Snowbound Summer (5 page)

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Howard Miller made Kara look like a professional skier.

It wasn't just his excess weight. Other people on the slopes were as heavy as Howard, but they still looked graceful compared to him. No, Howard Miller had lost—if he'd ever actually owned—the basic athletic competence that let a person flow smoothly down the slopes at high speed.

It was amazing to think that Ron could be descended from him.

Not that any of that really mattered today. If Howard Miller had needed anything to help him overcome the frustration of painfully snowplowing his way down the slopes of Snowline Peak, he got all the encouragement he needed in the form of his grandchildren excitedly calling out to him as they zipped about in circles around him on their own way down the mountain. It didn't make a lot of rational sense to Kara, but the grandchildren clearly loved the cantankerous old bastard no matter how mean he was most of the time.

As for Kara's part, even though Hanna and Howard tried to cling to Ron and her like mildew on a shower curtain, she enjoyed getting out into the air and skiing the steep slopes with her boyfriend. By the time they decided to break for dinner, she was pleasantly tired and glad to have the excuse to take off her skis and sit down again.

Dinner with the entire Miller family was also more fun than lunch had been with just the parents. Kara liked kids and Ron's nieces and nephews were about as typical a group of youngsters as she could ask for. They joked, they teased, they laughed and they shouted in a far more chaotic mess than Kara's mother had ever allowed at the dinner table—and Kara loved every unruly moment of it. That the kids managed to do all of this on top of eating and playing their Nintendo DS systems made them all the more remarkable.

She even found herself contemplating the notion that an evening trapped in a cabin with all of these kids was going to be nothing like the stifling night with Hanna and Howard that Kara had been unpleasantly anticipating.

To make matters even better, Ron clearly wasn't ready to go back to the cabin. “Hey, who's up for a little night skiing?” he asked as the meal came to an end.

The faces of Anne's older children, Matt and Jody, popped out of their game systems as they expressed their enthusiasm for the idea. Kitten's seventeen-year-old twins looked less happy. Kara suspected this was not because they didn't want to go skiing some more, but because they didn't want the younger kids interfering with their own fun.

“Geeze, Ron,” Anne's husband Gene complained. “Have mercy on us older folks. We're not all twenty-five anymore, you know?”

Anne punched him on the shoulder good-naturedly. “Speak for yourself, old man,” she told him. “I'm still twenty-five no matter what my driver's license says.”

“If you're too tired, Gene,” Kara found herself saying, “Ron and I can watch your kids.” She turned to Kitten. “We can look out for Brett and Marcie, too, if they agree to check in with us once in a while.”

“That's not necessary,” Kitten said. “The kids are seventeen. They don't need us watching out for them anymore.”

“Actually,” Hanna interjected, “I thought we might all go back to the cabin and play some cards tonight.”

The kids all groaned at this suggestion.

Howard evidently liked having his grandkids cheering for him because he instantly came to their defense—or maybe he simply didn't like his wife and enjoyed screwing with her plans. “Don't be an old shrew, Hanna,” he said. “Let the kids have some fun.”

Hanna clearly didn't appreciate either her husband's words or his tone of voice. “Well, everyone here isn't so young!” she told him. She looked pointedly at Kara, as if she hadn't just volunteered to accompany Ron and the kids.

Kara's mellow good-natured feelings evaporated. “Don't worry about me, Hanna! It'll be fun.”

“Yeah,” Ron agreed. “Believe me, Kara never has any trouble keeping up, even if we go all night long.”

Anne, Kitten, their husbands, and the twins broke into laughter with Kitten going so far as to spit out a mouthful of wine to keep from choking on it.

“What is it?” Ron asked. He looked around innocently as Kitten's husband, Eric, tried to stifle his own laughter so he could focus on pounding his wife's back to help her clear her wind pipe. “What's so funny?”

Kara couldn't be sure, but she suspected Ron knew exactly what he'd said.

“I don't know what's so funny, Uncle Ron,” little Emmy said. “But can I go skiing with you guys?”

