Snowy Mountain Nights
Lindsay Evans
Cold nights. Hot kisses… On a much-needed ski getaway with her girlfriends, the last person Reyna Allen wants to run into is the lawyer who ruined her life. The tattoo artist's bitter divorce left her with nothing, and she blames her ex-husband's attorney, Garrison Richards. Now firelight dinners, winter walks in the Adirondacks and toe-curling chemistry are daring her to give in to the one man she refuses to ever trust.Garrison is good at his job–and where Reyna's concerned, he may have been a little too good. He regrets the role he played in her divorce and intends to show Reyna that he's found his moral compass since then. But as their mutual heat thaws her resolve, will doubts put the freeze on their relationship–before he can convince her that they're the ones meant for happily -ever-after?
Cold nights. Hot kisses...
On a much-needed ski getaway with her girlfriends, the last person Reyna Allen wants to run into is the lawyer who ruined her life. The tattoo artist’s bitter divorce left her with nothing, and she blames her ex-husband’s attorney, Garrison Richards. Now firelight dinners, winter walks in the Adirondacks and toe-curling chemistry are daring her to give in to the one man she refuses to ever trust.
Garrison is good at his job—and where Reyna’s concerned, he may have been a little too good. He regrets the role he played in her divorce and intends to show Reyna that he’s found his moral compass since then. But as their mutual heat thaws her resolve, will doubts put the freeze on their relationship—before he can convince her that they’re the ones meant for happily-ever-after?
“This place is beautiful!” Reyna took in a deep breath of the night air. “I’m so blessed to come here every year.”
Happiness lit up her face, her black eyes reflecting the paleness of the snow, her mouth lifted in a smile. Garrison wanted to kiss her. He wanted to feel those cool lips under his own and breathe in the happiness she felt. But he knew that wouldn’t be welcomed. At least not yet.
Garrison took a step back from her. She turned from the stunning view to frown at him. “What?”
Her eyes were slightly tilted in her face, like a fox’s. Her full mouth parted with her question and stayed temptingly open. Garrison gave up the tight rein on his control and reached for her. He drew in her startled breath and gave her back one of his own.
He trembled as if caught in her snowstorm. He felt cold and hot at once, needing the pressure of her body against his to ground him. Her mouth was cool on his, the soft petals of her lips still at first, then she pressed close to kiss him back. A sound of pleasured appreciation rumbled at the back of his throat and he felt her sigh, her lips parting to give him the scorching inside of her mouth. She tasted sweet, like red apples and whiskey. Not spicy at all. Only heat and pleasure.
Dear Reader (#u1114bfad-046f-528e-8058-5663373ecbc2),
Tattoo artist Reyna Allen was crushed when the fairy-tale marriage to her high school sweetheart turned out to be a grim nightmare. The failed relationship left her unwilling to trust again. But when Garrison Richards, a cold enigma of a man, reenters her life and strips himself bare to her, literally and metaphorically, Reyna’s determination to keep romance at arm’s length falters.
Garrison is not all what he seems. Wrecked by his mother’s lifelong and fruitless search for love in dangerous places, he carries his own wounds. But sometimes it is the most damaged people that come together to create the most beautiful things.
Join me, dear reader, as we follow their journey.
Lindsay Evans
Snowy
Mountain
Nights
Lindsay Evans
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
LINDSAY EVANS was born in Jamaica and currently lives and writes in Atlanta, Georgia, where she’s constantly on the hunt for inspiration, club in hand. She loves good food and romance and would happily travel to the ends of the earth for both. Find out more at lindsayevanswrites.com (http://www.lindsayevanswrites.com).
To my readers, old and new.
Thank you for sharing your time with me.
Acknowledgments (#u1114bfad-046f-528e-8058-5663373ecbc2)
This new journey of mine wouldn’t be possible without Sheree L. Greer, Angela Gabriel and Dorothy Lindsay. As my beta reader, Sheree has read more romance novels than she’d ever even thought possible and Angela has suffered with me through many plotting sessions over dinner and ice cream. Dorothy Lindsay has simply always been there.
Kimberly Kaye Terry, as ever, thank you.
Contents
Cover (#u8227b1e3-739f-51ef-85de-9c251443e5f5)
Back Cover Text (#uafdac80f-fa0f-59de-bdc6-d47162018af0)
Introduction (#udd053e77-0dad-5f63-b196-3e62f22709d6)
Dear Reader
Title Page (#ua3b00ee3-9929-5d7f-a7b2-dba829c77ef2)
About the Author (#u8c2fa2bb-3d68-5e38-b24b-c990917e02a1)
Dedication (#ud5b23371-1ca2-5a8f-91d8-5c8816d00990)
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_9eaa68b9-7822-5976-8e9b-13cdaaf76f05)
“I hope you know that thirty-six-year-old men can die from overwork.”
