She’d spent so many happy summers and winters in these woods along with three generations of O’Neil men—Sean, Jackson and Tyler, their father Michael and their grandfather, Walter—exploring the outdoors, transforming rambling, tumble-down structures into something habitable. She’d hauled bricks, sanded wood and stood knee-deep in the lake while they’d built a deck. Somewhere out there was a tree where she’d carved his name.
It wasn’t that she didn’t love her parents, but sometimes it felt as if she’d been born into the wrong family. They didn’t understand her love of the mountains and the outdoors, and they certainly didn’t share it. When her parents had thought to dampen her love of the mountains and skiing by refusing to fund her equipment needs, Michael had given her Tyler’s old skis and let her keep them at Snow Crystal.
Brenna had never understood her mother’s hostility toward the O’Neils, who were well liked and respected by everyone else in the county. She’d decided it was just that Maura Daniels was violently opposed to anything to do with skiing and winter sports. She shut the snow out of her small, pristine house and complained endlessly about the long, cold Vermont winters until it sometimes seemed to Brenna that the mountains must have offended her personally in some way.
And so she’d lived her life growing up in one house but spending all her time in another until the day she’d found out Janet Carpenter was pregnant.
It had been the worst day of her life.
She’d vanished into the mountains for two days without telling anyone where she was going.
It had been Jackson, home from college for the summer, who had found her.
Strong, steady Jackson, who had ignored the orders of her parents, his parents and the mountain rescue team and trekked on foot to the ridge where they’d often camped out as children, following a hunch.
He’d wanted her to talk about it, but she’d kept her mouth clamped tightly shut because she always found it easier to keep things inside than let them out.
Strangely enough, that had been the one time in her life when her mother had been a comfort. It was as if finally she knew what her daughter, alien to her in every other way, needed.
It had been her mother who had urged her to get up in the morning, wash her hair, get dressed and keep going through another year of school. It had been her mother who had fed her homemade soup, spoonful by spoonful, and held her when she’d cried.
They’d never talked about the details, but for once her mother had stopped nagging her and shown a kindness and empathy Brenna hadn’t witnessed before or since. It was a painful irony that the worst time of her life had also been the best.
Then Tyler had been given his place on the U.S. ski team. From that moment on he’d been away, traveling from one place to another and not coming home in between, so there were months when the only time she saw him was on TV.
She’d trained as a ski instructor and worked for four years with Jackson in Europe, in the hope that distance might kill those feelings, but Tyler was skiing in Europe, too, and she’d frequently joined the family to watch him race.
She’d watched as his star had risen and he’d won medal after medal, skiing faster, harder than anyone else, his sheer talent and aggression on the mountain setting him apart from the others. The media described him as ferocious and fearless on the slopes, but she just saw him as the boy she’d skied with since she was a toddler.
She understood him.
She understood it wasn’t ambition that drove him, but a love of speed. The media accused him of being ruthlessly competitive and he was, but she knew the person he was competing against was himself. She’d spent hours alone on the mountain with him, watching him tackle new routes, seemingly impossible angles and slopes. As he’d pushed himself to the limit, she’d been the only witness.
Pulling a warm fleece over her pajamas, she walked down the curving staircase that led to the ground floor and was about to make herself another cup of tea when she saw him standing in the door.
For a moment she wondered whether her mind had conjured him, but then she saw him smiling and pointing to the snow.
Wishing she were wearing something other than pajamas, she walked across and opened the door. A blast of ice-cold air almost knocked her off her feet, and she snuggled deeper into the fleece. “Is something wrong? It’s the middle of the night!”
“Nearly dawn, and we need an early start if we’re going to get first chair.”
First chair? “You want to ski?”
“Have you seen the snow? Take a look over my shoulder.”
“I already did.”
Later the air would be filled with the shrieks of happy, excited children but for now Snow Crystal was enveloped in that strange, eerie silence that always followed a heavy snowfall.
“It’s a perfect powder day.”
“Yeah, and before we devote it to other people, I thought we should take time for ourselves. An early Christmas present. Time to head to the office, Ms. Daniels, before the rest of the world arrives. Get dressed and let’s go ride some powder.” His eyes were a lazy, sleepy blue, the only color in a world that had turned white overnight, and she stood for a moment, mesmerized.
“Now?”
He gestured with his head. “There is three feet of untracked snow out there waiting for us. You should already have your feet in your boots.”
She knew plenty of locals, civilized people at all other times, who would kill each other to be first on the four-person chairlift up the mountain on a day like today. “There will be a line for first tracks.”
“All the more reason not to hang around. I’ll give you two minutes to get dressed.” He was wearing a hat pulled down low over his forehead, and his hands were thrust into the pockets of his coat. Judging from the stubble shadowing his jaw, he hadn’t wasted time shaving. His smile was sure and confident and she wondered if any woman had ever said no to him.
Awareness dragged low in her stomach. “We have a full day of work ahead.”
“All the more reason to make the most of the next few hours. Or you could go back to bed and have another hour of sleep if that’s what you prefer.” The gleam in his eyes told her he knew the answer to that.
“I wasn’t asleep.”
“I never had to work this hard to persuade you when we were teenagers. I smuggled you out of your window more than once.”
“That was a long time ago!” A lifetime. Before Janet. “We’re adults now. Responsible.”
“Too much responsibility is bad for a person. I’ll be responsible after 8:30 a.m. The whole mountain will have been messed up by then anyway, but for now I’m on my own time. Come on.” His voice was deep and persuasive. “If I have to spend my day skiing with people who don’t know a ski pole from the North Pole, the least you can do is let me have some fun with you first.”
Élise would have used that as an opening. Élise would have flirted, or maybe even dragged him over the threshold and back to the bed that was still warm from her body.
Maybe she should try.
“You could come in for a while,” she said casually, and he frowned.
“What would be the point in that? You haven’t turned into one of those women who takes ages to get dressed in the morning, have you? I remember you once pulling your ski pants on over your pajamas. I’ll wait here while you change.”
She felt the color rush into her cheeks. How were you supposed to flirt with a man when he didn’t even know you were flirting?
“Why me?” Her voice was a croak. “You could have skied with your brothers.”