Woman on Top [McQueen Was My Valley 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (5 page)

He was staring straight at Brooke. “I need to express mail something to Salt Lake. How often do they pick up?”

Brooke opened her mouth. “Ah…” She genuinely didn’t know, having been doing this job for all of one day, so Cass stepped in to assist.

“Once a day, at four, so you’re fine,” she said, overly smarmy. “Here. Here’s the form. You can just hand it to me when you’re done filling it out.”

The two women stared dopily while the officer filled out the form. His nametag declared he was Officer Verona, probably the guy who’d been filling in for Julian when he was in Hawaii. But Julian was back now, so Brooke imagined Officer Verona would leave again soon.

After the disaster in the spa, Brooke knew she shouldn’t be ogling any man at all. But after all, he was looking at
her
. He kept glancing sideways at her as he filled out the form, and he finally said, “I was just talking to some skiers. Apparently there’s a cougar in the area. You ladies should keep an eye peeled, and give guests instructions on how to deal with cougars.”

“Yes,” said Brooke cheerfully, “don’t allow men under thirty to travel alone.”

Cass just gaped at her, but Officer Verona appeared to get it. He smiled widely as though they shared a secret.

Brooke said, “So what
are
the rules for cougars? I always forget what you do for each animal. Is it run like hell, or try to appear big and scare it?”

“Try to appear big and scare it,” Verona agreed. “Yell and wave your arms around. Don’t even bend down to pick up a child, because the second you do, you’ll seem like fair game. And, needless to say, don’t let any kid wander around unattended. I’ve got some fliers I could leave or post at your Camp Walden alerting your guests to keep an eye out.”

Cass butted in enthusiastically. “Oh,
sure¸
officer. You know what? I was about to head on up the hill to Camp Walden myself. Have you been there before? No? It’s just a five-minute gondola ride uphill. I could show you the way.”

Brooke sighed heavily. She was paying the penalty for having been such a wild child. Now, if her responsible sister Xandra saw her so much as
talking
to a man who didn’t resemble their father, she’d be all over Brooke like a rat on a Cheeto. It was going to take some time to live down her wanton reputation. No. She couldn’t offer to take the officer to the camp, even though she knew for a fact Cass was supposed to go meet the leader of a pet psychic group about using the ballroom for their conference.

“Sure,” said Officer Verona. “If you’re going up that way anyway.”

“You go.” Brooke urged Cass, even taking her by the arm to shove the tall gangling woman out from behind the front desk. “I think I know enough basic stuff by now to handle—”

“Hey, Gabriel.”

Brooke froze solid like a statue at the sound of Adrian Kinsey’s voice. Her eyes automatically flickered to view the redheaded stud. He had apparently just walked up the hill from the cabins—the Triple Play, in addition to its one hundred and fifty rooms, boasted of twenty luxury cabins—because he wore no jacket. He brought with him that vigorous outdoorsy scent, icy clear snow mingled with pine needles.

Adrian also froze when he spied her. His lovely peridot-green eyes were stunned. He was probably angered that she’d have the nerve to show up at the front desk. Brooke was so thoroughly mortified to the core she barely took note of a tattoo on his forearm. It looked vaguely Chinese, just some indecipherable black characters about two inches long, as though painted with an ink brush. She was ashamed that it warmed her innards to ogle his chest under the tight henley shirt. It was just so ingrained in her to admire men. She couldn’t help it. She should be running from him, not ogling!

Adrian spoke to Officer Gabriel Verona, but his gaze remained fixed on Brooke. “Gabriel. I got us a reservation at the restaurant even though it’s jam-packed with women who can tell that your dog was a bison in a past life.”

Cass waved a dismissive hand at Adrian. “Oh, that pet psychic convention. Just ignore them, Adrian. They’re all harmless women, really. Only a few are what I’d call truly off their rockers. The rest are just simple, everyday women who think cats can control their pendulums. So you’re dining with this fine officer?”

“Yes,” Adrian said vaguely. “He’s been out in the field for over two weeks eating his boot soles. Thought I’d kick him one notch up and show him Leif’s braised pork belly with apple cider.”

