Love on the Lifts Read online

  I finally got it. Allie and Sam…heavy duty secret handshaking going on.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  I nodded. “Thanks for the offer to move downstairs, but I think I’ll stay where I am. I don’t need to be any closer to the action, if you know what I mean. It’s probably best to let the secrets in the basement stay in the basement.”

  “Kinda like ‘what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas’?”

  “Exactly. I think what happens in Snow Angel Valley needs to stay in Snow Angel Valley.”

  I was also wondering if Aunt Sue had another open condo that I could move into. How was it that with everyone moving out, the condo suddenly seemed way too crowded?

  Chapter 22

  The next morning I was in the kitchen fixing French toast for breakfast. It was strange not having Leah here. Stranger still to know that I was going to go to the slopes for the day, maybe hook up with one of Ian’s friends. She’d called me last night to see what I thought about the idea. I told her I’d call her when I got there.

  I knew it would be fun. And I wasn’t certain why I was so reluctant to commit….

  Okay, I was reluctant because I felt guilty about having any kind of fun at all. I knew I shouldn’t. After all, Joe was insisting that I go. And Aunt Sue was probably right. Time away from each other was what we both needed.

  We’d sorta made up after I came back to the condo yesterday. Enough so that we shared supper, watched TV, and played a couple of games of checkers. Right now, Joe was in the shower.

  “What are you making? I’m starving.”

  I spun around. Brad was standing in the doorway, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, his feet bare, his short hair somehow looking tousled. His face unshaven.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  He rolled his shoulders into a big shrug. “Things with Cyn didn’t work out. I moved back over here last night.”

  That was a surprise!

  “Funny. Nobody mentioned it.”

  He rubbed his jaw. “It was pretty late when I knocked on the back door. Joe let me in.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say. “Sorry about you and Cynthia.”

  He shrugged again. “It happens.”

  “So you want some breakfast?”

  “Yeah, but you know what I want more?”

  He walked into the kitchen until he was standing almost in front of me. “I’d like you to go skiing with me today.”

  I smiled. “Go skiing with you?”

  “Yeah. Ever since that night on the deck, when you let me in to get my stuff, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  Why did I suddenly feel triumphant, vindicated, sexier than Cynthia? Why did it seem that my Brad-ectomy was coming undone?

  “Yeah.”

  He put his hands on my waist and grinned broadly.

  “So how ’bout it? You and me on the slopes, babe. We’ll have a great time.”

  Babe? No one had ever called me babe before. I thought it should have made me feel special. Funny that it didn’t.

  I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned my head and saw Joe standing there balanced on his crutches, his hair still wet from the shower, watching us. I don’t know what my face revealed but it couldn’t have been good, because Joe looked like I’d just kicked his bad leg.

  He spun around, started to move away.

  “Joe, wait!”

  I tried to go after him, but Brad was still holding me.

  “Let me go,” I ordered.

  “Not until you say you’ll go skiing with me.”

  “Hold this,” I said holding up the bowl.

  He got a confused look on his face before taking the bowl with both hands. With his hands no longer on my waist, I was able to slip away.

  Much to my surprise, Joe, with his injured leg, had made it out to the deck already. He was standing at the railing looking out at the mountains by the time I caught up with him.

  “Joe, let me explain.”

  “You don’t have to explain, Kate,” he said without looking at me, without emotion. “The reason you don’t win at poker is because you don’t have a poker face. Everything you’re thinking and feeling is clearly written on your face.”

  “Apparently it isn’t.”

  He turned then, his expression hard. “Go skiing with him, Kate.”

  “I don’t want to go skiing with him.”

  “Yes, you do. And it’s fine with me if you do. Because the truth is I was only hanging out with you because you were the only one left, and I felt sorry for you.”

  “That’s a mean thing to say.”

  “It’s the truth. You’ve wanted Brad from day one. Well, now you can have him.”

  “But what about you? Your knee?”

  “I told you yesterday that I could take care of myself.”

  And he’d managed just fine without me, better than I’d managed without him. And Aunt Sue had convinced me that I needed a day away from Joe and that he needed a day away from me.

  Why not spend the day with Brad? He was available, and apparently, so was I.

  I nodded. “Great, then. I’m outta here.”

  Have you ever wanted something so badly, thought you’d die if you didn’t get it, then when you finally did get it, you wondered what all the fuss was about?

  I was sorta feeling that way as we drove to the slopes with Brad and me in the backseat, Sam and Allie in the front.

  It was like Brad and I didn’t have anything to talk about; we had absolutely nothing in common.

  I mean, here he was, the guy of my dreams, and all I could think was: Why had I ever crushed on him to begin with?

  And why was he suddenly so not hot?

  He looked the same as he did the first time I saw him, and he was good looking. He did have a killer smile.

  But I just couldn’t seem to get excited about the fact that we were sorta having a date. I mean, he’d asked me to go skiing with him, and so here I was, and my heart should have been pounding.

  But it wasn’t.

  I could have been going to the grocery store to pick up a bag of potatoes for all the thudding it was doing.

  On top of that, an unnatural silence filled the car, like none of us could think of anything to say.

  The weather, I finally thought. The weather was always a good topic of conversation.

  “That was some blizzard we had last week, wasn’t it?” I asked, since he’d been at Cynthia’s instead of with us. We could talk about the blackouts, the shrieking winds—

  He perked up, looked around. “There’s a Dairy Queen in town? I didn’t know that. Where is it?”

  I heard Allie snicker.

  Sam took up for his friend. “It’s an understandable mistake.”

  He looked in the rearview mirror. “She’s talking about that storm that came through a few nights ago.”

  “Oh, bummer,” Brad said. “I was craving an Oreo Blizzard.”

  We did a round of everyone naming off their favorite flavor of Blizzard. Then we were once again surrounded by awkward silence.

  That was what really bugged me. How awkward it seemed not to be talking. I could sit with Joe for long stretches of time, not say a word, but never feel uncomfortable, never feel like the silence absolutely needed to be filled.

  And here I was racking my brain for anything to talk about.

  “No football games on TV tonight, right?” I said.

  “Right,” Sam said.

  “Maybe we should rent some DVDs.”

  Brad ran his finger along my cheek. I wondered why it didn’t send delicious shivers racing along my skin.

  “I was thinking we’d go to the Avalanche,” Brad said. “There’s supposed to be a wicked awesome band starting tonight: The Abominable Snowmen.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I hate to leave Joe alone all day and all night.”

  “He’s getting around better,”