by Dani April
Chrissie looked around at the brothers. Where Ethan was apparently cool with going on about his vacation just as if she was not present, the other two had different ideas. They both looked at her, waiting for her to say something before they made a commitment. She knew they would follow her. She was used to having people follow her but for altogether different reasons. These two would follow her because they liked her, and that was the best reason of all.
“Build a fort?” she looked up at Ethan for an explanation.
“Or maybe a castle.” He gave her a wink. “We’ve got enough snow out there to make just about anything we want to. Hell, maybe we’ll make one of each.”
“That sounds fun,” Chrissie admitted. “Would it be all right if I came with you?”
“Absolutely…” Then he hesitated. “Only thing is you better put your fur coat back on because that wind is going to be dangerously cold out there, and don’t be surprised if you get that expensive coat a little bit dirty while we’re out there working.”
“I don’t mind,” she told him and found herself excited by the prospects of building things in the snow.
“Great!” Ethan motioned her to join him and then looked at his brothers. “You guys coming or what?”
They were both on their feet in a split second. Chrissie laughed at them and got up to get her fur from out of her room. This was going to be fun, and fun was something she hadn’t had in a long time. With these three, she thought she could probably have a lot of fun.
* * * *
The cold outside in the snow bit into Chrissie, and every gust of wind made it feel ten times more intense. However, Chrissie was bundled up in her fur and a scarf, stocking cap, and gloves that Brad had given her from his closet, and she was able to take the cold in her stride the way the three brothers handled it. She worried briefly that the stocking cap and scarf wrapped around her neck made her look ugly, but then she decided this time was just too special to bring such silly worries to bear.
She had solved the problem of her falling-down jeans by tying the cinch from her fur coat tightly around her trim waist, and though the jeans were still baggy at the ankles, they now were in no danger of falling down her legs. Her feet did not fare as well because she had not found a way to protect them from the snow that rushed over the tops of the ungainly sneakers with every step she took in the deep snow. Soon her socks were soaked and her feet felt like igloos. Again, she was not going to utter one complaint. This was her day in the snow with the three brothers, and without even having to try, she was having the time of her life.
The property surrounding the cabin was not large, only an acre and a half they could call their own, but that was plenty of room to spread out and play and even run, though the depth of the snow would not permit much in the way of a run.
The first few steps Chrissie took across their yard, she wound up facedown in the snow. The guys were laughing at her. She struggled for a moment against the snow and realized it wasn’t going to eat her up, and it was just cold and rather wonderful. She laughed with the guys, sharing their sense of humor. Scott helped her to her feet, and Brad was on her other side to help brush off her coat. Ethan had already charged ahead and was calling them onward.
“You okay, Chrissie?” Scott asked. She was still in his arms, and she didn’t make any immediate effort to get out of them. His body felt so hard and warm against her own. Behind her was Brad, brushing off her long fur. The attention was glorious, and she realized this was a new feeling, a new kind of care that she could get used to in a hurry.
She was still laughing as Scott brought her back up to her feet and held her in his arms. “Yeah, I’m fine.” She finally pushed out of his arms. “You know my trainer keeps my body in top shape. I’m probably in better shape than any of you guys.”
“I have no doubt of that, Chrissie.” Brad was there when she turned around. She pushed him and he fell in the snow flat on his back.
Now it was her turn to laugh with Scott at her side, and he seemed to think it was the funniest thing he had ever seen. Brad wasn’t going to be outdone so easily. He had his fists full of snowballs and flung them at both of them. Chrissie gave a scream and ran away with Scott, holding onto him for dear life.
“I never thought my jeans would look so good,” Scott told her, and she caught him looking down at her body as she struggled through the snow at his side.
“They may look good to you my friend, but if my PR people back home could see me now, I think they would have me shot.”
“Well, screw your PR people then,” Brad said, joining her at her other side.
“My thoughts exactly.” Chrissie ran ahead of the brothers and tried to catch up to Ethan.
“Hurry up, guys,” Ethan hollered, waving them forward. “I started without you.”
Chrissie could just barely see his figure about fifty yards ahead of them. The snow was still falling at a pretty steady clip, and her vision was restricted.
She looked up at the sky. It was white with some floating, gray clouds, and as she held her face up, snowflakes landed on her cheeks, melting immediately, the water running down her face like cold tears. Just behind the pitch of falling snow and clouds, she could make out the peak of a mountain. She had seen many mountains before. She thought the Alps were actually the prettiest, but there was something about this mountain peak that caught her, and for a second she could not turn away.
The huge, barely seen peak was standing up there all by itself, out here where there were no people or any civilization. It was free, and now, for the first time in her life, so was she.
“I’ll race you guys,” she yelled at Brad and Scott and trudged on ahead of them in the snow.
When she finally made it up to Ethan, she was amazed at what he was building. He had formed a large section of snow, about ten feet by ten feet, and already in the few minutes he had worked, he had the makings of a foundation. His snow building was going to really look impressive. He had apparently done this before and knew what he was doing.
“Show me what to do?” Chrissie asked him.
