by Julia Kent
How we have to function.
“Is this the new normal?”
“New? It’s not new to me. The drones are, sure. And the level of paparazzi interest in us is definitely greater, but new? No.”
“It’s new to me.”
“Yes.”
“My every move is going to be cataloged if they can get access to me.”
“I’ll make sure they don’t.”
“But you can’t protect me 24/7.”
“My team absolutely can.”
“I don’t want that.” Panic starts to grow deep in my belly.
“I don’t either, but it looks like it’s becoming a necessity.”
“Because a bunch of assholes want to use us to make money?”
A strangely bitter laugh, so unlike him, pours forth. “How is that unique?”
“It is to me, Andrew. I’m nobody. I don’t live a life where people do this to each other.” I frown. “And I’m sorry you do.”
Flash!
I see the light out of the corner of my eye, deeper in the woods. Andrew grabs the patio door handle and, with a mighty shove, goes into fight mode.
I am barefoot. Wearing a white bathrobe, a ski helmet, and holding goggles. Andrew takes off on foot in the snow, bare feet a blur as he races to get the new photographer. I grab the nearest weapon – a ski pole – and run after him. He’s in fabulous shape, ninety minutes of personal training a day obvious.
I only run when I’m hiding from staff on a mystery shop, I’m not wearing a bra or panties, and after about a hundred feet I feel like Mother Nature has given me an icicle as a tampon.
By the time I catch up to him, he’s got the photographer on the ground, pinned face down in the snow.
“Grab the camera,” Andrew commands. “Run it upstairs and throw it in the hot tub.”
“No!” The muffled protests of the photographer come through the snow. It’s a woman’s voice, and it makes Andrew relent in shock, jumping up. If he’s going to be on top of a woman while wearing practically nothing, it damn well better be me.
The sound of shouts and footsteps to the left makes me turn and look. Gerald, flanked by two security guards I don’t know, comes running toward us like a suited superhero. He’s rough with the woman, grabbing her by the upper arm and yanking her to her feet.
She’s a kid. Not technically a kid, but definitely no older than college age.
“What the hell?” Andrew barks, reaching for his robe and tightening it. I start shivering, because when your jiggly bits are covered by a thin bathrobe and your nipples turn into popsicles, the body has to do something to preserve itself.
“You’ll be hearing from my lawyer!” the photographer shouts as Gerald hauls her away with a loud sigh.
Andrew bends down and grabs her camera.
“You give that back!” she shouts. It’s a tiny little thing, smaller than a phone, and upon closer inspection I see there’s a head strap. It looks like a coal miner’s headlamp.
“Probably live streaming,” Gerald shouts back to Andrew. “Turn it off however you can.”
Without another word, Andrew marches back into the house. I follow on bare feet made of ice. He goes into the small guest bathroom off the living room. I hear a toilet flush. Andrew emerges, shaking his head, no camera in hand.
“Took care of it?”
“Oops. I dropped it.” His hands go up in mock contrition.
“If that really was live streaming -- ”
“Then they got an eyeful.” He rakes his hair, eyes angry. “Might even find Dory somewhere in the sewer system.” His jaw pulses with tension. “It’s just getting worse.”
“So I’m not imagining it? It feels worse now.” I wrap my arms around my waist and shiver.
“Let’s get back in the hot tub. Gerald’s got this covered.” His arms slip around me and he tenses. “You’re an icicle,” he says, voice low and angry. “Those assholes. I need to get you back in the water.”
We have radically different ways of processing stress. Maybe it’s evolutionary. Fighting the paparazzi battle has made Andrew pumped up and charged, and I can feel he’s hard and ready to work out these overflowing stress hormones on, well, me.
I, on the other hand, am shut down, my brain’s pleasure centers completely closed off because you can’t have sex while you’re fleeing a hungry bear. Literally. The logistics are impossible.
Or something like that.
I’m trying to remember how it all works from my evolutionary psych class back in college as Andrew reaches into my robe and cups one breast, his palm impossibly warm against the iceberg of my nipple.
“You want sex? Now?” I pause before the staircase, really not interested in anything but some coffee. Or wine. Or a sensory deprivation chamber.
“You ask that as if I shouldn’t.” His touch is light, expression turning from determination to openness, reading me.
“How can you be interested in sex after being stalked by paparazzi while we’re naked and nearly being exposed?” I flatten my palm against his bare chest.
“A few minutes ago you were just fine in the hot tub, surrounded by paparazzi.”
“That was pre-drone. My primal brain felt safe enough to let my arousal system kick in. I don’t get how you -- ”
He moves my hand lower. “That’s how. My arousal system is always on.”
“The mechanics are easy to understand. It’s more your psychological state. How do you go from having our privacy utterly invaded to wanting sex? Don’t you need to process what just happened?”
“Sex is how I process what just happened.”
“Climbing on top of me and burying yourself inside is how you process a drone-stealing hawk?”
“If that’s an action plan, then yes.” He frowns. “How do you process what just happened?”
“With coffee and conversation. Lots of talking. For instance, why do people like that -- ”
He silences me with a kiss.
