to do, and make sure it was the best decision possible.

  * * *

  “You sure you don’t want something to eat before you go out?” Mac’s mother said to him.

  She ran water over a pile of potatoes to wash off the dirt, her hair scraped out of the way in a high ponytail that somehow suited her even though she was in her late f
ifties now. There were silver threads in the ponytail, but still a lot of black, and she was proud of that. “If I dyed it,” he’d heard her say, “everyone would think I was totally gray underneath, but I’m not very gray at all, and I want people to know it!”

  It was five-thirty on Saturday evening, and he was sitting at the kitchen table in his childhood home, while his mother made dinner for herself and his dad and his sister, Lisa, and her family, who were coming over.

  Mac had already seen Lisa and Andy and the kids last night, when they’d all gone out for a meal, and this morning he’d gone to watch nine-year-old Liam’s ice hockey game, so he didn’t plan on spending the evening with them tonight. He was seeing a bunch of his old friends instead.

  Still, they were great kids, Liam and five-year-old Krista, and he got on just as well with Lisa and Andy. It would be nice to have another family meal before he flew back to Colorado tomorrow, even if it was short. “I guess the guys aren’t picking me up until seven.” He suspected they had a heavy night in mind, too, and doubted he’d get in again before midnight. “What time are you planning to eat?”

  “Oh, we’ll eat at six or six-fifteen. The kids are always starving by then. They’ll be here any moment.”

  “I’ll have something with you, then. I can save room for more later with the guys.”

  “It’s good that you’re getting a chance to catch up with them.”

  “Might be moving back pretty close to here, if the job comes through.”

  “Would you? Are you seriously considering it?” Her face lit up.

  “Don’t get excited. Really, Mom. I shouldn’t have even told you that’s why I’m up here.”

  “I thought you were settled in Utah. Next thing I know you’re in Colorado, and now you’re thinking about another move.”

  “Is that a loaded observation?”

  “Well...just wondering.”

  “Wondering what?”

  “Did the whole...?” She stopped. “Did Sloane...?” She stopped again. “Did what happened with her stop you from ever wanting...?”