Habitats (an Ell Donsaii story #7) (27 page)

However,
Raquel flawlessly followed Lane down the intermediate slope, still doing exactly whatever Lane had done. Raquel’s skis ran right in Lane’s tracks, her style even looked like Lane’s. Whatever had happened getting off the lift, Raquel had obviously been skiing before. Morgan began to wonder if they might even be able to move up to the expert slopes a little later in the week.

At the bottom of that section of intermediate slope, Lane glanced back again, saw Raquel and Morgan right behind her and shot off the level area and down onto the next section. To Morgan’s surprise, though Raquel had been doing just fine, she pulled to a stop and watched Lane go down that next section from the top. Morgan pulled up next to her, “You OK?”

“Yeah! Sure!” she said a little breathlessly. “Just tired. I don’t have much stamina. But I’ll be ready to go again in just a second.”

Morgan eyed her with some surpr
ise. How could someone so toned, so obviously physically fit, claim to be tired after ten minutes of skiing? If she was a struggling beginner Morgan could believe it, but Raquel showed no evidence that the run had been difficult for her. Nonetheless, she stood beside Raquel a few moments until the girl pushed off down the slope, once again fol cnce halowing, as near as Morgan could tell, tightly to the route Morgan thought Lane had followed going down that section.

After that run t
hey went down the mountain on the intermediate slopes again in the same fashion, with Raquel following exactly in the path of whoever skied ahead of her. Raquel continued stopping to “rest” every ten minutes or so, claiming to be worn out, but then skiing perfectly as soon as she’d rested a few minutes. On their third run down the mountain, Raquel finally began skiing freely on her own, rather than just imitating whoever had led. She even led the way down a couple of sections, when both Morgan and Lane had stopped with her while she rested.

After that third run
, Raquel said she wanted to go into the lodge for some of the hot chocolate she’d seen advertised. Morgan glanced at Lane, thinking that it seemed like the kind of thing someone would do who was just there to chase boys, not to really ski. But, she shrugged and said, “Sure, I could go for a hot chocolate myself.”

Raquel said, “You don’t have to babysit me. You guys could make a run on your own if you wanted. Pick me up for the next one?”

“No, hot chocolate sounds like a
most
excellent indulgence. Let’s head in.”

Raquel said, “I’ll stand in the line for a hot chocolate
for each of us while you guys get us a table. Would you like some donuts or something else to eat?”

“No,” they laughed.
“We’ll get a table.” Morgan said

To Morgan’s complete astonishment,
Raquel returned with three
large
hot chocolates, covered in whipped cream
and
a half dozen large donuts. Wide eyed, Morgan said, “Who’s going to eat all that!”

Raquel stared
in chagrin at the tray she’d brought, “I thought you might change your mind about the donuts. I guess I went a little overboard, huh? I was feeling pretty hungry after all that exercise though.”

“Didn’t you eat breakfast?”

Sitting down on the bench, Raquel said, “A little,” she ducked her head, looking embarrassed, “I kind of eat a lot though.”

Lane straightened up and pointed out that the ski bums who’d been waving at them their first ride up the lift had just come in the lodge. Lane pulled off her stocking hat and swept fingers through her pale blond hair, fluffing it up. Morgan rolled her eyes but took off her cap too. Raquel grinned at the
two sisters but left her hat on. The boys made their way over to the table. The one in front smiled at Lane and said, “Mind if we sit with you ladies? There aren’t any empty tables.”

Lane said, “Sure.” Morgan glanced around and saw that, though there weren’t any
empty
tables, several had more empty seats at them than their own. One of the guys headed off to “get beers,” while the other two sat down next to Lane and Morgan. Morgan felt a little embarrassed to have these guys chasing afte c choff to “r them in front of Raquel. Then she worried that Raquel might get too friendly with one of the guys, which, as Shan’s sister she didn’t want to see.

As usual, Lane turned on her flirty charm, getting introduced to Jordan and Axel. Lane then introduced Morgan and Raquel to them. The guys were students at CU Boulder.

The third guy came back with three large beers and a big plate of nachos. He sat down across from Raquel. Lane asked his name and he said he went by “AJ.” Lane introduced him around to the others. When she got to Raquel the girl had just finished stuffing a donut in her mouth and couldn’t talk, but she stuck out a hand to shake, grinning amusedly at everyone. Swallowing, Raquel said, “What do you guys study in school?”

Axel and AJ were in civil engineering. Jordan pridefully said he was studying aerospace engineering. Morgan found the way he said it annoying, as if he were bragging
, but Raquel raised her eyebrows and said, “Aerospace? That’s cool. What do you want to do with it when you’re done?”

“Oh, I’ve already got a job lined up working on the new space habitat being built by D5R.”

“You do?” Raquel said, with a wide grin. “What’ll you be doing for
them
?” She took a big swig of her hot chocolate.

Morgan thought it a little weird that Raquel didn’t tell
him she worked at D5R herself. Jordan said, “I’m not sure yet. One of their recruiters contacted me, I guess because of my scores. She told me that I just needed to show up and they’d find work for someone like me.” He frowned a little, “She implied that they needed some design help for the next segments of their habitat. Some of it’s pretty complex you know?”

Raquel just smiled and took a huge bite of another donut. Morgan felt that letting the conversation drop at the end of that little brag seemed
kind of rude so she said, “Actually, Raquel works at D5R. Maybe you’ll be seeing more of each other in the future?”