Garrison Richards’s secretary, Anthea, walked into his office and put an envelope on his desk. He looked up from scribbling on the yellow legal pad, surprised at the darkness that had fallen outside his windows.
He didn’t dignify her comment with an answer. But she apparently didn’t need him to say anything.
“Your train ticket and other essentials are right here.” She tapped the envelope with a manicured finger. “The weekend at the resort is already paid for. Your train leaves at eight in the morning.”
He put down his pen and glanced at his watch, frowning. It was much later than he thought. Nearly ten o’clock. New York, a bright and glittering jewel, flashed in its beautiful finery from his twentieth-story view.
“Are you kicking me out of my own office on a Thursday night?” he asked.
“Yes, I am. With the help of your mother.”
Garrison assumed that his mother had paid for the resort and train tickets, while Anthea made sure his schedule was clear. With help like this, who needed a wife?
Anthea stood at his desk with the warm overhead light spilling over her still features, looking more motherly than his actual mother, in her practical gray pantsuit, the spectacles sitting on her gently lined face. She clasped her hands at her waist and watched him with endless patience.
“You have the cabin at the resort for the weekend,” she said. “I already had your snowboarding equipment delivered.” Anthea lifted a finger to forestall his complaints about missing work. “Since you’ve been trying to meet with Mrs. Taylor-Rodriguez about the latest draft of the agreement, I also arranged a meeting with her on Sunday afternoon before your train home in the evening.”
Garrison considered being firm with his secretary. Putting on the more serious than usual face that had his associates and junior attorneys scurrying to do his bidding. It rarely worked on Anthea, but she would at least know he was serious.
That was one of the reasons he hired her. She was efficient and effective, yes. But he enjoyed immensely that she reflected his inner calm, the calm he wanted to reflect in his office. In nine years, he hadn’t once regretted his decision. Even when she insisted on mothering him when no one else was around. Now wasn’t the time, though. As usual, he had a lot of work to do.
“All the other work can wait.” She pressed the button on the remote that controlled the windows, darkening them so he could no longer see outside to the brilliant nighttime Manhattan skyline. “You’ve been distracted lately. Your work hasn’t started to suffer yet, but it might if you don’t take a break. You haven’t had a proper vacation in over a year.”
Garrison’s lips tightened at her observation. Part of her effectiveness lay in that she knew how to reach him. His work was precise and thorough, very efficient, which was one of the reasons he was the top divorce attorney in the state. The idea that he could slip up and compromise his usual standards of excellence gave him pause.
“That’s not very fair.” He felt like a twelve-year-old boy debating the merits of a punishment.
“Life is not fair, as you’re always fond of reminding me.” Anthea withdrew to the door. She had left the office earlier at her usual time of five-thirty, but apparently came back to ambush him.
“Go, Garrison.” Her faint smile chided him. “These broken marriages can wait until Monday morning.”
* * *
And so the next morning found him doing what she directed, getting on a train heading north to the Adirondack Mountains. With his overnight bag over one shoulder and a briefcase in hand, he looked like the only person in the first-class car with work in mind. His fellow passengers sat back with drinks already in front of them: mimosas, Bloody Marys and some with just plain coffee.
He passed three women getting themselves settled into a quartet of seats. They were beautiful, he noticed automatically, well-made-up and expensively dressed. The kind of women he’d seen at New York society and industry parties he’d been invited to over the years. He idly wondered if they skied or were simply heading north to bask by winter fireplaces while carefully trained servants tended to their every need. When he passed them, his idle wonderings disappeared.
Garrison tucked away his bag and claimed his seats, two sets facing each other that Anthea had arranged just for him, knowing he didn’t like to be crowded. Soon the train began to move, and he sat back to make the most of the ride.
Up ahead of him, he noticed that a fourth woman had joined the group of three he’d passed earlier. This woman was sitting with her back to him and speaking animatedly with her hands. She wore her shoulder-length hair in natural curls that brushed the back of her neck. When she stood to put something in the overhead luggage rack, Garrison noticed that she was tall, maybe even six feet, a height he’d always found...compelling. He admired her voluptuous shape, the way she filled out the long green sweater and the jeans she wore beneath it. His eyes returned to her again and again.
Very occasionally, he thought he heard her low voice above the soothing rumble of the train moving over the tracks. There was something about the woman’s voice that pricked an awareness of familiarity in him. But she never turned around.
He wondered if it would be too ridiculous of him to walk past the four women then turn back around just so he could get a glimpse of the mystery siren. He dismissed the idea as quickly as it had come. He wasn’t the type to get worked up over a woman, especially one he’d only seen from behind and hadn’t even talked to.