“You can start by rolling balls of snow and putting them right over here,” he instructed her.
Scott jumped over the foundation with Ethan and started working on building up the snow fortress with him. Brad jogged over with Chrissie.
“My brothers are the snow architects in this family,” he told her, his breath fogging the air. “I just scoop up snowballs and stand back and watch them.”
“I don’t even know how to scoop up snowballs.” Chrissie laughed.
“It’s easy. I’ll show you how.” He led her by the arm out farther into the solid white field. “First we have to get a little distance from what they’re building and where we start pushing the snow. When they say they want a snowball, they mean they want a really big snowball. With the two of us pushing together and so much snow accumulation, I’ll bet we have one over ten feet high by the time we’re done.”
“Wow, that’s big!”
“Let’s see if we can break my record. I rolled a ball down this hill that must have been a good twelve feet one time when I was a kid. You game to try?”
“Sure, I am.”
They got down and started scooping up snow and making the pile bigger and bigger. The wind blew her long hair, held in place only by the stocking cap Brad had given her. The work was tiring but a lot of fun, and she knew she was going to have a big appetite when they went back home for dinner that night.
“See how I do it, Chrissie,” Brad told her, using his arms to move a mountain of snow before him. “If you get behind it like that and use your forearms, you’ll get a bigger ball.”
“You’re bigger than me, silly.” She laughed at him. “I think your snowball is always going to be bigger than my snowball.”
“Size has nothing to do with it. Here, let me show you.” He got behind her and held her arms in his sure grip and demonstrated how she could move to scoop up more snow. “Also, be careful not to le
t the snow get inside your gloves or up under your sleeves. Frostbite is real easy to get out here, and that’s something we definitely don’t want on our vacation.”
Even through the heavy lining of her fur coat and his winter jacket, she thrilled at the touch of his body next to hers. His face was close to hers as he spoke over the rushing wind, and she could feel his warm breath against her face and smell a hint of aftershave against his skin. When their footing became unsure in the uneven snowdrifts, he steadied her with his arms. She felt the muscles of his arms and his chest, and when his face briefly touched hers, she felt the sexy stubble of his beard.
She wasn’t even listening to what he was telling her. Inside, she had overcome the cold and felt only burning warmth that was spreading with each second their bodies made contact. She’d had enough boyfriends to know he was just giving her BS about how to shovel the snow in her arms. He just wanted an excuse to be up close to her and to touch her. That was all right. She wanted him to touch her. At that moment she wished they were back inside by the fire and weren’t restricted by the heavy coats. She would like to feel more of this man’s body.
* * * *
When Chrissie got back to the warmth of the cabin, it was almost sundown, and a strange, dim light was filling the land as the snow continued to blow down. The coziness of the little cabin and the warmth of the fireplace had never seemed as wonderful to Chrissie as she shrugged out of her fur and fell to her knees in front of the fire to warm her hands.
“I hope you like canned hash and beer, Chrissie?” Ethan asked her as he made his way out to the kitchen.
“I guess I do.” She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think I’ve ever had food like that before.”
“Well, you’re going to have it tonight.” He threw a couple of beers to Scott. “Make yourself useful, bro. Give one to our guest.”
Scott handed her down a beer and smiled. Chrissie really did not like beer, but after a few sips, this one started to grow on her. It was like everything else about this magical place.
Slowly, she took off her shoes and socks and held out her bare feet in front of her on the floor. They had gone a funny red and were so numb she couldn’t feel them even after bending over and attempting a vigorous massage.
“Your turn to fix dinner, bro,” Ethan told Scott.
“I made breakfast,” Scott protested.
“Not for me you didn’t,” Ethan teased him, leaving him alone in the kitchen to start the meal.
Ethan came out and joined Chrissie in front of the fire. She gave him a smile, still never sure when he was going to be nice. She was still rubbing her feet, and as she rubbed them more, they started to hurt. In fact, they were hurting all the way up past her ankles.
“What did you do, Chrissie?” Ethan asked, kneeling down next to her on the floor and inspecting her feet with his gaze.
“My feet got wet outside.” She showed him her socks. “When I took these off, they were soaked. I didn’t even realize it until I got back inside. I guess I was having too good of a time.”
He picked up one of her legs in his big hand and laid it across his lap. He took her hands away and took over the massaging for her. She leaned back on her elbows and decided he was probably giving her an awesome foot massage. If only she had any feeling left in her feet, she would probably be in heaven along about now.
Then he ran his hands up her ankles and to her calves, folding back the baggy jeans to see the rest of the damage to each of her feet and lower legs. He gave her an angry look. Why couldn’t he ever just be nice to her like his brothers were?
“You know if you get frostbite out here where there isn’t going to be any medical help, it would be real serious,” he admonished her.
“I guess I didn’t think about that.” She looked down at her feet and winced in pain as he brought more blood into them with his fingers.
Ethan whistled over to his brother. “Hey, Brad, go out there and boil up two really warm pans of water!” Then he turned back to Chrissie. “Take off your pants,” he ordered her.
“What?”
