Snow Job (4 page)

“You don’t want any development on the inlet, right? No matter what it is, you just don’t want it happening?”

She eyed him cautiously. “Right. It’s a fragile, protected inlet with a specific microclimate. It needs to be left untouched. Anything you build there is going to threaten the

—”

“I get it,” Karl interrupted impatiently. “You made yourself clear about the shrimp thing yesterday. Although you had no trouble eating their cousins at dinner with Andrew Barron, I noticed.”

“We’re working on a number of cases together,” she replied haughtily.

“Are you sleeping with him?”

His question was inevitable, but she bristled as though she hadn’t expected it. “That’s none of your business.”

In the horrible silence that fol owed, Astro sat up with a little whine, his bright brown eyes traveling anxiously from one human face to the other as though he wanted them to say something comforting.

“You want the inlet to stay safe from development?”

Karl repeated at last, coldly.

“Yes.”

“My grandparents, the McDonald grandparents, are going to be in Breckenridge this Christmas. And my mother stil hasn’t broken the news about us to them. She thinks the idea of a divorce in the family would be a huge blow to them, and she’s been avoiding tel ing them about it al year.

“Now it’s nearly Christmas and she doesn’t want to spoil their holiday with news like that. She’s promised to tel them after New Year’s, when they’re heading back home.

But she realized that if I were there at the cabin without you, there would be a lot of awkward questions. Not to mention the fact that one of the nieces might say something about whatever story I came up with to explain why you weren’t there. But they real y don’t get what the separation means, so I don’t think they’l wonder why you’re showing up with me. They’d stil be more puzzled if you didn’t.”

“Karl.

Your

mother…honestly.” Elyce

sighed,

exasperated. She might have accused Karl of concocting the story from whole cloth if she hadn’t known his mother so wel . Alice was sensitive to a fault, and this sort of thing was exactly what she would do to avoid delivering painful news.

“How is this
my
fault?” Elyce knew she sounded whiny, but didn’t care.

“It isn’t your fault.”

“What does this have to do with the project though?”

“
Quid pro quo
. You want the inlet protected. I need you in Colorado for Christmas to keep my mother from making my life miserable, and to keep from ruining the holiday for my elderly grandparents. You come with me and put on a good show of stil being happily married, and I’l ensure that no development happens on that stretch of shoreline.”

Elyce sat in stunned silence, trying to take in Karl’s offer, absently ruffling the fur behind Astro’s ears. “You’re actual y asking me to…to
prostitute
myself over this? Am I hearing this correctly?”

Karl’s jaw tightened as it had the previous evening.

“You realize you’re stil technical y my wife, Elyce. We’re only separated, not divorced. It would hardly constitute prostitution—even if that were what I was asking. Which it isn’t. What do you take me for?”

“I’m not sure anymore, Karl. I can’t believe you would try to manipulate me this way. Using your mother? Your grandparents? Is that any way to— What are you doing?”

Karl lifted Astro from the couch and placed the dog on the floor with hands as gentle as they were rough a moment later, when they grabbed Elyce by the shoulders. “If that’s what you want to think, then that’s the offer I’l make, Elyce.

A little test of your commitment to the environment. Just think of it, al those tiny, helpless little shrimp. And I’m sure there are other habitats there too. I could flatten the whole thing, just bul doze it and slap some concrete down. It’s al up to you.” He pul ed her closer suddenly, locking his arms around her waist and ignoring her efforts to push herself away.

“Karl, quit it. Just stop.”

“Al up to you,” he repeated snidely. “But I guess your resolve doesn’t extend quite that far. Al that land, al those endangered little creatures and you won’t spend a holiday with your
own husband
to save them. You’d rather live in a world without those things than inconvenience yourself for them. Never mind the fact that you won’t inconvenience yourself to make Christmas a little happier for a group of people who are legal y stil your family.”