When the attendant arrived, he ordered a black coffee and opened one of the files he’d brought with him. Just to have something to work on during the train ride, of course.
* * *
“Reyna, I need you to cut his damn name off my body!”
Marceline made a sound of frustration and looked at the inside of her wrist, where she had tattooed her soon-to-be ex-husband’s name nearly three years before. Her normally beautiful and serene face was tight from stress. The long hair, twisted at the top of her head and fastened with silver chopsticks, only emphasized the unhealthy gauntness of her features.
Sitting opposite Marceline, Reyna shook her head. “Sorry. I only put them on. I don’t take them off.” She smoothed her fingers over her friend’s wrist then squeezed it with a reassurance she was far from feeling. Marceline’s eyes were dark with a pain Reyna hoped never to experience.
Beyond the long windows of the train, the landscape was awash in white—snowcapped mountains, pine trees heavy with late-winter white and gracefully twirling flurries drifting from the sky. Despite the turbulence in her friend, Reyna tried to hold on to the sense of peace the snow gave her.
The train, taking them on their annual single women’s trip into the Adirondacks for Valentine’s Day, rattled soothingly over the tracks, a sound Reyna had always found meditative. But Marceline, still in the middle of divorce proceedings from the man she thought was the one true love of her life, looked uneasy. As if she’d rather be hidden away in her big Long Island house than heading to a ski vacation with three of her closest friends.
“You can see my skin guy in Manhattan,” their friend Bridget said as she came back from the restroom, catching the tail end of their conversation. She had ears like a cat. With her short, coiled hair and big amber eyes, she even looked like one. “He’s a dermatologist. I’m sure he can take care of that for you.” Bridget wrinkled her freckled nose.
“And how would you know that?” Louisa, who had gone to the restroom with Bridget, walked up behind her. She raised an eyebrow, half in inquiry, half in challenge. Her straightened, shoulder-length hair swung down to hide her face for a moment, then she shoved it back, revealing features that had stopped more than one man in his tracks.
Bridget made a vague gesture to her face. “I had skin issues when I was younger. You all remember that, I’m sure.”
“Oh, yes. We remember.” Louisa smirked.
The four women had known each other since they were preteens at the same exclusive New York private school. They shared over fifteen years of friendship that had been through just about everything under the sun. Reyna, on scholarship that she and her blue-collar Brooklyn parents had worked hard for. Marceline, newly orphaned and recently arrived from Haiti. Bridget, a trust-fund baby looking for the next exciting thing. And Louisa, already cynical and frighteningly brilliant, intrigued at the idea of friendship with girls so different from her.
With the arrival of the two women, Reyna excused herself to make her own way to the bathroom. The train rocked under her as she walked and lightly touched the seats of the other passengers without stumbling into them. The early-morning train from Penn Station to Saratoga Springs was full—after all it was the Friday before Valentine’s Day weekend—but it wasn’t overwhelming. The last few seats before the bathroom were even empty.
She loved trains. It was because of her that the four of them took the train up to the resort every year instead of flying. But it was because of Bridget’s expensive tastes that they traveled in the first-class car with its wider aisles, Wi-Fi and attendants who regularly came through the car offering everything from coffee to newspapers.
As Reyna neared the bathroom, she noticed a man standing in the aisle. With his back turned to her, he leaned his shoulder against the wall of the moving train, looking as comfortable as if he were in his living room. Or office.
Despite his casual clothes—the gray sweater across his broad shoulders, jeans that lovingly skimmed his body—everything about him shouted business. He held a cell phone to his ear and spoke into it in a low, intent voice that stroked a delicate place deep inside Reyna. An unexpected flutter of attraction took wing in her belly. The man’s dark jeans draped over a backside that would be envied in any fitness magazine. Or a woman’s bedroom. She bit her lip at the thought.
“I find it extremely difficult to care what he doesn’t want to do. He had those children with the woman he’s leaving behind, and so he has to help support them.” His tone rumbled with casual power.
Reyna came up behind him. “Pardon me,” she said. “Are you waiting for the bathroom?”
The man turned, and Reyna nearly lost her breath. His intent dark eyes swept her from head to foot in a single, scorching glance that was at odds with his cool demeanor. His face was not handsome; instead it was distractingly sexy with its full mouth, sharp cheekbones and dimpled chin. She knew him.
Garrison Richards.
Memories she’d long ago put behind her came rushing back. Garrison’s impassive face as he sat next to her ex-husband at the conference room in his downtown law office. Ian watching her with the eyes of a stranger as if they hadn’t spent the past eight years of their lives as man and wife. Reyna’s horror when she’d realized just what it was that she had signed in those divorce papers.
She flushed, mortified that she had just been lusting after Garrison Richards. That afternoon when they met five years ago, there had been nothing sexy about him. Only an off-putting sternness and judgment that left her cold.
