“Just being walked out on by women like you, gorgeous,” he said smoothly.
She nibbled on her lower lip, and he remembered how her mouth had felt under his the night before. He had thought he’d had enough time to exorcise the lust demons that had been plaguing him for years, but realized now he hadn’t come close.
Would he ever be able to sate his thirst for Lindsey?
He’d sort of believed that her elusiveness was all that kept him still wanting her. It had been a while, and each time they were apart he’d try to forget her. Those big brown eyes and the pretty blond hair.
The media had dubbed her the Ice Queen for her cool persona before each of her runs. Other skiers smiled and joked, but Lindsey had held herself aloof and had come down the mountain as though she owned it. Now he realized that he had wanted to be the man to melt that icy exterior.
He’d done it once, but that wasn’t enough.
Why wasn’t it enough?
It seemed to him that having waited so long to claim her in his bed, he should be happy, or at least content. But he wasn’t.
He wanted something more.
But as was par for him, he had no way to define it and could only say that it involved Lindsey.
“I am sorry again for leaving so abruptly,” she said softly. “I wanted to see if I could take a run this morning... Well, that’s not entirely true.” She fixed her gaze squarely on his. “You scared me, Carter. I’ve never been the way I was with you last night. I’m not sure I recognize that part of myself.”
“Good,” he said. “The old you has been hiding. Frozen in some sort of limbo. I’m glad you don’t recognize yourself, because that means you are finally thawing.”
“Thawing? Wow, I thought I’d proved last night that there is nothing icy about me,” she said in a slightly breathless voice.
“You did, but then you retreated behind your wall of ice,” he said.
“Fair enough.”
“Let’s go,” he said, standing and holding out his hand to her.
“Where?”
“Trust me?”
She reached for his hand and gave him a forced smile. “No. But I’ll follow you anyway.”
He’d take what he could get with her. She stood and he led the way to the parking lot and his SUV.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.” He smiled mysteriously. “I have an idea.”
She got into the vehicle without another word, and he drove them away from the lodge to a path he’d found about a week ago when he’d needed to get away from everyone and everything. He parked the SUV on the side of the road and came around to Lindsey’s side of the SUV. She had her door open and had hopped out before he got there.
“This is your big idea?”
“Stop with the doubt and follow me.”
He led the way to the tree line over the snow-covered ground, and she followed him. Her boots were good and sturdy, as were his, and he kept walking until he found what he was looking for: a small clearing in the copse of trees. Icicles hung from the branches, and in the center was a mound of snow that he suspected some local kids had built.
“This is it?”
“Yup,” he said.
“How’d you find it?” she asked, looking at the steep snow mound, which was large enough to slide down. In the middle was a trench big enough for a sled.
“I don’t know, but I think it will work perfectly for us.”
She walked over to it and then looked back at him. “Thank you.”
Seeing her quiet, contemplative expression as she continued to look at the snow mound made it easy for him to believe that he’d done the right thing. But deep inside he knew that helping her ski wasn’t what he really wanted.
THE STEEP MOUND of snow might look like a bit of fun to anyone else, but to Lindsey it looked huge. As she stood at the base of it, she realized that Carter had found her the ideal place to test her own limits.
“I have a sled in the SUV,” he said. “Let me go and get it.”
She nodded.
Words were inadequate while fear was tightening her throat, but really her fear had to do with the public way she’d fallen. She knew everyone had seen it, and now when she put on her skis she was always aware of people watching her. In truth, they might not be, but her fear was that they were.
She noticed some foot holes had been dug in the snow and put her boots in, slowly climbing to the top of the mound. When she got to the top, she simply stood there. Her pulse was racing, and she was sweating inside her snow wear even though it was freezing.
She licked her dry lips and tipped her head back to look up at the sky. This height was so small compared to the mountains she’d skied in her career, yet it felt bigger. Felt scarier somehow, and she knew she didn’t want Carter to see her this way.
It was one thing to admit she was afraid to ski but something else entirely to actually let him see a glimpse of what that fear looked like. She turned to climb down and saw him standing there, the trees behind him, their limbs heavy with snow. The small sled in one hand and the most serious look she’d ever seen in Carter Shaw’s blue-gray eyes.
He knew.
She hated that he was witnessing this moment of horrible weakness.
He didn’t say anything, just continued to watch her. Inside her fear a small bubble of rebellion formed. Carter was the last person on earth she wanted to witness this meltdown.
“Great...I’m glad you have that sled. I was going to give it a try without one but thought I’d wait for you.”
“You don’t have to do this,” he told her. “Baby steps are the way forward.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about. This little mound is nothing,” she said airily. God, please let me get off this damned mound, and quickly.
“Okay.” He pointed into the distance. “See that drift over there?”
She glanced all the way across the clearing to the large drift that had been reinforced probably by the same people who’d built this mound. That had to be where the sled would stop. It seemed huge. Farther than anything she’d gone down before.
But she knew that was fear talking.
“Great.”
“Great?” he repeated. “I know it’s not great, gorgeous.”
She knew it, too. But she wasn’t about to let him once again see her weak and vulnerable. Man, was that what this was all about? Was that why she couldn’t ski? Vulnerability?
Whatever it was, she was going to have to sled down this mound to prove a point to herself—and to Carter. She’d expected him to hand her the sled, but this was Carter, so instead he climbed up next to her.
“Not so bad from up here,” he said. “Reminds me of the first time I stood at the mouth of the half-pipe.”
“Is this really how high it is?”
“Nah, it’s a bit higher, but I was strung out on nerves waiting to take my first run. Excited, scared and so full of ideas of how I wanted it to go I couldn’t