The ski resort where her father worked as director of ski operations in the river rafters’ off season fitted the bill perfectly. Her schedule was flexible enough to write the occasional freelance story for Outdoor Women and to spend plenty of time with Ryan, who was now a full partner at Whitmore Family Practice.
The only drawback was the gobs of ointment she needed to slather on her cheek where her port-wine stain had been to protect the skin from the winter sun.
“I’m not ready.” Lindsey held herself perfectly still, her legs in her pink ski pants and new boots the only parts of her body that moved as they swayed slightly in the winter breeze. “I should have stayed home with Sierra.”
By home, she meant the grandiose Whitmore house in downtown Indigo Springs. The house where Annie still lived with her father had only two bedrooms so they’d decided it made more sense for Lindsey to stay with Ryan on her frequent visits.
“You’ll be fine,” Annie said.
“Do we have to get off at the top of the mountain?” Lindsey asked as the disembarkation spot got closer. “Can’t we just stay on the lift and go back to the bottom?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Annie said. “We have to get off.”
That fact didn’t seem to get through to Lindsey. “But if I break my leg, my other dad might not let me move to Indigo Springs this summer.”
It turned out that Lindsey’s adoptive father really did love her, enough that he’d surrendered to her pleas to live primarily with Annie and Ryan. She’d start high school at Indigo Springs High, but the Thompsons weren’t giving her up entirely. The plan was for Lindsey to spend one weekend a month, alternating holidays and two weeks of every summer in Pittsburgh.
“Then we’ll make sure you don’t break a leg,” Ryan said.
“It’d be a shame if our maid of honor needed crutches to walk down the aisle,” Annie said, then turned to Ryan. “Can you believe our wedding is only two days away?”
“If it were up to me, we’d already be married,” he said.
“It takes time to plan a big wedding.” Lindsey put her anxiety on the back burner to give him an eye roll. “How many times do I have to tell you that, Ryan?”
Annie laughed. “Listen to her, Ryan. She’s the one who got us back together after all.”
“And don’t you forget it,” Lindsey said.
Annie looked around their daughter to smile at Ryan. She would have leaned over and kissed him if it hadn’t been almost time to get off the ski lift.
“Oh, no!” Lindsey cried. “I can’t remember what to do!”
“Point your poles forward and lift the tips of your skis,” Annie said as the horizontal bar automatically lifted. “Stand up after the chair passes over the top of the mound. And let go of my arm.”
Lindsey complied but not without a girlish squeal. She did as Annie had instructed, managing to stay upright as all three of them successfully got off the lift.
“That wasn’t so bad now, was it?” Annie asked. “Keep listening to me and we’ll make a skier out of you yet.”
Lindsey sniffed. The cold had turned her cheeks pink to match the insets in her sleek black ski jacket.
“If I do this,” she said, gazing down the mountain, “both of you have to come with me when your wedding photographer takes my modeling pictures.”
“Fine with me,” Annie said.
“Me, too,” Ryan said, exchanging a conspiratorial wink with Annie.
Lindsey trudged ahead of them, walking awkwardly on her skis.
“So I’m just supposed to let the gravity take me, right?” Lindsey asked. “Why don’t you go before me…Whoa! I can’t stop!”
She stayed upright, positioning herself at an angle as Annie had taught her, moving over snow turned even whiter by the glare of the sun.
Annie slanted a proud grin at the man she loved, then the two of them followed their daughter down the mountain and into the bright future.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-3836-1
THE SECRET SIN
Copyright © 2009 by Darlene Hrobak Gardner.
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