In the rocking car of the train, Garrison’s gaze raked over her. She felt it from the tips of her snow boots to her shoulder-length curls that she’d sworn had been presentable when she’d left her apartment. She fought the urge to rearrange her hair. Instead, she touched the necklace at her throat, sliding the silver star along the chain. A habit she had when she was nervous or uncertain.
He tipped the phone away from his ear and replied to her earlier question.
“The bathroom is empty. You can go ahead.” Directed toward her, his voice was even more compelling, a deep and seductive rumble.
He moved back to allow her to walk past him and into the bathroom. The door rattled shut, and the lock clicked. Reyna took a deep breath as she stared at herself in the mirror. She looked calm and in control, but her cheeks were blazing with heat—a combination of embarrassment and the unwelcome attraction she felt for the man who had represented her husband in their divorce.
She quickly used the bathroom and pushed Garrison from her mind. Afterward, Reyna splashed some water on her face and took her time toweling her skin dry. She desperately hoped he wasn’t near the bathroom anymore.
But when she walked out, he was still nearby and still on the phone. But he had stepped away from the door to give her some room. He stared intently at her again and said something to the person on the other end of the phone before speaking to her.
“You look familiar,” he said. “Do I know you?”
Reyna ruthlessly shoved the attraction aside and gave him her most scornful look. “No, you don’t.”
With that, she walked past him and made her way back to her friends.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_d97d8cd6-3165-591c-b158-9b73b6d4b6b5)
Garrison stared after the woman while his secretary’s words on the other end of the line fell away from him in a garble of sound. She was the same one he had been watching from before. Now that he’d seen her face, she was breathtaking: an Amazon with a hauntingly beautiful face and body. He drew a quiet breath, hypnotized by the sway of her hips under the green sweater and jeans as she walked away. Halfway down the train, she sat down with her three friends, never once glancing back at him.
“Garrison, are you still there?”
It took him a few seconds to realize Anthea was trying to get his attention. He mentally shook himself.
“My apologies, Anthea. I’m right here.”
He finished going over the particulars of the Reichman divorce, yet another rich client who didn’t want to financially support his offspring, then went back to his seat. He could hear the muted strains of the woman and her friends’ conversation from where he sat. And he wasn’t the only man glancing in their direction. Annoyed with himself for his uncharacteristic fascination, Garrison opened a folder for a case still in arbitration, but couldn’t concentrate on a single word.
The woman’s eyes haunted him. They were black and intense, her gaze as regal and unflinching as a queen’s. He drew a swift breath of surprise as he abruptly recalled who she was and how he knew her.
Reyna. Reyna Barbieri.
He’d handled her divorce from her actor husband nearly five years ago. From the look on her face, she had undoubtedly known who he was on sight. And she hadn’t been happy to see him.
Garrison remembered the first time he saw her. Ian Barbieri, a client of his whose ship had come in the form of a syndicated crime drama, was a few years into the TV show when he filed for divorce. Every fall, his face was on billboards all over New York City, advertising the new season of his show.
With his star burning bright through the network TV sky, Barbieri had breezed into Garrison’s office wanting a quick and surgical separation from his wife of nearly nine years. Garrison hadn’t been surprised. Although Ian Barbieri was a relatively small fish in the show business pond in New York, the rumor had been going around for months—with pictures included—that he was cheating on his high school sweetheart. He left her to keep the home fires burning while he had sex with nearly every wannabe starlet and groupie in the city. What had surprised Garrison was that Barbieri’s wife hadn’t hired a lawyer of her own. Neither had she objected to any of the terms of the divorce that her ex proposed.
Garrison drafted the documents with the stipulations Barbieri wanted and arranged a meeting with the wife thinking that, since the divorce was uncontested, it would be an easy and quick process. Barbieri wanted to keep just about everything he’d made and acquired since the marriage, leaving his wife with nothing but her wedding ring. She hadn’t protested.
Then Reyna Barbieri walked into the conference room. Given Barbieri’s movie-star looks, Garrison had been prepared for a similar creature, perfectly coiffed and artificial, the New York version of Hollywood. But Reyna had that wholesome loveliness that came from a life lived apart from show business. The air in his lungs stuttered at her natural, long-legged beauty. And the misery in her face.
Her shoulders were slumped. The floral summer dress and light sweater were too insubstantial for the fall weather and too big for her body. The wounded and defenseless look of her made him want to protect her. Garrison wanted to pull her into his arms and shelter her from everything that he knew was to come.
His heart thumped viciously at the unusual wave of feeling. He sat in his chair staring at Reyna as if she were the only person in the room. Garrison was surprised that everyone else hadn’t stared at him for his blatantly fatuous and unprofessional behavior.
