Asking for Trouble (The Kincaids)

by James, Rosalind

  She swore in frustration, stomped her way across the tiled entryway, as much as a person with sore feet in high heels could be said to stomp. Stopped at the stairwell and pulled off said heels, accepted the cold grit of the worn carpeting under her feet as she climbed to the fourth floor.

  She could have sworn they’d had a moment. Too bad that, once again, the moment had been all hers.

  How the Real Men Do It

  Joe was sitting in Alec’s office when Rae popped in on a chilly mid-February evening. It was after seven, and Joe could tell from the quiet of the outer office that nearly everyone else had left.

  “I’m heading out,” Rae said. “You guys here for a while?”

  “Nah,” Alec answered. “Wrapping up. If you’ll wait a sec, I’ll go with you. I can finish this up at home tonight.” He shut down, began to pack up. “Joe was just telling me that he’s going skiing up at Tahoe over President’s Day. Abandoning the ship for some of that backcountry skiing he does, and he was inviting me along so he can show me how the real men do it. So he can humiliate me, more like. What do you think? Want to come?”

  “I’m not a very good skier,” Rae hesitated. “In fact—“ She laughed a little. “I suspect I’d barely make it into the intermediate category.”

  “We’ll be right next door to Alpine Meadows,” Joe put in. “If you want to come, we could all do resort skiing on Saturday, and you could spend Sunday that way, too, or just hang out, whatever you wanted, while I took Alec into the backcountry. As long as you don’t mind going alone, it would be fine. I’d invite you to join us,” he hastened to add, “but it sounds like it’d be a little technical for you.”

  He’d managed not to say that it would be too hard for her, he thought with relief. He had to congratulate himself on that one.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, reading his mind, “I’m not offended. It doesn’t sound good to me at all. And I shouldn’t be inviting other people along on your trip, I know, but what about Alyssa?”

  “Alyssa?”

  “She loves to ski, and she hasn’t done it since she moved,” Rae said. “I know, because we’ve got her gear in our storage unit.”

  Rae and Alec were living in Rae’s little cottage while their new house was being remodeled, and there hadn’t been room for Alyssa’s sports gear, her skis and surfboard and all the rest of it. It hadn’t been going to fit in her room, either, that was for sure, so Alec and Rae had decided it could go into the storage unit that housed the few items of Alec’s furniture that had made Rae’s cut for the new place. Joe knew that because he’d driven the truck there and unloaded it himself.

  He hesitated. Not because he didn’t want Alyssa along, but because he did. It had become harder than ever to keep his distance since the night he’d rescued her. He kept wanting to call her. To check on her, he’d told himself, knowing all the while that that wasn’t the reason, or at least not all of it. The idea that she was going out with other guys—that was the real reason. He couldn’t get it out of his mind, now that she was this close, and it was driving him crazy, and there seemed to be no way to fix it.

  “If you don’t mind,” Rae said again. “If there’s room.”

  “Sure,” Joe said. He’d controlled himself for fifteen years, after all. All right, her parents wouldn’t be there, and he’d already discovered that that made a big difference. But at least she wouldn’t be wearing a short skirt on a ski vacation, or that sweater with the band around her pretty throat. She’d better not be wearing that sweater, or he wasn’t at all sure he could answer for the consequences. A man only had so much self-control, and he had a bad feeling that he’d reached his limit.

  Rae smiled in satisfaction, sat on the edge of Alec’s desk, pulled his phone around to face her, and punched buttons. “No time like the present,” she informed the two men.

  Joe heard the ringing, then Alyssa’s voice. “Hello? Alec?”

  “It’s Rae. I’m sitting here with Alec and Joe, and we’re planning a ski trip over President’s Day. You’ve got that off, right?”

  “Right,” Alyssa said.

  “Want to come, then?” Rae asked. “We’re going to—somewhere,” she laughed, “some ski area up at Lake Tahoe on Saturday, and I’m going to ski there on Sunday, too, or hang out at the lodge drinking hot chocolate, more likely, and Alec and Joe are going backcountry skiing. I don’t even know what that is, but I gather it’s some heroic thing that Joe does, way beyond my comfort level. What do you think? Want to come?”

