Four Nights to Forever (5 page)

“I’ve heard
bitch
before,” Nicky said, his voice loud with clear excitement at the excuse to say a swear word.

“When we ran into your mom, you practiced what to say, so go talk to her,” Larissa said.

Nicky nodded, his face a bit paler now that reality seemed to have overtaken the novelty of swearing. He swallowed and walked to where Karen and Cassie stood, as if the gray, industrial carpet led to gallows.

Larissa sighed as she sat in the chair Cassie had emptied. Doug pulled his arm back and rested his elbows on his knees. “He does know it’s not his fault, right?” He was looking at Cassie, but there was always the chance Larissa would think he was looking at Nicky.

“He does, although he had been goofing around with his pole and it got stuck between the slats of the chair,” she said. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Larissa’s head fall back against the top of the chair.

“Bet he won’t do that again,” Doug said, full of sympathy for the kid. He’d ruined his marriage by learning the hard way not to do stupid shit and hurt other people in doing so. It was a rough lesson.

“Probably not for a while.” Unease skittered across his back as Larissa lifted her head and leaned forward, her elbows also resting on her knees. “She’s pretty,” she whispered.

“Yup.” He wasn’t stupid enough to pretend he didn’t know who Larissa had meant. Cassie’s helmet had smashed her blond hair against her head, her eyes were red from unshed tears, and the tension of the morning hadn’t left her face. And yet,
pretty
didn’t begin to describe how she looked.

“I ran into Bear and Garrett,” Larissa said, referring to two of the three ski patrolmen who’d come to Karen’s rescue. “They’ve already crafted the story that Karen threw herself from the lift to get between you and the woman you just had your arm around.”

“Cassie,” he said shortly, even though Larissa wasn’t the one making stupid locker room jokes. He hadn’t told Cassie that the other half of the “Doug luck” joke was that his female students injured themselves reaching for him as he slipped out of their grasps. “The woman’s name is Cassie.”

“Good thing I came down to the clinic and not one of them.”

“Hell.” At least he could count on Larissa to keep her mouth shut about finding him with his arm around a student.

“If you weren’t so vocal about your no-flings policy, they wouldn’t give you a hard time.” Amusement lingered at the edge of her voice, but when he glanced over at her, her eyes were sympathetic.

He went back to gazing at Cassie, pretending to be watching all three of them. Karen had her hand on Nicky’s shoulder, and Cassie had crouched down so she was eye-to-eye with the boy. The squat made her butt stick out, stretching the seat of her ski pants over her soft, round curves. He itched to run his hands along them.

“I learned not to have flings with students the same way Nicky learned not to goof off with his poles on the chairlift. Collateral damage.”

“But you’re not married anymore. What’s stopping you?”

The entirety of Snowdance thought they knew all about Doug’s past, but they only knew of his one night of infidelity and the divorce that followed. They didn’t know about the months of false accusations that had preceded the actual one-night stand or how finally committing the crime his ex-wife had repeatedly suspected him of had left him feeling like he’d needed a shower for months.

Cassie would be different. He wasn’t married, and she was a different woman, but he couldn’t shake the queasy feeling from his past that still lingered. He couldn’t go down that road again.

Since he didn’t have a good answer to Larissa’s question, he stood and went to talk to Nicky, instead.

*

Cassie stood between Karen and Doug as they lingered under the portico at the entrance to Snowdance Center, waiting for the resort shuttle. Karen, wearing Cassie’s shoes, leaned on her crutches while Cassie held both pairs of poles, Karen’s boots, and a plastic bag carrying her helmet and some other bits of clothing. Doug still held the two pairs of skis he’d carried out for them. He looked different without his helmet, younger, which was horrifying, regardless of how handsome he was. Her own daughter was twenty. What if Doug was closer to Sam’s age than hers? She’d found comfort in his arms and not just because she’d been in need and he’d been available. She hadn’t been able to ignore the sexual attraction that had stirred in her as he’d rubbed his hand along her arm.

It was his hair that made him seem younger, she decided, as she looked him over out of the corner of her eye. His blond hair had dried after being sweaty under his helmet, and a couple of curls had popped up, looking for attention. It didn’t matter that he’d been as solid as the mountains surrounding them throughout this entire ordeal or that his lips were stern as he lifted his head when the shuttle pulled up. That hair was as unruly as a small boy’s while he was hopped up on Pop Rocks.

Please be at least thirty-one.

Karen opened the passenger door to the shuttle and climbed in with as much grace as a woman on crutches could muster. Doug slipped the skis into the restraints on the side of the van, then took the poles from Cassie and secured them, too. Only when her hands were empty did she wonder how she would get Karen and all their stuff into the high-rise and then up to the condo. Maybe the front desk staff could help?

“You’ll call the ski school office about tomorrow?” Doug asked, helpful and thoughtful and thinking ahead when Cassie couldn’t even figure out what to do when the van stopped at their building.

“Yes.” He nodded and turned to walk back into the building when she called, “Can you come back to the condo with me?” It had bubbled up inside Cassie and slipped out. “With us, I mean, and help me carry all this stuff? I know it’s not in your job description, but I don’t really know what to do.” She lifted up the plastic bag, as if it were the “stuff” she was worried about and not the two pairs of skis and her injured friend.