He realized then that despite her husband’s flagrant cheating, she had not wanted to end the marriage. And that her husband had hurt her in ways she had never expected and would probably never recover from. Garrison remembered pulling out a chair for Reyna. He also remembered her flinching from him. Her reaction had hurt, twisted him with guilt even though he knew he’d done nothing wrong. At least not technically.
In hindsight, Garrison should have insisted that Barbieri provide for her, even though she had pressed for nothing on her own behalf and seemed to be waiting on the man she’d spent nearly half her life with to treat her fairly. Garrison’s inaction, and Reyna’s sadness, had haunted him ever since.
But the Reyna who had confronted him outside the bathroom was not the same sad woman he’d met five years before. Not at all. This Reyna Barbieri was stunning for a completely different reason.
She wore her confidence like a royal cloak. And her snapping black eyes had challenged him the moment she realized who he was. Her shoulder-length curls were tight and thick, inviting him to sink his hands into them and pull her closer. And her body. Christ Almighty...
The long and tight sweater hugged a figure that came straight from his dreams, a slender but curvaceous body he could easily imagine taking into his arms and making love to all night. Because of her, he was powerfully aware of every masculine part of him, aware that he wanted to be intimately joined to every feminine part of her.
Ignoring his work, Garrison stroked his lower lip and watched the seat where Reyna had sat down. A strong pulse of desire drummed deep in his belly, a guaranteed distraction for the rest of the train ride.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_3b8c419c-1d24-54c3-bba1-a6183f2465e0)
By the time she got back to her seat, Reyna’s heart was beating way too fast, as if she’d just finished a marathon. Her cheeks felt flushed, and she was fighting the urge to look back over her shoulder at Garrison. What was wrong with her?
“You all right, girl?” Louisa, the most perceptive of all her friends, asked as she sat down.
The women had taken out a deck of cards, and Bridget was dealing.
“Yeah. I’m good.” She forced a smile and cleared her throat. “What did I miss?”
Louisa gave her a concerned glance but didn’t press it. “We’re playing blackjack. The winner gets a massage at the resort.”
“I could definitely use one of those.” She lifted her tight shoulders with a sigh of anticipation. “Prepare to lose your shirts, ladies!” Reyna pushed her encounter with her ex’s lawyer to the back of her mind and focused on the card game.
An hour later, the train arrived at their stop. Although she hated that she was paying attention, Reyna noticed Garrison getting off the train with her and her friends, immediately walking toward the taxi stand. She breathed a quiet sigh of relief and clambered from the train. Garrison wasn’t going to the resort with them. She didn’t have to worry about seeing him again.
Outside the climate-controlled train, the day was crisp and cold. The sun had cleared away the snowy clouds, covering the white-and-green landscape in warm gold. Reyna breathed a lungful of crisp mountain air. It felt good to be at Halcyon again.
“He’s cute!” Bridget looked over her shoulder at Reyna as she followed Louisa and Marceline into the black SUV that the resort had sent for them.
Reyna gave her rolling duffel bag to the driver and claimed a seat by the window. “Who?”
Louisa made a disbelieving sound. “The guy you’ve been staring at for the past five minutes.”
Reyna blushed and turned her attention to the window as the Range Rover powered through the snow and up the hill toward the ski resort. Bridget and Louisa laughed while Marceline gave her a reassuring smile.
“He is a cutie,” her friend said. “There’s nothing wrong with looking.”
Reyna clenched her back teeth but didn’t say anything.
It was a gorgeous morning in the Adirondack Mountains. With the windows up, the heater on and the driver playing a lively Beyoncé song, the women were comfortably isolated from the outside chill. Reyna sighed and relaxed into the heated seats, ignoring Bridget and Louisa’s chatter. The SUV growled up the path toward Halcyon Ski and Mountain Resort, a sprawling circle of cabins on a hilltop that overlooked majestic mountains and wintry fields of white.
In Halcyon, the air was crisp and sharp, a welcome change from what Reyna experienced every day in the city. With the company of her girls, being there always made her feel refreshed, even if she was in one of her bad moods.
The resort was one of the lesser-patronized places of the “it” crowd that Bridget and Louisa knew. It was beautiful, exclusive and scenic, with just about every amenity available. And it was a place people came to for the privacy as much as they did for the skiing.
Halcyon was the one truly big splurge Reyna allowed herself every year. The resort had become the place for her to get away from all the things worrying her in the city. Her career at the tattoo parlor where she’d worked since her divorce, the MFA degree in Graphic Design she’d gotten during her marriage but never used, the decision of what graphic arts jobs to apply for, if she did take the plunge.