“That was neither caffeinated nor conversational,” I admonish, breathless and pulsing from his mouth.
“It also wasn’t sex,” he says, pretending to pout. “Neither of us is getting what we need.” Separating from me, he crosses the room and draws the curtains closed.
He walks me backwards to the couch, which is turned away from the patio doors. My need for privacy is heightened, the push and pull of Andrew’s desire and my own freakout at war inside me.
Mostly at war between my legs, which is generally not a battleground.
We’re here to work, but also to have fun. Our rude interruption doesn’t have to end the pleasure, right?
“I might need a little more convincing,” I murmur against his neck, feeling him tense with arousal, then inhale slowly, the sound and fire in his throat making me warm up all over.
“Persuasion, you say? Need a little Austen?”
“I could certainly use a little Mr. Darcy right now.” I mean, who couldn’t?
“‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,’” he quotes as he nips my ear.
“In want?” My hand makes it clear I can feel his want, wrapping my fingers around it.
“I certainly do have good fortune,” he rasps as his hand slips down my ribcage, resting on the curve of my hip, his skin so warm, mine quite chilled.
I stroke him. “A big fortune.”
He groans.
I smile.
We find our way.
Evolutionarily.
Chapter 2
Experiencing a season together for the first time when you’re in a new relationship is a rite of passage. For instance, my idea of a fun winter activity involves reading under a thick, fuzzy blanket, snuggling up to a roaring fire, and drinking hot chocolate.
Andrew, on the other hand, likes to race down a snow-covered mountain at speeds that would qualify him for the Indy 500.
Guess where we are now?
“I am not
going down that double black diamond trail. No way,” I declare, staring at an incline of doom on this mountaintop in Vermont. As I stare down the slope, I wonder what kind of sick bastard planted thirty-foot giant pine trees in the middle of a ski trail.
The sun is shining on this fine Saturday in December. You can’t see my engagement ring, which is hidden by gloves so thick, I might as well box instead of ski. Warming packets tucked away in pockets near the wrists aren’t really helping, because in my terror, all the blood in my body has gone to my gut, which is currently screaming “Run away! Run away!” while leaving my hands and feet to turn into frozen concrete.
Andrew’s response?
A grin.
“Everyone’s afraid their first time. It’s like sex,” he cajoles. The creak of the ski lift, bringing an influx of excited skiers in batches of twos and threes, plays a steady drumbeat behind him. Andrew is the epitome of ski sophistication and slope prowess, his body encased in tight black ski pants, a form-fitting black jacket with red racing stripes, custom-made gloves and skis, and a helmet for safety.
A skier since he was three years old, he has nearly three decades of experience.
Me? I joined ski club back in middle school because the boy I had a crush on skied, too. Broke my ankle on the bunny slope. Everyone called me “Gimp” for the rest of seventh grade.
I point to the sheer cliff Andrew expects me to put my feet on, feet attached to skis that have the potential to stab me in the heart if the laws of physics decide to go rogue.
“That is nothing like the first time I had sex! First of all, there is no backseat of a 1996 Dodge Caravan. Second of all, Al isn’t here -- ”
His grin disappears. “Point made. You do not need to bring up your ex-boyfriend and -- ” His tongue rolls in his cheek, jaw clenched. “-- sex with him.”
“And third!” I crow. Hey, he started it. “In both cases, my mother told me only to act when I felt ready, and never let a guy push me beyond my comfort zone.” I poke him in the chest, right where his lift tag hangs from his jacket zipper. “You’re violating my mother’s rules of consent.”
Most guys would sigh at this point. Although I can’t see his eyes behind those tinted ski goggles, I know they’ve narrowed with determination. Andrew isn’t most guys. Aside from being my fiancé, he’s also the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
Which means he never backs down from a challenge. This is the same guy who hired a drone-killing hawk, for goodness sake.
I’m fooling myself if I think I’m not skiing down this trail, huh?
“Your mother also believes that rational risk-taking is key to human development,” he counters. If I could see his eyebrows, they’d be raised.
Oh, ho ho! Using my own mother against me.
“That’s right.” I watch pointedly as some poor, scared woman in red ski pants starts down the slope, wiping out a hundred feet down, screaming a long, thin sound like a yodel. “Rational. Flinging my body down a sheet of ice is the definition of irrational.”
“So was jumping into a pool at Shannon and Declan’s wedding to rescue a drowning dog and cat while wearing a heavy wool dress.”
“Don’t use my acts of bravery against me in an argument!”
“I’m not using them against you, Amanda. I’m pointing out the holes in your logic. Calculate the risks and the rewards and act accordingly.”
“There are no holes in my logic. None.”
“The risk of dying on a ski slope is one in a million. The risk of serious injury is .001 percent. You drove here with me, right?”
“What does driving have to do with skiing?”
“The risk of death from a car accident is one in seven thousand. You put yourself in more danger every time you drive than when you ski down a double black diamond trail.”
“You sound like my mother. This is scary.”
“She welcomed me into your family after I proposed.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re supposed to turn into an actuary like her!”
“Besides, Pam is a wealth of information. Analytical minds are underrated.”
Wait a minute. “You got those statistics from my mother, didn’t you?”