  “Really?” Joe could hear the longing in Alyssa’s voice. “I’ve always wanted to try backcountry skiing.” She sounded as excited as . . . well, as excited as his last girlfriend, Vanessa, would have been if the topic had been a vacation to Tahiti.

  Joe surrendered to the inevitable. “You’re welcome to come along for that too,” he said. “It isn’t much more technical than what you’d be doing if you were skiing the tougher slopes at a resort. Only difference is, no lifts to get you up there.”

  “You need special equipment, though, don’t you?” she asked.

  Alec looked the question at Joe, and Joe nodded. “Yeah,” he told Alyssa. “Boots, skis, bindings, skins for going uphill. But you can rent all that.”

  “Oh.” He heard the flat tones of her disappointment. “I shouldn’t. Not with the lift ticket and everything. I could do one or the other, maybe, but not both. I should probably stick to the ski area with Rae. But that’d be great,” she added quickly.

  “Oh,” Rae said breezily, “Alec and I can take care of that, the ticket and the equipment rental. I don’t have skis at all, and Alec doesn’t have all those things Joe’s talking about. And really?” she broke off to ask Joe. “You need all different stuff?”

  “Well, yeah,” he said, and he had to smile. “That’s half the fun, getting all the different gear, needing to upgrade.”

  She rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to the phone. “We’ll go together and get it all,” she told Alyssa. “That’s no problem.”

  “I shouldn’t,” Alyssa said, but she didn’t sound convinced.

  Alec sighed. “Why can’t I have one happily dependent woman in my life? It makes no difference to us, Liss. It’s just a lift ticket and a few days’ ski rental, not a Maserati. So come on, say yes so I can wrap this up and take Desiree out of here. It’s dinnertime, and I’m hungry.”

  Be It Ever So Humble

  It was the Friday night before a holiday weekend, and Alyssa was in the car with Alec and Rae, heading up to Lake Tahoe along with what felt like half the population of the Bay Area. There wasn’t a whole lot of conversation, not on her end. Alec and Rae chatted, but talking from the back seat was too hard, and after a while, she fell asleep.

  She woke to the sight of black night outside, Alec following turns that eventually took him into a community that seemed to be mostly trees, with the occasional blaze of light breaking up the darkness. No surprise, Alec had rented a ski cabin in a neighborhood where the houses were big and the neighbors distant.

  By the time he turned into a long driveway and pulled to a stop next to Joe’s SUV, she could see by the dashboard clock that it was after ten-thirty. She got out of the car, the shock of the cold mountain air a brisk wake-up call, accepted her bag from Alec and headed for a steep flight of wooden stairs, her way illuminated by concealed lighting along the sides.

  “Nice cabin,” she said to Joe, because he was at the top, holding open an oversized front door and letting her into a stone-flagged entryway that led to another flight of stairs. A railing along one side of the spacious entry ended in three or four steps down into a sunken great room walled by windows. She could see a hearth with a wood stove at one end, the wall behind it faced with more stone.

  She guessed that it could be called a cabin. It was made of logs, which made it a log cabin, no matter how big it was.

  “Pretty late,” Joe said when they were all inside. “Traffic bad?”

  “My fault, really,” Alyssa s
aid. “I thought I could get out early, or at least on time, but Helene had some stuff for me to finish.” Which hadn’t seemed all that urgent, but Alyssa wasn’t the boss, and Helene was. Get along to get ahead, she reminded herself once again.

  “No problem,” Joe said. “Come on, I’ll show you the upstairs.”

  “Alec and Rae in here,” he said when he’d led the way to the second floor, opened the door of a large room equipped with a queen bed. “And Alyssa, you’re here.” Next door, a slightly smaller room, twin beds this time, more big windows. “Bathroom at the end of the hall. Everybody good?”

