Snowbound Summer

by Veronica Tower

  Hanna continued screaming, clutching at her shattered hip, trying unsuccessfully not to writhe in agony.

  All four Millers huddled around the injured woman while the two young ski lodge personnel operating the ice-climbing wall stood open mouthed in horror.

  Kara overcame her own shock and took control of the situation. She pointed one gloved finger at the nearest employee. “You call 911—now!” She swiveled her arm around to point at the other employee. “And you get on your cell phone to the lodge. They have to have some sort of emergency services. Get them up here!”

  She hurried around to crouch near Hanna's head. Everyone had their hands on her trying to calm her and they only seemed to be driving her into a greater frenzy.

  Kara reached deep inside of herself to tap all the frustration and anger she'd been feeling this weekend. “Everyone get back!” she shouted.

  Startled everyone looked up at her—even Hanna.

  “Give the woman some air!” Kara ordered.

  The twins were the first to do as she said. Rebellious teenagers or not, they understood the voice of adult authority and responded to it on an almost unconscious level. Ron didn't back up, but he did straighten up, taking his hands off his mother. Howard proved to be a bigger problem. There were tears welling in his eyes and an expression of genuine fright on his face. He had his hands on his wife's shoulders and left off looking at Kara to return to begging her to be okay. “You're going to be all right, Hanna,” he told her. “Kara has the doctors coming. Try not to move! It's only going to make things worse.”

  Ron put his arm around his father's shoulders. “Dad, give Kara a little room, okay. She knows what she's doing.”

  Where Ron had gotten that last idea, Kara didn't know, but she'd seen enough cop shows in her life, not mention rescue shows dating back to Emergency! in the seventies that she wasn't completely adrift regarding what to do. She took her ski vest off and placed it over Ron's mother.

  “Hanna, I fear your hip is broken,” she said. “Help is on the way. What we need to do now is keep you warm and try not to move you until the professionals get here.”

  As she spoke, Ron pulled off his own vest and laid it over the lower half of his mother. Hanna continued to lie on the ground, crying more or less quietly.

  “How did she fall?” Brett asked. “One moment she was fine and the next...”

  One of the attendants came forward. “The lodge is sending a team to help,” he said. “They should be here in a few minutes.”

  Those few minutes crawled by at seemingly glacial rates.

  Howard crept forward again. “You're going to be just fine,” he told Hanna. “You're a strong woman! You'll be up and fighting with me again in no time.”

  Hanna overcame her agony sufficiently to spit a few words between her clenched teeth. “You told the kids they weren't your children.”

  “Kitten doesn't think I love her,” Howard defended himself. “All three of them need to understand I do care.”

  “Most people,” Hanna told him, “would have accomplished that by being nice to them. You didn't have to rip their worlds apart. You didn't have to tell them!”

  She spat the last sentence much more forcefully than the others.

  “Why keep it secret?” Ron asked. “Shouldn't Anne and Kitten have known they're adopted? They might have needed that information, if only for the medical histories.”

  Hanna tried to twist about to glare at him, but the movement spiked the pain in her broken hip, causing her to scream again.

  “Ron, stop upsetting your mother!” Kara told him. She really wanted to hear the answers to his questions, but this clearly wasn't the time.

  Ron edged back a little, clearly chagrinned to have caused his mother further pain. Surprisingly, Howard stepped up again to fill in the blanks. “We had always intended to tell Anne and Kitten they were adopted,” he said. “But then you came along and your mother was worried that if we told them they were adopted, we'd end up having to explain that I was sterile. Her cheating embarrassed her. She didn't want anyone to know.”

  “Howard, can't you ever shut up?” Hanna asked.

  “It hurt,” Howard continued as if his wife hadn't spoken. “But I always wanted kids and, well, you hadn't done anything.” He glanced down at his wife. “I was even able to forgive Hanna at first.”

  “Just stop talking!” Hanna growled.

  “But she...”

  Howard's voice trailed off as if some part of him recognized that Hanna was right. Talking about it was too painful.

  “We know,” Kara told Ron's father. “Hanna explained it to me last night.”

  Howard shook his head as if he were still amazed at what happened twenty-five years ago, but then, according to Hanna it hadn't stopped then, had it? Cheating for her hadn't proven to be a onetime fling.

  “So why didn't you two just get divorced?” Marcie asked. “I mean, no offense, but it's not like you like each other anymore.”

  “She threatened to keep me from my kids,” Howard said.

  “Can we please stop talking about this?” Hanna asked. From the look on her face, she must have been in agony. The two lodge employees were standing back, completely unclear how to treat her injury.

  No one was listening to her. “So what's your excuse now?” Brett asked. “Uncle Ron's a man. Mom and Aunt Anne are women. Why don't you divorce her now?”

  “I'm Catholic,” Howard reminded them. “We swore vows.” His expression, which had been so concerned five minutes ago, turned hostile. “I haven't broken mine.”

  “That's a load of crap, Dad!” Ron told him. “You may not have broken your fidelity vows, but what happened to cherish and hold in sickness and in health? Actively trying to make Mom miserable for the past twenty-five years is probably worse than her cheating all of this time. And extending your hatred to all women? That's sick in and of itself. Why didn't the two of you get counseling? Why didn't you get some help?”

  “Ron, I swear if you don't shut up,” his mother said, “I'm going to get up off the ground and tan your hide like I should have done when you were a child.”

  For the first time since Hanna had fallen, Ron smiled. “Mom was too liberal to spank me,” he told Kara. “I think it was a Dr. Spock kind of thing, although why she would think that Vulcan child rearing techniques should have anything in common with earth children, I don't know.”

  Kara found the corners of her mouth threatening to turn upward. Even Hanna seemed to find Ron's absurd statement humorous. “Don't make me laugh,” she told him. “This already hurts bad enough! I can't imagine what laughing would do to my hip.”