Anne successfully smothered her mirth. “I don't think that's a good idea, Emmy,” she said. “It's already past your bedtime. We need to get some rest if we're going to have more fun tomorrow.”

Emmy evidently tried to stamp her foot but her leg wasn't long enough to reach the floor. She tried again before settling for kicking her chair. “That isn't fair!” she told them. “The big kids get to have all the fun!”

“Now you see?” Hanna said. “You're all upsetting little Emmy.”

“I'm not little!” Emmy insisted.

Ron looked heavenward as if asking God to grant him strength or patience.

“Don't you go rolling your eyes at me!” his mother snapped.

“What's the problem, Mom?” Anne said. “You paid all of this money so we could go skiing. Now you're saying you want to stay home and play cards? Well, Emmy and I will stay home with you, but if the others want to go out and have some fun, why stop them?”

Hanna Miller's face began to flush with frustrated anger. “Is it too much to ask—” she began.

“Yeah, Mom,” Anne interrupted. “It really is. Let Ron and Kara take the kids out to play. It's not like all of us can sit around the card table anyway. There's what? Eight adults? Five kids? If you really want to play cards you should be thanking Ron and Kara for getting the kids out from under our hair so that the rest of us can actually enjoy a game.”

“But—” Hanna began.

Kitten finally succeeded in clearing her windpipe. Now she slapped the table with her open palm and squealed with added amusement. “It's not us she wants to play cards with, Anne! She wants her little Ronnie-pooh to stay home and keep her company. Is Mommy jealous that Ron's girlfriend gets all of his attention?”

Hanna's face turned beet red with anger, but rather than warning Kitten off, this only seemed to make her more determined to tease her mother.

“Hey, Kara,” Kitten continued. “Did you know that little Ronnie-pooh is Mommy's favorite little guy?”

Kitten started laughing again but Kara thought she could detect a hint of pain beneath the amusement. Kitten was making a joke out of something that must feel deathly serious to her in her heart.

“I think I had an idea,” she told Kitten.

“I don't understand,” little Emmy said. “Why doesn't Grandma want to play with us?”

“Oh, she does, Pumpkin,” Anne told her daughter as she wrapped her arms around her and gave her a big hug. “It's just that in Grandma's family, Ron is like you are in our family—the baby.”

Ron's color was starting to get as deep as his mother's—but from embarrassment not anger.

“I am not a baby,” Emmy insisted.

“Of course you're not, Pumpkin,” Anne told her and squeezed the little girl tighter.

“Oh, just go out and ski then, if you have to!” Hanna interjected. “Honestly, Ron, I don't know why you and Kara agreed to come out here if you didn't want to spend any time with me. First you fight me over the room and now this!”

“The room was only a fight because you didn't reserve a room for Kara and me—”

“Don't say it!” Hanna snapped at him. “I don't want to discuss it in front of the children.”

This caused Kitten's son, Brett, to pull himself back out of his video game to make an observation. “You know it's the twenty-first century, don't you, Grandma? I think we'd all be a lot more worried if we didn't think Uncle Ron and Kara were sleeping together.”

Brett's twin sister, Marcie, snickered and Kara had to glance down at the table to hide her embarrassment.

“Hey, Kara?” Anne's twelve-year-old daughter, Jody, asked. “When are we going to get to start calling you
Aunt Kara
?”

Kara felt the heat rushing faster to her face and she kept her eyes pointed downward.

Ron came to her defense. “Okay, okay,” he said. “That's enough of those sorts of questions. We haven't even moved in together yet.” His eye twinkled as if he were considering repeating his announcement from earlier in the day, but the painfully embarrassed expression on Kara's face must have convinced him to restrain himself.

“I don't like the subject matter of this conversation,” Hanna said. “There are children present.”

“Well, that's really Anne and Kitten's business, isn't it?” Howard said.