Working at the tattoo parlor was fun, but every day she felt more and more like the only girl in a college fraternity. The boys who worked there—although over twenty-five—were all about picking up women, going to bars and getting more ink on their bodies. She’d outgrown the place a long time ago but was nervous about making the necessary change.
“God! This place gets more and more beautiful every year.” Louisa sighed as they drove past a grove of naked trees. Their barks were a dark brown against the white landscape, branches covered in snow and stretched out above them like lace.
Reyna agreed with a silent nod, staring out her own window.
“Hopefully there’ll be hotter guys up here this year,” Bridget said as she freshened up her bright lipstick with the help of her compact. “Last year was a bust.” She pressed her lips together then snapped the compact shut.
A woman who always did whatever she wanted, Bridget was more than willing to have a fling at the resort and never look back after the weekend. Reyna could never do that. Sleeping with a man at the place that had become her sanctuary from drama just seemed like a very, very bad idea.
“I hear that Ahmed Clark might be up here this year.” Marceline shared the information with the slightest of smiles.
At one time or another, the women had all drooled over the rising basketball star. Unlike his teammates, who they all thought were freakishly tall or had too many tattoos, Ahmed was just perfect. He was six and a half feet tall, wore a wide and frequent grin while on the basketball court and regularly gave money and time to charity. His body wasn’t half-bad, either.
Bridget chuckled. “I guess I know who I’ll be hooking up with this weekend.” She pouted her freshly reddened lips and winked.
“If rumors are reliable.” Louisa raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“If he’s up at Halcyon, that man will be under me before the weekend is through,” Bridget said.
Reyna laughed and shook her head at her friend. If only Bridget was that relentless about figuring out her life, she wouldn’t still be living at her parents’ place and steadily burning through her trust fund.
“Honey, why do you have to make this weekend about sex?” Marceline looked as if she was only partially joking. “It’s supposed to be about us, remember? You and your girls.”
“Yes, but you girls like to sleep, and I don’t. I have to fill the time somehow.” Bridget gave Marceline a saucy wink then started fiddling with her phone.
They arrived at the resort a few minutes later. The lodge where they would check in, eat, drink and socialize was a big and beautiful old-fashioned log cabin straight out of a mountain woman’s dream. The two-story lodge contained a restaurant upstairs and the shop and front desk downstairs. The restaurant’s wide glass windows overlooked a dizzying view of the mountains.
Far back and behind the lodge, although they couldn’t be seen from the main path, sat over two dozen log cabins, each with two to four bedrooms, a fireplace, wireless internet and a kitchen in case anyone was intrepid enough to cook.
After Reyna and her friends checked in at the front desk, another driver chauffeured them in a covered golf cart down the snowy path to their cabin. They tumbled into the heated cabin, stretching and groaning from the long morning of sitting on the train and then in the SUV. The driver dropped their bags, complete with ski equipment, by the front door before quietly leaving with his tip.
“This isn’t our usual cabin.” Bridget looked around, hands on her hips.
“You’re just now noticing that?” Louisa grabbed her bag and walked toward one of the bedrooms.
“It’s fine, Bridg.” Reyna patted her friend’s shoulder and headed for the other bedroom. “There aren’t any bad cabins up here anyway.”
The frown didn’t leave Bridget’s face when she followed Reyna into the room. But she quickly forgot her dissatisfaction when Louisa appeared in their doorway wearing a teal ski suit, complete with furred hat and boots. Very black Russian sex kitten.
Louisa posed in the middle of the bedroom. “Who’s ready to go check out the place?”
“That’s not fair!” Bridget said, eyeing Louisa’s clinging and questionably warm outfit. “I want to be sexy, too.”
Reyna groaned. “Then change already. There’s a glass of hot apple cider waiting out there for me.”
After Bridget got sexed up to her satisfaction, the four women made their way to the lodge. As their booted feet crunched through the snow, Bridget teased Marceline out of her funk while Reyna and Louisa walked behind them.
“So who was that guy you were checking out on the train?” Louisa asked.
She kept her voice low, but at a conversational level so the other women wouldn’t think she was trying to hide anything from them.
Reyna shrugged. Lying about Garrison Richards’s identity would be a waste of time. Louisa was smart and had a husband named Google. If those resources failed, her brother worked high up in the FBI and could get her any information she wanted. Sometimes she was a little scary.
“He’s someone I knew years ago,” Reyna finally said. “From the divorce.”
“Ah.” Louisa grinned, her eyes sparkling as if she’d just found out a secret. “That explains why you didn’t look exactly glad to see him.” She squeezed Reyna’s waist. “But you couldn’t look away from him, either. I don’t blame you. He’s a sexy beast.” She growled playfully.
Reyna paused, surprised that Louisa didn’t throw around any of her usual adjectives for people she found appealing: hot, handsome, fine. Maybe because Garrison was none of those things. He was too stern, too cold, to be anything but sexy. And a beast. She swallowed thickly at the thought.