  “Hey, I think I see someone coming with a stretcher,” Marcie announced.

  Everyone followed her gaze to see two apparent paramedics running toward them through the snow with an orange plastic stretcher. The view sort of reminded Kara of the old TV show, Baywatch, if David Hasslehoff had been bundled up for winter and running through the snow.

  The two paramedics quickly took over the scene, effectively ending any further conversation and giving Kara time to think about what had been said, and remember how cold it was in the storm without her vest. Fortunately, the paramedics had blankets and Ron and she got their vests back. They watched the man and woman check Hanna's vital signs, brace her back and hip, and make her scream again when they moved her onto the stretcher out of the snow.

  Then they talked on their phone to the lodge again before reporting back to the group standing around Hanna. “We need to take her to the hospital, but Emergency Services can't get a helicopter in during this storm. There's also a lot of flooding down the mountain so we don't know how long it will be until an ambulance can reach us. We're going to transport Mrs. Miller back to the lodge where she'll be warm and do our best to make her comfortable until we can move her to the hospital.”

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Back at the lodge, Ron got on the phone to his sisters. Kitten was already in the air so t
here was no way that she and Eric could do anything but fly home. She sounded upset about it, as if the confusion of feelings that had caused her to run away from their parents were now making her feel guilty that she wasn't with them.

  Anne and her family were stuck in their rental car trying to find a way back to Snowline Lodge that didn't involve a flooded road. After talking to Ron, they decided their best bet was to find a hotel down in the valley near the hospital and wait for word on when Hanna could be moved to it. Ron and Kara continued to wait with Howard and the twins.

  It wasn't particularly pleasant—waiting never is. But once the lodge's emergency response team was convinced to give Hanna painkillers for her hip, the tension died down considerably.

  Howard and Hanna even talked a bit without growling at each other—something that Ron didn't remember happening all that often in the past twenty-five years.

  When the ambulance arrived to take Hanna away, Howard surprised everyone by deciding to ride with her. When the paramedics closed the ambulance door, he was shockingly holding his wife's hand.

  “I will never understand them,” Brett said. “Not even if I live to be their age!”

  “I don't know what's so difficult to understand,” Kara said.

  The twins and Ron turned to stare at her. “They hate each other,” Ron reminded her.

  “Of course they do,” Kara said. “But they've been married more than forty years. Don't you think that under all of that anger and hate they care about each other, too?”

  Ron shook his head doubtfully. “I don't know about that.”

  “I do,” Kara said. “I saw your father's face when your mother fell. He was frightened...frightened for her!"

  “I need a drink,” Ron said. He started to walk back into the lodge, then remembered Brett and Marci.

  “Don't mind us,” Brett suggested. “Just bring the bottle back to the cabin and we can all get drunk.”

  Kara shook her head, but she didn't have to say anything. Ron had already turned his back on the lodge and the bar inside it.

  He extended his hand to Kara. “Promise me,” he said, “if we ever hit that point...I mean the point when they first began to realize that they had serious problems...promise me we'll get counseling. I don't want us to end up like my parents did.”

  She accepted Ron's hand, sliding her brown fingers into his white ones, enjoying the simple comfort that came with the contact. Snow still fell and it was beautiful. The whole mountainside was beautiful. It really was a good place to spend the evening with the man she loved—even considering how tough the weekend had been. “My parents needed some counseling, too,” Kara reminded him.

  Ron stopped talking, turned to face Kara and cupped her cheek with his free hand. “I love you,” he whispered.

  He started to lean in to kiss her but Brett's voice interrupted him.

  “Hey, if you two don't mind, I think Marcie and I are going to go back to skiing. I mean, we can't help Grandma now anyway, can we? And tonight is our last chance until December or January.”

  “We don't mind,” Kara answered for Ron. She looked into Ron's clear blue eyes as he leaned in to kiss her again. “In fact, we might join you later.”

  Ron's mouth touched hers and for a moment his warm lips blotted out the rest of the world.

  He broke the kiss much too quickly and muttered, “Much later.”

  Kara didn't remember who he was talking to until Marcie giggled.

  Then Ron's lips touched hers again and she forgot all about the twins and skiing and the problems in Ron's family. Instead she focused all of her attention on kissing her man.

  The End

  * * * *

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Other Books by Veronica Tower and Red Rose Publishing

  Blind Date

  Christmas Wagers

  House Rules

  My Son's Roommat

  Not Another Dateless Valentine's Da

  One Night Stan

  One Night Stand 2 Tricky Business

  The Runaway

  Strip Poke

  Trick

  Healing (forthcoming)

  Please Stop Filming (forthcoming)

  Rock Idol (forthcoming)

  * * * *

  The Snowbound Series

  Snowbound 1 Snowbound Christma

  Snowbound 2 Snowbound New Yea

  Snowbound 3 Snowbound Valentine's Da

  Snowbound 4 Snowbound Vacatio

  Snowbound 5 Snowbound Trea

  In Print from Red Rose Publishing

  One Night Stand

  Christmas Wagers (forthcoming)

  House Rules (forthcoming)

  My Son's Roommate (forthcoming)

  Not Another Dateless Valentine's Day (forthcoming)

  One Night Stand 2 Tricky Business (forthcoming)

  Snowbound 1 Snowbound Christmas (forthcoming)

  Snowbound 2 Snowbound New Year (forthcoming)

  Snowbound 3 Snowbound Valentine's Day (forthcoming)

  Snowbound 4 Snowbound Vacation (forthcoming)

  Snowbound 5 Snowbound Treat (forthcoming)

  Tricks (forthcoming)

  * * * *

  * * *

  Visit www.redrosepublishing.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.