Hanna was in no mood to be sassed. “I don't want you—”

“Hey, night's wasting kids!” Ron interrupted, standing. “Let's say we cut out all this chatter and hit the slopes.”

“I was talking, Ron!” his mother said.

“No, you're fighting!” Ron told her. He kissed his mother on the top of the head and then offered Kara his hand to help her stand.

The kids immediately followed them, not putting away their game systems, of course. They started toward the front of the restaurant with their eyes still locked on the little computer screens and their thumbs manipulating the controls. It was a wonder they put the consoles down when they actually hit the slopes.

Kara leaned close to Ron as they followed the children. “I thought you were the one who wanted to do everything your mother wanted this weekend,” she whispered.

Ron's face screwed up in disgust. “I don't know what's wrong with her. It seems to me she's a lot worse than usual.”

“Think she'll be asleep when we get done?” she asked.

“She will if we stay out long enough,” Ron told her as they stepped out of the lodge and into the cold night air.

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Chapter Five

“My thighs burn so bad!” Kara whispered to Ron as they held open the door of the cabin and ushered the kids inside. She'd been counting the children all night—not that easy a task in the dark with all four certain that they didn't need an adult chaperone. But how was she supposed to go back to Anne and Kitten and say,
Oops, sorry, I lost one
?

“Perhaps I should massage them for you,” Ron whispered back.

Kara smiled to herself at the thought even as she gave Ron a stern warning glare. They were not fooling around in a cabin packed with the Miller family. He could just leave that thought at the door with the snow on his boots.

Ron touched her back, encouraging her to precede him into the cabin. Kara did so, stamping her feet a couple of times to clean them before stepping inside. She stopped when she saw Hanna and Howard sitting on different pieces of furniture in the main room. Howard snored fitfully, but Hanna was wide awake, waiting for them all to return.

Ron's mother made a point of looking at her watch. “Do you realize how late it is?”

Kara turned back to glance unhappily at Ron.

Ron closed the door and stepped past Kara. “Yeah, it's almost one o'clock in the morning,” he said. “What's the problem?”

“You've kept the children out so late they'll probably sleep until noon,” Hanna complained.

Ron dramatically covered his mouth. “Oh, no!” he exclaimed. “That might keep them from
skiing
some more.” He stopped goofing off. “Mom! What is the problem?”

Hanna huffed, got to her feet, and stormed off toward her bedroom without answering.

Ron turned to Kara and shrugged.

* * * *

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“Now where were those muscles that were hurting?” Ron whispered as he slid beneath the sheets in the bed beside Kara. The door was closed, the lights were off, and so—Kara suddenly realized—were all of Ron's clothes.

This was not happening tonight—or any other time this weekend!

She placed her hand on Ron's muscular chest and pushed him back toward the edge of the bed. “Be good!” she whispered fiercely.

“I thought you said I'm always good,” Ron teased back. His hand slid beneath the covers to touch her stomach over the top of her light summer nightgown.

She grabbed his hand and tried to push it away, but he resisted her. “Put some pajamas on,” she whispered.

“I didn't bring any,” Ron told her. “Now what about those sore muscles? Does it hurt up here?” Ron slid his hand up her body and cupped one of Kara's large breasts.

Kara grabbed the hand again and this time successfully pulled it away from her body. “That isn't a muscle,” she told him.

Ron slid closer so that the long length of his firm naked body pressed against the more slender lines of Kara's form. His lips nuzzled her ear through the strands of her long dark hair. “Are you certain?” he asked. “Let's check it out...”

The fingers of Kara's free hand twitched for a moment as it lay trapped between their two bodies, then she gave in to temptation and felt the smooth inner flesh of Ron's naked thigh beside her. She was intensely aware of the weight of his still flaccid penis lying across her nightgown-covered leg.

Ron's hand on her stomach took advantage of Kara's momentary distraction to slide back up and touch her breast again. He squeezed her gently through her nightgown. “You see?” Ron whispered. “It's soft but firm beneath my fingers. Are you sure this isn't a muscle.”