Free Fall Read online

  Hating the weakness, she forced a smile. “Why, are you tired?”

  “Lily—”

  The walkie-talkie at her hip went off, and anything the two of them might have said or done was put on hold as Sara’s voice filled the air. She was the middle sister, two years younger than Gwyneth. Instead of cold, cynical and bossy, she was mothering, nosy and bossy. “Lily Rose, I’m at your desk, and you’re not here.”

  “Amazing powers of deduction,” Lily muttered.

  “Lily Rose? Can you hear me?”

  She might be a badass to the rest of the world, but to Sara and Gwyneth, she was the eternal baby sister. “What’s up?”

  “You need a maid. My God, your desk is a disaster.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be down in a few,” she said into the walkie-talkie.

  Less than five seconds later, her cell phone rang. She didn’t have to look to see it was Sara. “What now?” she said when she’d hit speakerphone rather than take off her helmet so that she could hear.

  “I just wanted to tell you something.” Sara spoke with slow care, a sure sign she was miffed. “Two things. Aunt Debbie showed up earlier. She skied a while and now wants a suite.”

  “Well, you’re guest services. Check with your reservations desk, but I’m sure both our suites are taken this week.”

  “They are. She’s making a stink, saying she told you to clear one for her.”

  Aunt Debbie was their mother’s younger sister, their grandma’s “surprise,” a late-in-life baby, and was only a few years older than Gwyneth. A born diva, she lived in New York, but always came out to ski once a year or so, wearing the finest designer gear, bearing embarrassingly expensive gifts and smothering hugs. She’d spend the time hanging around the lodge looking rich and beautiful, always choosing some particular spectacular ski stud to hook up with for the week.

  Certainly if Aunt Debbie had told Lily she’d planned on coming to ski this week, Lily would have remembered to take an Advil in advance. “Well, she didn’t. Just give her the best room you can come up with.”

  “I will, but, sweetie, you really need to remember these things or ask for help if you need it.”

  Lily banged the phone on her forehead. Talking to her sisters was like talking to two particularly impenetrable brick walls.

  “Oh, and Gwyneth says an old friend is coming in tonight for a week’s stay with his brand-new Jeep.” There was laughter in Sara’s voice now. “And that you’re not to steal it, as is your habit with Jeeps.”

  Instead of banging her head again, Lily tipped her head back and looked at the sky, into the snow falling out of it like angel drops. It’d been ten years since she’d been arrested for stealing a Jeep. “Didn’t you get the bulletin? I don’t steal new Jeeps. Only old ones.”

  Sara chortled. “Sorry. I couldn’t resist.”

  Lily disconnected. “Aren’t you funny.”

  “Older sister?”

  Lily tentatively flexed and bounced on her knee, testing. Not good. “Yeah. She hasn’t grasped the fact that I’m no longer a wild child and that stealing Dad’s precious Jeep Laredo to go smoke weed on Mole Hill just doesn’t hold the same appeal.”

  Logan laughed and once again pulled off his backpack, unzipping it. “Ah, the fond memories of our stupid youths.”

  Impressed that he didn’t ask her a million questions about her past, she watched him kneel in the snow and shift through his pack. “Granted,” she admitted. “I had more stupid moments than most.”

  “Because you got caught?” He pulled out an elastic bandage.

  “It wasn’t difficult that time. I forgot to set the emergency brake, and when I got out to sit on the cliffs to smoke and watch the moon, the truck rolled down the mountain.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “And now I’m that stupid kid forever, no matter how many years I put between me and my…indiscretions.”

  “I take it you’re the baby of the family?”

  “Unfortunately.” She eyed him as he came close once again, tossing the bandage up and down in his hand. “And you?”

  “The oldest.”

  “Ah.” She smiled. “So are you an impossible, cold, hard know-it-all?”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  Slowly she shook her head. “You might be impossible, and the know-it-all part remains to be seen, but I don’t buy the cold.”

  He ignored that and nodded to her leg. “What’s with the knee?”

  “See? Cold wouldn’t have even noticed.” She came clean when he didn’t give up an ounce of the intensity. “Ancient injury.”

  Crouching before her in the snow, he pulled her Gore-Tex pants up to her thigh while she silently thanked herself for shaving that morning. Then he bent his dark head. His breath danced over her skin. With his index finger, he traced the six-inch scar that rounded her kneecap in a half circle. His finger was warm and callused.

  “It’s old,” she said.

  “Not that old. Want the wrap?”

  What she wanted wrapped was his body around hers, but she wasn’t too stubborn to admit the bandage would give her the support she needed to get down the hill. “Please.”

  Tipping his face up, he smiled at her in a way that suggested he knew accepting help from anyone went against the grain. Still holding her gaze, he tugged his gloves off with his teeth, an oddly erotic thing all in itself. Then he peeled her ski sock down.

  She hissed.

  He went still. “Hurt?”

  “Your hands are cold.”

  He flashed a grin. “Suck it up.” With efficiency, he wrapped her knee, then pulled her sock back up and her pant leg down over her boot. “You should soak it when we get back. Do employees get to use the hot tub?”

  “Actually…” She stared down at him, into those amazing eyes. It was unusual, and it made no sense, but she wanted him to know the truth. She wanted him to know her. “I’m not quite an employee.”

  He straightened, standing a good head taller than her. “No?”

  “No. I, um…” She smiled wryly. “I own the resort. Inherited it, actually.”

  He didn’t even blink. “So I’m taking it you get access to the hot tub.”

  She stared at him, then laughed. Still no ridiculously invasive questions, not a single joke, none of the usual stuff that always so completely and totally irritated her when she revealed that she, a twenty-five-year-old punk, owned a ski resort.

  “Can you board down with your knee?” he asked.

  As her other option was lying in a litter while a pair of her patrollers took her down the mountain, she nodded. Though she went slower this time, he didn’t try to pass her or continue their race. Instead, he followed, presumably to help her if she needed it. And though she’d skied with plenty of men she’d planned on sleeping with over the years, she’d never felt so…aware of one as she was of Logan.

  The slopes were filled with skiers heading down to the lodge on their last run of the day as the sun began to sink. Halfway back, her walkie-talkie chirped again. It was Chris this time, with a new emergency on the east side. A boarder had fallen out-of-bounds. He was uninjured but unable to climb back up the sheer rock to safety.

  “Just shoot me now,” Lily muttered, then lifted an apologetic gaze to Logan. “Fun’s over. Again. I have patrollers on their way, but I’m going over to help.”

  “Whoever you were talking to sounded worried.”

  “It’s going to be a little tricky getting him back up. It’s getting dark. And where he went over is sheer rock, covered in two months' worth of ice, topped with some powder.”

  “Avalanche waiting to happen.”

  “You got it,” she said grimly. “There are signs making it out-of-bounds for exactly that reason.”

  “Maybe I can help.”

  “No.”

  “I have ten years’ climbing experience.”

  She let out a breath. He’d fixed her binding. With duct tape. He’d wrapped her knee when most wouldn’t have e