“I know that, really, I do. But I’m not sure how to approach this without keeping it more in business terms. I don’t want—”
“To get hurt, the way you were when Ken left you,” he said.
She didn’t say anything and he wondered if he’d gone too far, but the truth was, they weren’t like other couples that were starting a relationship. They knew each other’s pasts and closely guarded secrets. In a way, Bradley thought it might make things easier. Yet she was still a mystery from his point of view. And he was dying to know how they’d be in bed.
And if they were half as good as that long-ago kiss and his red-hot fantasies, then he figured they’d have a rocking good time together.
“Exactly. But you haven’t been exactly shy around women, Bradley. You’ve broken a few hearts.”
“Not as often as you make it sound. I tend to date women who know the score,” he said. It was true that he was careful to make sure he didn’t date women looking for marriage and long term. There was only one woman he wanted to try a real relationship with, and that was Elizabeth.
“See? You’re just proving my point. Who knows what you think the score is?” she asked. “I don’t want to be roadkill on your journey.”
“That’s horrible. I’ve never left any roadkill, despite what any woman might have told you. In general, the ladies tend to give up on me when they realize that I’m exactly what I said I was and they can’t change me.”
“What makes you think I won’t try to change you?” she asked.
“You already know me, Lizzie, and I know you. We both like to win. I’m not laboring under any misconception that you are going to ever put a man before your job, and you know that I need to be free to do my thing at work and at play.”
“But you’d be faithful to me?” she asked. “Cheating is...well, cheating. I’m not interested in being part of your rotating harem.”
There it was, he thought. That hint of vulnerability left behind from that bastard Ken who’d thought that Elizabeth really was the same hard woman in real life as she was in the boardroom. That she’d be able to understand he needed variety in the bedroom. Bradley had made sure that Ken regretted two-timing her.
“Of course. I might like women, but you know once I commit I don’t play around.”
“I do know that. You even broke up with Samantha just so you could kiss me at Marina’s wedding.”
He’d forgotten about that. Samantha and he hadn’t been that serious, so their split hadn’t been much of an issue, and he’d wanted Elizabeth in that instant with such fierceness....
“Okay, I think we’re getting a bit off topic here. So...dinner in a couple of nights? Shall I pick you up at your place or at the lodge?”
“The lodge. I will have to be on call,” she said. Once again, he heard the rustling of her sheets as she moved on the bed, and he groaned as he imagined her naked.
“Of course.”
“And Bradley...?”
“Yes?” he asked coyly. He had to play this right. If he sounded too anxious she’d back away. Elizabeth had always been wary of him.
“I don’t want to lose this,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Our friendship. You’re the only one who calls me after midnight. Who competes full-out with me and doesn’t hate it when I win. You make me feel like it’s okay to be me,” she said. “If we sleep with each other, that could change.”
“We’ll just have to do our best to make sure it doesn’t change. I’ll always want to wake you after midnight.”
“Really?” she asked, her voice soft and husky, so different from how she was during the regular business day.
“Yes. That’s the time when the line between reality and fantasy are blurred, and attraction and wanting are at their strongest. I can’t imagine that would change just because we were sleeping next to each other. Do you?”
“I guess not.”
“Have a little faith, Elizabeth—we’re both intelligent and we both know what we want. We’re not going to hurt each other. We’re going to give each other pleasure and more friendship.”
“You sound so confident,” she said.
“I am. Trust me.”
He had waited such a long time for Elizabeth, and he knew that she liked to set up rules and barriers between them. But he wasn’t a man to take no for an answer.
This time he was coming for her and nothing—not even Elizabeth—was going to stand in his way.
She sighed. “Well, then, I guess I’ll see you soon, Bradley.”
“You most definitely will, Lizzie.”
A LIGHT DUSTING of fresh snow covered the employee parking lot of the Lars Usten Lodge as Elizabeth pulled her SUV into the spot labeled General Manager.
The Lars Usten Lodge/Spa ski resort was the idea of Lars Usten, a two-time gold-medal alpine skier. The runs on the Wasatch Range were used by the U.S. Olympic ski team for practice and training, and although the runs still prohibited snowboarders, they enjoyed a steady stream of lodgers year round.
She hopped out of her SUV and pulled her thick red wool coat tighter to ward off the cold. Then she glanced surreptitiously around before she took out her iPhone and photographed the sign with her name on it.
General Manager, Elizabeth Anders.
Oh, my God. Now it seemed real. Seeing her name on the plaque made her want to do the Snoopy dance of joy, but she was an adult.
“Want me to take your photo next to the sign?”
She glanced over at Lindsey Collins, a former Olympic alpine skier and currently one of the ski instructors at the Lars Usten Lodge, who was standing there with a bemused smile on her face.
Lindsey had wide Nordic features and brown eyes. She was taller than Elizabeth, at five feet ten inches, and wore a thick ski headband in her hair to hold her shoulder-length blond locks off her face. If not for a career-ending accident at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, she’d be up on the mountain training right now.
“You saw?” Elizabeth asked a bit sheepishly.
“Yeah, but I thought it was cute. And you have worked damned hard to get here...so, do you want a photo next to the sign?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth replied. She already had a picture frame on her dresser ready for the photo that would be a reminder—or a touchstone, rather—to keep her on track as she worked every day at her job.
She’d even dressed the part in a swanky black dress that she’d paired with her mother’s pearls and her father’s big gold watch. She wouldn’t be where she was today without her parents.
“Go on, then,” Lindsey said.
Elizabeth walked over to the sign and turned to look back at the camera. Inside she might feel like grinning, but her expression for the photo was serious and intent. “Got it. You want to join me for breakfast?” Lindsey asked.
“Yes, I’d love to. But first I want to touch base with the night manager and make sure everything is on track. So...thirty minutes?”
“Perfect. I want to check the ski valet and make sure that Thompson Holmes’s skis arrived.”
“I