  “Yeah,” Alyssa sighed. “Shower, bed. Sounds good to me.” She didn’t spend a lot of time admiring her surroundings. She mostly focused on appreciating the heated towel racks and massaging shower in the bathroom, the flannel sheets on the bed. There were advantages to having a successful brother and being allowed to tag along on his vacations, even though the comparisons could get tough. And even though Alec and Rae, as always, made too much noise, noise that she really, really didn’t need to hear right now. She put a pillow over her head, gave herself a nice little fantasy as a consolation prize, and fell asleep.

  She woke up, though, with her good mood restored. She’d only awakened once during the night. Instead of the traffic noise she’d grown used to hearing, the occasional sirens, the loud voices and laughter of late-night returners, the streetlight that insisted on shining into her window through a crack in the drapes, there’d been nothing but silence and darkness enfolding her, and she’d drifted off again, warm and content. Now it was morning, she was in the mountains with two days of skiing ahead of her, and she couldn’t wait.

  “Some cabin,” she said aloud when she’d got out of bed and opened the heavy drapes next to her bed to find sliding doors leading out onto a narrow deck that ran the length of both her room and Alec and Rae’s, and what looked like acres of snowy pine forest beyond. She could imagine waking up on a summer morning, drinking your coffee out there. Assuming you had a butler to bring it to you, of course. Well, maybe not.

  She pulled on her ski clothes, which made her even happier, and came downstairs to the sight of the wall of windows from the night before, drapes open to reveal an endless view of more evergreens, more snow. A leather couch and two easy chairs formed a comfortable seating group near the fire, a rocking chair sat in a corner next to a tall bookshelf full of books that looked like somebody had actually read them, and the rafters soared a good 25 feet overhead. It was airy, yet cozy, made you want to snuggle up in warm socks, drink coffee from a mug, read a book and look at trees. She wasn’t sure how you got that effect, but whoever had designed and decorated this house had managed it.

  “Morning. Coffee’s made,” Joe said as she took it all in. He was standing in a fully equipped kitchen that could have come out of any architectural magazine, stirring something in a big blue ceramic bowl, wearing a dark red plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up and looking more like a logger—a really hot logger—than any man cooking in a gourmet kitchen had any business looking. His hair was a little longer now, more than military-short, and it looked even better.

  “What are you making?” she asked, pouring herself a cup of coffee, then looking around in vain. “Wait a minute. Tell me there’s a fridge in here.”

  Joe smiled, set his bowl down and came over to open a cabinet that was hiding an extra-large refrigerator.

  “How would you even know?” she wondered. “What’s wrong with having a refrigerator that looks like one?”

  “It ruins the aesthetic,” he informed her solemnly.

  “Huh.” She looked inside and found her milk, and a whole lot more, slammed the fridge—the cabinet—door. “You did a lot of grocery shopping.”

  “That’s what I get for starting my vacation early. And the answer to the question about what I’m making is, blueberry pancakes and eggs. You ready for pancakes?”

  “Sure.” She scooted up onto a stool at the breakfast bar, sipped her coffee, and watched him. “I didn’t know you could cook.”

  “Pancakes and eggs, anyway. Somebody has to. I thought nobody in the world could be as hopeless at cooking as Alec, until I met Rae.”

  “I know,” Alyssa said. “She’s worse than me, and I’m bad. So are you the chef for this whole trip? Do I just get to sit back?”

  “Nope.” He ladled circles of batter studded with lumps of round berries onto the griddle that was set into the middle of the huge restaurant-style stove, then pulled out another bowl and began to crack the better part of a carton of eggs into it. “You get to help me. But I figured we’d do some eating out, too. I’ve got a plan.”

  “Why am I surprised?” He was so relaxed, so approachable. So unlike Joe. “You seem like you’re quite at home.”

  “Well . . .” He smiled at her. “Because I am.”

  “What? You’re kidding me,” she said as he continued to smile. She waved an arm around. “I thought Alec rented this place. You mean it’s yours? You have a vacation house?”

  “Is that so amazing?” He handed her silverware and a napkin, then flipped his pancakes, dumped half the egg mixture into a pan that had been heating on the stove and began to stir it with a spatula.

  “Well, yeah,” she said. “It is. I thought you worked all the time.”