While in that conference room with him five years ago, she hadn’t paid any attention to his looks. He had been all shark, cool and efficient. Presenting her with the facts of her impending divorce after drafting the awful document that allowed her ex-husband to toss her out on the streets with nothing. Admittedly, she had been young and foolish, naively relying on Ian to do the right thing.
Reyna sighed. “Yes. He is sexy. If you like that sort of thing.”
“That sort of thing? Girl...” Louisa chuckled. “What man-loving woman with a working libido wouldn’t be into that sort of thing?” She fanned her face and grinned.
Reyna had to silently agree. Garrison’s understated dress only emphasized the belly-quivering masculinity of him. The subtle swagger in his walk, the way he appeared to see clearly everything around him. Those small details made her wonder wicked things. Like what kind of focus he would have in bed. Would he please his woman first and take his own pleasure at the end of a long and sweat-dripped night? How would it feel when his...? She cleared her painfully dry throat.
The fur on Louisa’s hooded jacket fluttered around her face as she laughed. “You don’t fool me one little bit, honey.”
At the lodge, they found their usual table near the window and beneath one of the heater vents. Unwilling to wait for table service, Bridget went to get them a round of hot apple cider. Reyna stretched her legs under the table next to Marceline’s, more than ready for the relaxing weekend.
The lodge’s restaurant, which could comfortably hold at least fifty people, was already a quarter full on that Friday morning. Conversation wound through the airy space, mixing with laughter and the clink of cups and saucers. The guests were a mix of couples, singles and groups all gathered at their tables to enjoy the morning and the beginning of the weekend.
“Here you go, ladies.” Bridget came back to the table with a silver kettle and four matching cups on a tray. “The first round is on me.”
A collective sigh of appreciation went around the table. At first, Reyna thought it was for the apple cider, then she noticed that none of the women were paying any attention to the drink. Instead, their gazes were fastened on something over her shoulder. Ahmed Clark, Reyna guessed without looking. But she was wrong. Instead of the basketball player, it was Garrison Richards who had walked through the door.
She drew a breath of surprise. What was he doing here? She thought he had... Reyna shook her head. It didn’t matter. All she knew was that her friends were acting like hormonal teenagers.
She wanted to slap them all. But while pouring a glass of cider for herself, she snuck a look at Garrison from under her lashes. Yes, he was sexy. There was no denying that. There was also no denying that she should stay away from him. It took a ridiculously long time for her friends to stop staring at him like vultures at the sight of new carrion.
Louisa poured drinks for the rest of the women and slid Reyna a private, provoking glance. “He’s a nice specimen,” she said to Marceline. “Maybe that’s just what you need to get over your broken heart this weekend.”
“I’m pretty sure Reyna has dibs on him already.” Marceline’s voice seemed tinged with regret.
“Hmm,” Bridget chimed in. “He is a cutie! Isn’t that the guy from the train?”
“Most definitely.” Louisa grinned. “And I don’t see a ring.”
She was the most perceptive of them all, but was also the most cruel, using her insight to play games that most people were not ready for. Louisa gave Reyna another annoying look, but Reyna didn’t bite. She only shrugged and tasted her cider. It was perfect, the heated cinnamon, sugar and apples coating her tongue with delicious flavor. Just the perfect thing on such a cool and spectacularly beautiful day.
Reyna kept her eyes on the cider and not on the man her friends refused to stop staring at.
“You know that a ring doesn’t mean much these days,” Bridget said, picking up from Louisa’s earlier comment. “Some married men travel without theirs just to pick up some stranger before going back home to the wife.” Bridget nodded in Garrison’s direction, although he was far from the only man in the lodge. Reyna was willing to bet, though, that he was the most...appealing. With the gray heads, men who were obviously with their lovers and the immature-looking boys, Garrison was unfortunately the hottest thing in the room.
“Yeah, what’s that about?” Marceline muttered. “I know plenty of girls who would love to land a married man. If he had on a wedding ring, it’d be like catnip.”
“Maybe they don’t realize exactly what they’re trolling for,” Bridget said. “Territorial women can be vicious.”
Louisa gestured with her cup. “That’s not the only thing they have to watch out for. Some of these hot-ass married men have diseases they’re ready to pass on to anyone, including their wives.”
A chorus of agreement went around the table.
While the women got distracted from Garrison with the talk of cheating married men, Reyna watched him from the corner of her eye. So she noticed that he sat at the empty seat closest to the fire, his booted feet nearly nudging the grate. And she also noticed when he started watching her.
He took a sip of his drink and looked at her over the edge of his cup. She ducked her head, but not before his penetrating gaze managed to scatter her senses.