“That’s a low blow, Karl. You know I care about your family. And this isn’t about them, anyway.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s al about
me
. And I real y couldn’t care less about my grandparents or the damned shrimp right now.” And he lowered his lips to hers too swiftly for her to protest.

It was just like it had been before—and nothing like it had been before. Fire licked through Elyce’s loins, and Karl took advantage of her inadvertent gasp to delve farther, tightening his grasp as he deepened the kiss.

Out of habit or long-denied need, Elyce found her mouth parting to admit his advances, even as her racing mind screamed for release. She knew Karl’s kiss like her own breath, knew her own response, but the whole thing had never been angry before, never a defiant battle of wil s fought with lips and tongues as weapons.

She blushed to the roots of her hair when she realized the struggle was turning them both on. When he final y lifted his head, al owing them a pause for air, Elyce hauled herself away and crossed the room to yank open the door and point imperiously at Karl’s SUV.

“Get out!” she demanded, and then glared furiously when Karl simply smirked at her and remained firmly seated on her couch. Only his slightly rapid breathing gave away the fact that he wasn’t as composed as he seemed.

“Wel , that was interesting.”

“Karl, I mean it. Leave now.”

“It real y wasn’t what I had in mind, but stil …”

“Karl!”

“Close the door. It’s already freezing in here, no point in making it colder.”

After a moment of enraged staring, she slammed the door shut with an impatient growl. “You
suck
, you know that?”

“Helpless shrimp. Sweet old people. It’s that simple.

Make your choice, Elyce.”

“Fuck you.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You never used to talk that way. Who have you been hanging out with lately, Wife?”

“Stop cal ing me that.”

“It’s true though. But it doesn’t matter right now. Make a choice and I’l go.”

“You wil ? Good. I choose the option where I take you to court.”

“The land itself isn’t protected there. And the impact statement, which you didn’t bother to read, says the shrimp won’t be harmed by the proposed use. I have the science to back it up. So go on, take me to court.”

“I don’t care what the statement says,
any
development is going to change the habitat, and even minute changes could threaten the entire population of shrimp in those waters.”

“You’l stil lose the case and you know it.”

She
did
know it, and it was infuriating to think about. It was the main reason she kept avoiding the impact statement. Because she knew it would likely provide no ammunition and the longer she waited before facing that fact, the better. But the alternative Karl was proposing…

“Would sex be part of the arrangement?”

“Part of the
quid pro quo
? No,” he said firmly. “But you would have to put up a reasonable show of affection for the benefit of my grandparents and the nieces and nephew, and you would have to share a room with me. No sleeping on the couch. Granddad gets up at about five in the morning. He’d find you down there and the jig would be up right away.”

“I could just say you’d started snoring.”

“No deal. Besides, you’l want to be up in the bedroom where it’s warm. Once the fire dies down you’l freeze in the living room with al those windows.”

“True,” Elyce conceded. She had spent enough winter nights in the cabin to know, after al . Even with costly, efficient central heating, the great room couldn’t real y hold its heat at night in the winter without the fire blazing. It was, she supposed, the price of the spectacular view. “You could sleep on the couch and say
I
was snoring.”

“Again, no deal. So wil you do it or not?” He sounded cold again, impartial, as though the outcome didn’t matter to him. Elyce couldn’t help but envy his ability to sound so calm, when she knew ful wel he wasn’t.

“If I agree, what are you going to do with your plan instead? You’l just move the development, is that it?

Where?”

“I have some other options. Less ecological y delicate options. So are you agreeing to this?”

Elyce hesitated. It wasn’t that she distrusted Karl, exactly. True, she had felt betrayed when he gave up a junior partnership at an environmental law practice to take the reins of a major real estate development company. But she didn’t think he would deliberately renege on an agreement like this. Her fear, she admitted, had to do with her own wayward response to his advances. Could she withstand the temptations that those nights would present, and the guilt of spending so much time with Karl’s kind and affectionate family who had al made it clear they would welcome her back?