  “I have really good wireless.” He smiled again, put eggs and pancakes on her plate and handed it to her, went to the fridge and pulled out a butter dish and a crock of maple syrup, then fixed his own plate and set it next to hers, got his own coffee. “And this way,” he went on as they began to eat, “I don’t have to mess with rentals. I’ve got a base for whatever I want to do, skiing, backpacking, hiking, whatever, got enough space for anyone I bring up with me. Efficient.”

  “Nice if you can do it,” she said dryly. “But it’s a great place,” she went on hastily when he shot a look across at her.

  “You like it?” he asked.

  “No, I don’t think it’s quite plush enough for me. Of course I like it. It’s . . . well, I think the word is fabulous, and I’ve only seen a little bit of it.” She gestured to the wide, snow-covered wooden deck that extended the entire width of the window wall. “Is that a hot tub out there?”

  “Got to have a hot tub,” he said. “It’s in the rules. Feels good after skiing, too.”

  Getting into a hot tub with Joe after skiing . . . yeah, that would be good. She’d never seen him in the summer, all these years, only at Christmas and a few Thanksgivings. Which meant she’d never seen him in a swimsuit, and she’d really like to see that. She sneaked a peek across at the size of the thigh taking up the stool next to hers, the width of his back, the breadth of his shoulders in that plaid shirt. A swimsuit—yes, please. She might not get to touch, but she’d sure like to look.

  “Morning, guys.” Alec and Desiree looked over the railing from the second-floor landing, headed down the pine staircase with its hand-hewn log rail. “Breakfast ready?” Alec asked. “Guess I’ll withdraw my letter of complaint. Maybe the service at this hotel isn’t so bad after all.”

  And that was the end of her cozy time alone with Joe.

  She got to be impressed again an hour later, when everyone was buckling ski boots and pulling on coats.

  “Are we driving up in your car,” she asked Joe as he came to sit on the bench beside her to put on his boots, “or is there a shuttle?”

  “Neither,” he said. “We’re walking.”

  “We’re walking,” she said slowly. “To the ski area.”

  “No, we’re walking ten minutes up the road. There’s a lift into Alpine Meadows from there.”

  “So let’s recap here.” She finished her boot-fastening and sat up. “You have a ski cabin with about the nicest bathroom I’ve ever been in, never mind in somebody’s ‘cabin.’ I barely came out this morning. The floor’s warm in there!”

  “Radiant heating in the subfloor. You liked that, huh?”

  “And a refrigerator that hides in a cabin
et because refrigerators are so pedestrian,” she went on, “and a private ski lift.”

  “Not private,” he said, a smile threatening. “I have to share it with all those neighbors.”

  “Hey,” Alec complained from his spot on the living room couch a few steps below, where he and Rae were fastening their own boots. “A whole life’s worth of experience with your fabulous brother, and Joe’s the one getting all the love?”

  “You don’t have a ski cabin,” Alyssa pointed out. “One lousy house in San Francisco. Pfft. Get a private ski lift, and I’ll be impressed.”

  And then Joe went back to being Joe again. “Is this absolutely necessary?” Alyssa asked when they’d taken the chair lift up, got to the ski area, and . . . not skied. “Couldn’t you just tell us what to do while we ride the lifts or something? Or give us the PowerPoint presentation tonight, so we could ski today, sometime before the snow melts?”

  “It’s necessary if you want me to take you backcountry skiing tomorrow,” Joe said calmly. “Because you’re not going up the mountain with me until I’ve seen you use this equipment, and until I’m convinced you’re going to remember how to do it.”

  Alec, Alyssa, and Joe were standing in the ski area’s avalanche beacon practice area, and Joe was giving them a lesson in rescue techniques. A long, boring lesson.

  “Yeah, Liss,” Alec said. “There Joe and I’d be, buried under tons of snow, thinking about your eyes glazing over during his Rescue Beacon Lecture. Yeah, that’d be reassuring. We’d know we were dead meat.”

  “I thought you said there wasn’t much danger, though,” she said, but she had to laugh, because Alec was right. She couldn’t help it, she wanted to ski.