“My mouth’s watering just thinking of it!” Officer Verona said happily, and somewhat ambiguously. He was looking at Adrian with admiration, too, but Adrian still pinned Brooke to her seat with the force of his accusatory gaze.

It was too much. Brooke leaped to her feet, grabbed her purse, and emerged from behind the counter. She used Officer Verona as a shield, peeking around his arm to tell Cass, “I just remembered. Xandra needs me for some urgent errand. I’ll be back in about two hours.”

Brooke left Cass gaping openmouthed like a beached fish. She was deeply sorry Cass was now stuck at the desk, but Cass could get Erika to fill in if she wanted to continue flirting with the men.
Me? I’m out of here. I can’t be in the same room as that man.

Adrian exerted such a powerful influence over her, like an inexorable lunar tide. Officer Verona was a hunk, and he seemed like a pleasant, cheerful guy too. But Adrian Kinsey, the military antiquities expert, had unknowingly staked a permanent claim in Brooke’s heart.

She did the only thing left open to her. She ran.

* * * *

Oh, the freedom! Brooke skied with unopposed force down Logan’s Run, all champagne powder today. She must’ve been going thirty miles per hour, even traversing the moguls just because it was fun.

Logan’s Run was an advanced run, not one of the most difficult or black diamond. Brooke liked it because it was quite long and one could get the impression one was flying. There were a couple of run outs where, if hit properly, one could do some fancy spins and jumps. She could even olly around without a bunch of children stomping like Herman Munster in their stiff layers of new ski clothing.

Brooke’s sister had been BASE jumping lately off some of the dizzying spires that abounded in the canyons, but Nathan had just told Xandra she needed to stop until after she gave birth to their child. Brooke could never fathom leaping off a steeple and into an abyss. Brooke was a daredevil, but only with skis—she needed something under her feet.

Running into the marine Adrian Kinsey again had thrown her for a loop. She had promised Xandra she’d keep it in her pants. She had gone too far, hanging with the rough crowd surrounding Xandra’s sleazy ex, Javier. Hell, Xandra had had to move from Charleston to Bumfuck, Utah to get away from Javier, and Brooke just blithely continued partying with that crowd.

Well, they were fun people. They had even gone skiing in Quebec and Vermont, great crowds of them hanging at the lodge looking chic in their expensive gear. Most of the Bolivians didn’t ski but conducted business in the chateaus, and Brooke got her ya-yas out on the slopes. She did a bit of modeling during the week and hung out on yachts and skied the rest of the time. She didn’t personally partake of the sort of business Javier and his cohorts did, so what was the problem? She was having
fun
.

She was thirty now, though, and her father and Xandra were right. She had to settle down, to figure out what she wanted to do other than modeling. She wouldn’t be pretty enough to model for much longer. Thirty was actually pushing the age limit in that field, and she’d never gone so far as to get breast implants, so that marginalized her even more. But what did she like to do? She liked horses. Xandra had just given the cattle ranch portion of the Triple Play property to their stepbrother Doug, a happy-go-lucky guy whom everyone liked. Brooke had been wracking her brain trying to think what she could do for the cattle ranch. Could she be a ranch hand? Why not? As long as Xandra paid her a salary and she kept that beautiful suite near Xandra’s inside the lodge.

A mogul run made Brooke’s teeth chatter, so she torqued in the other direction and found herself zooming toward a stand of piñon pines. She didn’t lose any velocity because she was preparing to pivot around and head back toward where some college kids had emerged, yelling as usual.

She was a nanosecond away from making the turn when the appearance of a white-faced, redheaded man about ten feet in front of her threw her for a loop. She continued whooshing into the trees with the massive momentum of the G-force.
I’m screwed.
A tree was fast approaching, and the ginger man, who was of course Adrian Kinsey, made such a giant leap for her that they collided.