On the other hand, would it ever be this easy again, the cancel ation of a potential y harmful construction project?

For the price of a few days of her time, probably considerably less time than she would have spent for a trial, she could achieve her goal and then be on her way with her mission accomplished. And, as Karl pointed out, she would also be helping his mother and grandparents, for whom she stil had a tremendous fondness. At least, she would be helping them in the short term.

Slowly, reluctantly, she nodded. “Al right. I’l do it.”

It took Elyce almost a week to get up the nerve to tel her parents she wouldn’t be spending Christmas at their home that year as planned.

The fol owing Thursday, eating dinner under her mother’s watchful eye, she raised the issue and prepared to combat her mother’s automatic assumption.

“You’re trying again? Honey, that’s wonderful! You know how we feel about Karl, we’d real y been hoping you two would work it out.”

“No,” Elyce protested immediately. “It’s nothing like that. It’s just a favor. For Alice, real y. She hasn’t told Karl’s grandparents,
her
parents, about the separation yet. I now it’s crazy, it’s been almost a year. But now she’s worried that if they find out it wil ruin their Christmas, and evidently she’s very concerned about how they’l take the news, so…”

Her mother’s brow was furrowing in an alarming manner. Elyce’s father, sensing blood in the water, excused himself quietly from the table with a little nod of support Elyce’s way. He too liked Karl, but he knew better than to get between Elyce and her mother at a time like this.

“So you’re going to participate in a lie, Elyce? Let them al think that you and Karl are back together and then drop the bomb after the holiday? How wil that help anything?

You know I think your mother-in-law is a dear, but
this
?”

Elyce knew her mother had never thought of Alice Nash as a “dear” anything, but wisely kept silent about the comment. “I know it’s a little unorthodox, but they’re nice people. And she means wel . I do hate to think of the McDonalds finding out such bad news when they get to the cabin and I’m just not there. Nobody in that family gets divorced. It real y would be a blow.”

Sharon Anderson contemplated her daughter through narrowed gray eyes as she stood up and began gathering dishes from the table. Petite and slim, with a tightly marshaled blonde bob and an air of constant briskness, she tended to tense up visibly in times of confrontation.

Now her quick, choppy movements told of her anxiety, even more than her voice. “And what are the sleeping arrangements going to be?”

“Mom!”

“Wel ?”

“Well
what
? We won’t be doing anything together but sleeping. But the whole point is to act like we’re stil married. If we insisted on separate rooms I think it would sort of defeat the purpose, don’t you?” At her mother’s continued disapproving glare, Elyce shrugged helplessly. “I said I’d do it, Mom, I can’t go back on that now. What do you want, anyway? I thought you liked
Karl.”

“I do like Karl, sweetie,” Sharon said with a defeated sigh. “But what matters is whether or not
you
like Karl. What I want is just for you to be happy. That’s al , just happy.

That’s pretty much al your father and I have ever wanted for you kids.”

“I know, Mom. And I am happy, real y. I’m just trying to help Karl’s family, I feel like I owe them that much. This is not going to be a big deal. Besides, I think Riley enjoys having you guys al to himself for Christmas.” Elyce held the door to the kitchen open for her mother, who sidled by carrying an improbable number of dishes balanced on her arms.

“Honey, Riley is a fifteen-year-old boy,” Sharon pointed out. “He doesn’t truly enjoy any event where his parents have to be in attendance. That’s just how fifteen-year-old boys are.”

Elyce’s younger brother Riley—who was already a good deal tal er than she was, nearly as tal as their father, and therefore objected to being cal ed her “little” brother—

was actual y a fairly amiable teenager who got along wel with his parents, as he did with everyone else. But Elyce admitted her mother was probably right. Even Riley couldn’t be al that thril ed about spending a holiday with only his parents for company, although she wasn’t sure she would have been much better in his eyes as a hip holiday companion. She was fourteen years older, and Riley often seemed to see her as more of an aunt than an older sister.