“You’re going to need to take these off,” he held up the leg of her jeans. “Come on, I won’t look. Anyway, that sweatshirt you’re wearing is as long as a dress on you.”
“Ow!” she cried out as he brought more blood flowing into her sore feet. “Ethan, that really hurts!”
“I’m sorry. Just hold still and take your pants off.”
She shrugged and decided she trusted him enough to do whatever he told her. She undid the cinch around her waist and reached up under her shirt and unbuttoned and then unzipped the jeans. Hiking up first one knee and then the other, she pulled down the pants and threw them aside. As she took the rough material over her calves and ankles, more pain shot through her nerves.
She quickly brought her sweatshirt down past her knees and noticed that Ethan had a wicked smile curving his mouth. “What’s the matter? Haven’t you ever seen a woman’s legs before?”
“I’ve seen plenty of legs. But I must say you have a nice pair.”
“Everybody tells me that…” Chrissie sighed as he went back to rubbing her feet.
“I was just smiling because it seems I always find a way to get a woman’s pants off her.”
“Sounds like you’re proud of that.”
“Everybody’s got a skill.” He laughed and ran his palms along the bottom of her feet.
“Ethan, that still hurts,” she squealed.
“Relax. That’s a good sign. If it didn’t hurt you, I’d be really worried along about now.”
Brad brought out the pans of water and set them down in front of her. “I’m going to lend you my snow boots, Chrissie,” he told her. “So when you go out tomorrow, this won’t happen again.”
She reached up and took his hand in hers as Ethan picked up her feet and gently set them down into the warm water of the pans. “You guys are all so good to me,” she told them. “I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t met you.”
“Believe me, Chrissie, the pleasure is entirely ours.” Brad cupped her hand with his other one and smiled down at her, a kind and sexy smile all at the same time. “When we started the drive up here, none of us would have believed that we’d end up spending time with a girl up here, certainly not one as special as you.”
“Now that’s really starting to hurt, Ethan,” she called down to him.
She tried to remove her feet, but he wouldn’t let her, holding them down beneath the warmth of the water in his strong hands, making her feel small in his grasp. Also, there was that other feeling she had been getting from all the guys, that of being protected and cared for in a way that she had never known until this moment.
“Coward,” Ethan taunted her. “Keep your feet in there, or I’ll cut them off.”
She laughed and squealed. “You big bully!” she yelled at him. “Help me out here Brad. Your brother is murdering my feet.”
Brad kneeled down behind her, still holding her hand. She used him as a backrest, leaning back into the muscle of his body. Ethan’s hands were working wonders on her feet beneath the water, reviving the feeling in them and massaging away the pain. Before she even knew what she was doing she had pulled Brad’s arms around her shoulders.
“God this feels really good…” Her voice was almost sleepy as the guys met her every need. “If you all do this for me every day, I’m going to see to it that I get frostbite every time I go outside.”
“Now we’d have to ground you if you did something like that,” Ethan told her in his stern voice.
Scott had gone over to the stereo and was flipping through a collection of music he had. A quiet dance tune came over the speakers by a girl she knew and had developed a friendship with when she was out on tour.
“Stay on that one please, Scott,” she called over her shoulder to him. “I know her, and she’s got some really mean stuff.”
Scott did as she told him, and the light music was soon adding its touch to the room alo
ng with the fire and the men. The cold wind howled outside, and Chrissie thought it even sounded nice right now. At that moment, everything was just perfect.
“Are you this friendly to everyone, Chrissie? Or is it just us?” Brad asked her. She thought he sounded halfway serious.
Of course there was only one answer to his question. “Just you three guys,” she whispered back to him, her eyes still closed as she gloried in Ethan’s foot massage and Brad’s strong arms around her.
“Well, Chrissie,” Ethan told her giving her feet one last squeeze. “I think you’ll live this time, but don’t let it happen again.”
“That feels so good. Rub my feet for me for another ten minutes please?”
He looked down at her. She knew he was thinking about it. Then he just gave her a playful pat on her knee and got up. “Hell no!” he told her. “It’s time to eat.”
“Dinner is served, oh masters and mistress,” Scott called to them from the kitchen.
Brad nuzzled the top of her hair with his chin. “Come on. Let’s go eat,” he whispered to her, letting his hands linger for what amounted to a caress of her shoulders.
Regretfully, she let him release her from out of his strong grip and allowed him to help her back to her feet. He handed her the beer she had been working on and took her by the hand to lead her to the table. Dinner did smell good, and she was hungrier than she’d ever been in her life.
She also found that being in the presence of these guys made her heart beat like crazy in her chest and sent constant warmth down low in her belly.
* * * *
Dinner was simple, beans and hash, and of course beer. A few days ago Chrissie wouldn’t have liked this. She wouldn’t have thought it even good enough for Peaches and Cream. Now, however, it tasted just right to her, and she ate with a ravenous appetite. She asked for seconds and then thirds. Back home, her trainer had her on a strict diet, and she would probably have come up with some horrid punishment for Chrissie if she could see how she was eating tonight.