“What? You know me. I use Gina for all my research.” Gina is Andrew’s executive assistant. Life manager. Cat wrangler.
“That’s not a ‘no,’ Andrew.” I look at him, unflinching. “Did you or did you not ask my mother for statistical ammunition against me?”
“Pam and I happened to have an interesting conversation about skiing and liability risks -- ”
“You did! You pumped my mother for information to prepare for this argument!”
“I plead the Fifth.”
“You can’t do that. We’re not in a court of law.”
“Feels like it.”
“I can’t believe you and Mom conspired against me.”
Pulling the goggles up over the edge of his helmet, Andrew gives me a half sympathetic, half impatient look with those long-lashed brown eyes. “We’re not on this ski slope for recreational purposes. We’re here to evaluate whether Anterdec should acquire this resort property. Consider this ski run a mystery shop. This is just like being on one of your assignments.”
“What? No, it’s not! This is nothing like a mystery shop.” But he’s right. It kind of is. Back in Boston last week, Andrew suggested we come to this northern Vermont resort as a hybrid trip. Half fun, half work. His company, Anterdec, is considering buying this ski resort, and I’m the assistant director of marketing.
Get paid to ski, spend a long weekend in snow-capped mountains, and make love with my fiancé? Don’t mind if I do.
Turning into an ice-coated victim out of the movie Frozen wasn’t part of the bargain, though.
He plants his hands on his hips and just stares at me. I stare back. And then it hits me.
Sex. I can get out of this with sex.
Men use logic and rational thought as a weapon against women because they underestimate us. He thinks that if he just mansplains enough, the cogent evidence will make it clear that I should take the reasonable, sensible path.
In a way, he’s right. It should work. But you know what trumps logic?
Hormones.
And men have hormones, too. Lots of them. Like good little foot soldiers, their hormones take orders, which mostly consist of “Ahoy, matey! Send blood to the ship!” and “Sheath your sword!”
If Andrew is going to use my mother against me, I can use his hormones against him.
Choose your weapon, buddy.
I step into his space, loosening my body, ignoring the fear pulsing through me at the thought of skiing down the trail. “How about we do more evaluations on this ‘mystery shop’ back at the room? Like we did yesterday. That hot tub is so lonely right now. In fact, I can hear it whispering our names, begging us to come back,” I rasp in his ear, which is covered by his helmet. Whispering like this is about as sexy as trying to kiss an ice cube tray, but I go for it.
The alternative involves turning myself into an icy bowling ball being rolled down Mount Everest.
The way he stands up straighter tells me his interest is piqued.
Let’s see what else I can get to stand taller.
Click.
Click.
Click!
“Hey, Amanda! Andrew! Here, babe. Look here!”
I freeze. Andrew drops one of his poles and wraps his arm protectively around me.
Paparazzi. More paparazzi. Yesterday was bad enough. Two days in a row? Ugh.
“Damn,” he mutters, body tense, his pose that of rapid-fire strategic thought. Lost him. If the press knows why we’re here, then Andrew’s hand will be tipped, and the sales price of this resort will increase. That’s my business mind talking. As assistant director of marketing for Anterdec, and as Andrew’s fiancée, I care about the bottom line.
As a woman in love, wanting privacy about our couplehood, I just want the photographers to go away. Having my picture splashed all
over the internet and local Boston gossip magazines isn’t fun. Yesterday was bad enough. We thought we kept them off our trail today.
We were wrong.
“How did they find out we’re here?” I whisper.
He gives me a weird look. “From yesterday. Remember the drone?”
“I mean here. At this specific resort.”
“Dad,” he says angrily. “You know how he’s been lately.” Andrew’s father, James, is the former CEO of Anterdec, and still thinks he calls all the shots in the business and in the personal lives of his sons. Andrew’s older brother, Declan, got married last summer and the press covered the bride and groom’s escape from the wedding. Ever since, James has insisted that we carefully view all wedding plans through the lens of getting free media-driven PR.
And as they say in show business, bad press is better than no press.
Or, as James might rephrase it: Any attention is good attention.
Which is pretty much the toddler credo, too.
“Scouting out honeymoon locations? Getting married on the slopes?” shouts a guy with a fake-friendly cry, the lens on his camera glinting in the sun.
A sharp intake of air from Andrew makes me realize he has found an out. He throws the guy a thumbs up. “Yep! Exactly. Thinking about having the wedding here,” he shouts back, matching the guy’s fake tone. That’s a lie. A big one, but sometimes we lie to make people go away.
Click. Click. Click. Flash. Click.
Who uses a flash in full sun? Thank goodness I’m wearing tinted goggles. Fellow skiers are gathering in small groups. My stomach sinks. So far, Andrew has managed to shield me from the press, but we’ve been through this a few times, mostly when we’re out on the town in Boston. It’s rare, but it happens.
And it’s so predictable. The ambush comes first, followed by other people gawking, and then --
“Amanda, can you look over here?”
“Hey, Mandy!”
“Nice piece of ass you got there, Andrew!”
Their goal is to get us to turn and give them the strangest expressions so they can manipulate our pictures for click bait.