The corner of his mouth twitched, and for a moment she worried he would say no. Then the near-no on his lips slid into a near-smile and he nodded. “Of course.”

“Thank you.” Cassie smiled back, then stepped up into the van, sliding over on the bench seat to make room for Doug.

“Hey, Doug,” the driver said with a nod to the rearview mirror.

“Hey, Karl.”

“What happened to this one?”

Cassie opened her mouth to protest
the joke
, but Doug beat her to it. “She broke her leg,” he said with enough bite to his tone that the driver nodded gravely, as if he’d meant nothing more to his question and put the van in drive.

*

Doug did more than carry their skis up to the one-room condo. While Karen collapsed on the couch and Cassie stood in the entry next to their skis, Doug set Karen’s boot by the fireplace and was pulling out the inner linings when he halted mid-action. “Old habit. They will dry faster. Though we didn’t ski much, so they aren’t wet.”

“The thought was nice,” Cassie said as she yanked her boots off, sighing with relief when her feet got to expand for the first time in hours. Once she got her boots off, she didn’t want to get up.

“If you don’t mind me invading your space, I’ll do yours,” he said, his hands out for her boots.

Please invade my space,
she thought, but all she had the courage to say was, “Don’t you have someplace you need to be?” as she handed over the offending plastic torture devices that people called ski boots.

He didn’t say a word as he took them from her, but she didn’t miss his flinch.

“That’s not what I meant,” she said to his back as he pulled the linings out and set them on the stone fireplace. There were a couple of clicks and then a whoosh as the gas fireplace lit up. “Just . . . I’m sure this is an inconvenience to you.”

The hotshot flirt she’d been cultivating on the chairlift had disappeared completely and transformed into a babbling moron. “What I mean to say is, thank you.”

A smile spread across his face and suddenly Cassie’s fears about his age and how stupid she sounded disappeared. “You’re welcome. If you decide not to ski tomorrow, call for one of the shuttles and they’ll help you return your skis.”

Did his smile falter a little at that last sentence, or had stress kicked in and made Cassie hallucinate?

“What?” Karen called over from the couch. “Cassie’s skiing tomorrow. My little injury doesn’t change that.”

“A little injury,” Cassie sputtered.

“Honestly, Cass, what are you going to do if you go home? Sam’s with her dad this week, and she was too excited about it for you to intrude. You’ve already gotten subs for all your yoga classes.” Karen left off the big four-oh birthday that she’d used to get Cassie to agree to this vacation, thank goodness. “I guess you could unpack your new apartment, but this vacation is a break between your old life and your new one. You should take it.”

Cassie looked between Karen, dictating from the couch, and Doug, who was standing by the fireplace, pretending not to overhear, and looking like everything she wished she had the guts to do.

Hotshot. Right.

The truth was, Cassie
didn’t
know what she’d do if she went home, other than unpack and wish Sam were around to mother. And this vacation wasn’t just a break between lives; she was supposed to learn to take care of herself and stop beating herself up when self-care came at the expense of taking care of others.

Marriages do not break up because the wife starts teaching yoga classes
. Her therapist had told her that several times and Cassie had believed it . . . except that the only explanation Tom had given her for the sudden demise of their marriage was,
You never have time for me anymore.

Her jaw started to throb, and she realized she was clenching her teeth as well as her hands. She took a couple of deep breaths and wiggled her fingers loose. If she couldn’t be selfish while on a birthday vacation while her best friend was telling her it was okay and no one at home was expecting her to take care of them, when could she be?

She glanced over at Doug, his quizzical brown eyes framed by curls that lay on his pale forehead, except for a few errant tendrils of hair still fighting for independence. His raised an eyebrow, and the twinkle in his eye offered a challenge she didn’t want to refuse.
Try me,
his face said. The scary thought of being rejected woke up the butterflies in her stomach.

But he’d already turned her down, so . . .

“I guess you’ll see me tomorrow morning,” she said finally. She couldn’t quite believe she was going to leave her broken friend at the condo and spend the whole day on the slopes with a hot ski instructor. But she was.

Doug left with a friendly, casual wave, and Cassie shut the door behind him. When she returned to the living area, Karen wore an ear-to-ear smile. “I saw you checking him out.”

“Of course I was.” Denying it would only encourage her friend. “Wasn’t that part of your plan? Did you make arrangements for the hottest ski instructor to work with us when you planned this vacation?”

“I wish I’d thought of it! Though, we did pretty well.”

“You really don’t mind if I ski tomorrow?” Cassie collapsed on the couch beside Karen.

“Nope. I’m going to arrange for a flight home, but the condo is yours for a week. Enjoy it. Enjoy him, if he lets you and you want to. And I think you should want to.” The last sentence was said with a lascivious smile.

“He preemptively turned me down after you threw me at him at the bottom of the lift.” The memory might have been embarrassing, but Doug had played it so cool there was no room for awkwardness.

“He was checking you out, too.”

Cassie snorted. “Right. How old do you think he is?”

“At least flirt with him.” Karen turned a little on the couch, grimacing with the movement, but she waved off Cassie’s help. “He’ll be good practice.”

“You read my mind. And I flirted a little on the lift,” she admitted. And it had felt good to flirt. Strange, like a new pair of leather shoes that would be super comfy as soon as they stretched out a bit.

“Good. A little flirting means you’ll attract men who are more interesting than the ones you’ve been dating.”