The force of the collision was probably even worse than the potential collision with the tree. “Ooph!” All the air was expressed from Brooke’s lungs as she went hurtling to the snow, a heavy man on top of her. They plowed a huge furrow about twenty feet long into the powder, sliding like one enormous Tasmanian devil with flailing limbs. Their boots automatically came unclipped as they tumbled end over end across the snow. She had crashed so heavily she was “having a yard sale” with all the flying items.

A fallen log put a stop to their skidding ball of body parts. Brooke was on the ground, panting, clinging to the arms of Adrian’s ski jacket.
How the hell did he get downhill this fast?
She had assumed the men were going to have lunch at Leif’s restaurant in the lodge.

“Holy shit!” she cried and immediately detached herself to sit up, shoving the idiot away. “What were you
thinking
?”

“You were about to crash into that tree!” he protested.

“So it’s better to crash into
you
?”

“Ah…
yeah
?” he suggested, angry now that she hadn’t appreciated his lifesaving skills.

“I would’ve made that pivot if you hadn’t appeared suddenly like some kind of fucking spirit from beyond the grave! You scared the shit out of me.” Brooke slapped the powder from her jacket and pants and glared at the marine, who was still on his butt in the snow. He
did
look virile and athletic, his brilliant scarlet hair standing out in sharp relief against his periwinkle blue beanie and jacket. Brooke had no doubt that he could be a pretty mean customer if riled. Adrian worked for the same “private military contractor” that Xandra’s new husband Nathan had worked for. And if he was half as tough and robust as Nathan, he was a hard-as-nails contender. So Brooke softened, and even reached a glove out to assist him to stand.

“Sorry about that. I was just…enjoying the scenery in the woods.”

She could not fault him for stepping aside to pee. “How did you even get down here before me?”

They were standing this close for the first time since the ill-fated treatment room encounter. Adrian made no move to back away from her. He shrugged, and his eyes twinkled with amusement. “Maybe I’m just a better skier than you.”

“Oh, yeah? You should wear a helmet.”

“It ruins my peripheral vision.”

Brooke had taken off her helmet to feel her skull, as though it had cracked like an egg. “It ruins more than that when you hit that tree.” It was pleasant, actually, standing here in the middle of a snowy grove with the dashing spy. She confirmed what she’d thought odd before—he
did
exude a scent of snow crystals, or clean ice. The college kids screaming in the field sounded like they were five miles away. Once again, Brooke was completely enraptured by this man. She tossed her helmet in the snow so she could run her hands through her thick, dark brown curls. She was a man-eater, she knew, familiar with all of the moves that distracted and turned men on. She had even mastered the art of taking a man’s mind off an argument by scratching her cleavage absentmindedly.

But she remembered. She must not treat this man like any of her other conquests. He was a friend of Nathan’s—a sensitive POW who had been brutalized. “You’re a coworker of my brother-in-law, Nathan. You should be more careful when you ski, because you seem to ski so often.”

He shrugged. He even looked happy, as though they were sharing a piping mug of hot chocolate, not recovering from a near fatality. “I figure it’s my time, it’s my time. You’re…Xandra’s sister?”

Now Brooke squirmed. She felt like a terrified teenager on her first date. Awkward, not knowing what to say. “Yes, I didn’t arrive till they were on their honeymoon, so I haven’t spent much time with Nathan.”

Adrian removed his beanie, and his resplendent crimson hair stood up in shiny spikes. He speared his fingers through his damp hair, and it stood up like a porcupine’s quills. “Yes, I didn’t see you at their wedding. I would’ve noticed such a high-spirited, luscious girl as you.”

Brooke brightened.
That’s a compliment. Holy shit, that’s a compliment. I can’t resist a compliment.

“Instead, I only noticed you behind the spa’s desk. And, of course, when your hands were massaging my ass.”

Oh, God. I want to vanish into a hole in the earth.

Brooke couldn’t swallow, her throat was so dry. She yammered something like, “I don’t work that job anymore. I…”

“Adrian!”

Brooke exhaled with relief when that sensuous game warden yelled at them from the slope, about twenty yards off. He was skiing toward them, and he luckily distracted Adrian so she could reattach her skis and head toward Gabriel Verona.