Jordan’s eyes widened
, then narrowed a little. “What do you do there?”

Raquel pointed at her full mouth a second as she chewed. When she’d swallowed, she said, “A little of this and a little of that.”

“Kind of a ‘girl Friday’?”

Raquel grinned and nodded, “Kinda,” she said, licking icing off a finger.

“Does your section have anything to do with the habitat?”

“A little,” Raquel said, picking up the last donut.

Morgan’s eyes widened. Had anyone else eaten a donut? She glanced around, as far as she could tell Raquel had eaten all six! If she kept that up she wouldn’t have that amazingly slender figure much longer. Her eyes narrowed,
unless my brother’s new girlfriend is bulimic?

Lane pointed up at the big screen hanging nearby, “Hey, check out the newsfeed
. It’s something about D5R.”

They all looked up and saw a man waggling his fingers around. He twisted and turned them, picked up a ball ced m">and tossed it in the air. Wondering what the big deal was, Morgan dropped her eyes to the text runner, “… Mr. Parker has only had the D5R fabricated prosthetic hand for a few weeks. He can already do almost everything with it that a normal hand can do. As the amputee community has become aware of his phenomenal outcome they have besieged D5R and Dr. Hanson, the UNC surgeon who performed the procedure, for access to this technology…” Morgan looked back up at the video, now in a zoomed in loop of the other movements.
That’s an artificial hand?!

Lane turned to Raquel, “Did you know about that prosthesis?”

Raquel shrugged, “A little.”

“Holy crap! How did they keep that a secret?”

“It wasn’t so much that it was a secret, as that no one thought it would work. It isn’t really newsworthy if you’re trying something crazy.”

Morgan narrowed her eyes. It sounded that Raquel knew more than just “a little” about the project. She was about to ask just
what
Raquel really did there at D5R when Jordan stood up and said, “Let’s hit the slopes!”

To Morgan’s astonishm
ent, as they all got up, she realized that Raquel had eaten some of the guys’ nachos too. When Raquel headed into the bathroom before going out, Morgan tagged along to listen outside the stall. She worried that she’d hear the sounds of Raquel emptying her stomach. With a mixture of relief and concern she heard nothing to suggest it.

In line for the lift
, Lane managed to insinuate herself between Jordan and Axel, suggesting that AJ ride up with Raquel and Morgan.

On the ride up Morgan turned to AJ, “So do you guys ski every weekend?”

AJ stared up the mountain, “Jordan skis a lot of weekends. His family’s rich. I can only afford one trip a year.”

Morgan looked him over, realizing that his equipment looked pretty well worn. “Where’d you grow up?”

“Colorado Springs.”

She glanced back at the chair behind them where she saw Lane leaning on Jordan and laughing. “Is Jordan as smart as he puts on?”

“He’s pretty smart. He hardly ever studies and still gets reasonable grades.”

Morgan lifted an eyebrow, “What
does
he do?”

AJ grinned, “He’s the life of
every
party.”

“So I should warn my sister away from him?”

“Nah, he’s harmless and she’ll have fun…” then after a pause, he quietly said, “As long as she doesn’t expect too much.”

At the top of the lift the boys turned left onto a somewhat difficult intermediate run. As Morgan expected, Lane followed them, and Raquel followed Lane. To Morgan’s relief Raquel showed no evidence of difficulty on that slope. Morgan saw Jordan looking back over his shoulder at th chouLane.em, then he pulled up to a stop at the top of one of the easier black diamond runs. “You girls up for some real skiing?”

Lane hooted and said, “Let’s
do
it!”

Morgan turned to Raquel
with concern, “You think you can take this one? If not, you and I can take that one to the right and meet them at the bottom.”

Raquel looked over the edge, “No, I
think I can do that one now.”

They started down, Jordan just as good as Morgan had expected, Lane pushing herself a little too hard, trying to keep up with him. The other two guys were both good skiers like you might expect in Colorado, though not
in Jordan’s class. Then Raquel eased over the edge.

Morgan’s eyes widened. Raquel didn’t do anything spectacular but she made
the run down that difficult slope look easy and somehow… flowing… riding over and around the moguls like she was mounted on tall, soft springs. In fact it looked
so
easy that it gave Morgan the feeling that she wasn’t really going all that fast. Raquel didn’t lose any ground on the guys ahead of her even though they gave the appearance that they were skiing far harder than she was. Morgan dropped over the edge herself, thinking,
the girl had to have been pulling our leg when she said she’d only done a little skiing.

When Morgan pulled up to the bottom of that little run she saw that the next section was marked as a double black diamond. Her first reaction was that they’d need to take the
“easy” crossing trail that they’d stopped on over a little to a less difficult slope for Raquel. Then she realized that if Raquel could make the run they’d just done look easy, that she’d almost certainly be fine on the double black. Morgan side stepped over next to Raquel, “What the hell? I thought you were supposed to have only been skiing a couple of times! How in the world did you conquer a black diamond run like that?” She raised a suspicious eyebrow.

Raquel’s
smile faded and her eyes widened. She glanced back up the slope they’d just come down and then over at some of the other runs that could be seen around the bowl. “Um, yeah… Sorry, I’ve skied more than I let on. It was when I was young so I didn’t think it would come back to me so quickly”