She came in on the tail end of her friends’ conversation about cheating. “I don’t know why anyone would want to have an affair with a married man. Seems like a recipe for heartache to me. And not just for the actual wife whose husband is doing the messing around.” She knew from experience how awful that was. “These girls might get attached and then fool themselves into thinking their lovers are going to leave their wives.” Ian had been cheating on her, but as far as she knew, he never married or lived with any of the women he’d cheated with.
“Some women just like to gamble.” Louisa shrugged.
“Pardon my intrusion, ladies.”
They all looked up. Reyna’s fingers twitched around her cup of cider, and she had to clutch it tighter to stop from accidentally spilling it.
Garrison stood near their table. He seemed perfectly at ease in his thick gray sweater and jeans. And by at ease, Reyna’s mind supplied, she meant sexy as hell. He stood with a hand in his pocket, his gaze trained firmly on her.
“I’m Garrison Richards.” He looked at all the women before bringing his eyes back to Reyna. “I want to apologize to Ms. Barbieri—”
“I don’t go by that name anymore,” Reyna interrupted. “It’s Allen now.”
“My apologies.” He dipped his head. A spark of something flared in his eyes, but his face remained cool. “But please allow me to apologize again when I didn’t recognize you earlier.”
“No apologies necessary,” she said. “It’s been five years, and we only met a couple of times.”
“You are quite unforgettable,” he said.
His hawkish gaze tightened something low in her belly. She swallowed and tried to ignore it.
“I’m frankly surprised,” Reyna said. “You must have been through hundreds of women like me.”
She felt the shocked gazes of her friends. They knew it wasn’t like her to be so rude.
But Garrison wasn’t fazed. “I doubt there’s anyone like you.” A small, unamused smile touched his mouth. “I’d like to invite you to dinner one night this weekend, if I may?” He pulled a card from his wallet and held it out to Reyna. A calling card, she noticed, one without his business information.
When she didn’t take it, he put it on the table in front of her. “You don’t have to give me your answer now, but be sure to call me when you decide to accept.” After another nod at Reyna and her friends, he turned and headed back to his table.
Marceline and Bridget stared at her with their mouths hanging open. Louisa only smiled. Like the Cheshire Cat, she sipped from her glass of cider and waited for what Reyna had to say.
“You have to tell us where you know that fine-ass guy from!” Bridget aimed a far from subtle gaze at Garrison’s table. “Oh, my God! I bet he’s tasty.”
The sadness in Marceline’s face receded with her curiosity. “Yes, fess up. Our not-so-little Reyna has been keeping secrets.”
She tried not to wince at the reference to her height, something she had always been self-conscious about. Instead, she shrugged.
“He is someone I met—”
A ripple went through the lodge just then.
“It’s Ahmed!”
Her friends all turned toward the door. Ahmed Clark had walked into the room and given Reyna a temporary reprieve. She wasn’t ready yet to tell her friends how she met Garrison.
It was not that she was ashamed of it. But that was a time in her life filled with such pain and betrayal that she’d rather not revisit it. They all knew the pertinent details of the divorce and what happened afterward. They had been there for her when she found out Ian had been sleeping around, when she confronted him, when he demanded a divorce, telling her she wasn’t the kind of wife a TV star like him should have.
It seemed so ridiculous at the time. So surreal. The boy she had known in high school, pimply faced and gangly. The one whom no other girl had paid the slightest bit of attention to, but had been her friend, then lover, then husband. They had blossomed from their teenaged awkwardness together, Ian becoming more beautiful than anyone had ever imagined, the swan in his duckling family.
He’d never seriously considered acting, but when an uncle in the business suggested that he try out for a TV role, Ian dived in and never looked back.
Dismissing the past, Reyna turned with her friends to watch Ahmed Clark stroll into the restaurant with a tall beauty at his side. He was pretty enough to be a movie star himself. So was the woman with him.
“Damn, he’s fine!” Bridget made a show of licking her lips and moaning his name. “Give me five minutes, Ahmed, and I’ll make you forget all about that skinny red bone on your hip.”
Reyna chuckled. She didn’t doubt that her friend’s boast could come true. Bridget was beautiful and determined enough. Across the table from her, Louisa picked up Garrison’s card and tucked it into her pocket. Her smile was pure mischief.
* * *
After another round of hot cider, Reyna and the girls left the lodge and took the ski lift to the top of the mountain. In the glass-and-steel lift, Reyna marveled at the lush spread of the Adirondacks beneath and around them. New York City was incredible, and Reyna couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. But she loved the wildness of the mountains, its fierce beauty, the evergreens drooping with the cold, white weight of the snow.
Once at the top of the mountain, her friends hit the slopes on their skis and left Reyna to her own devices. Around her, children played with snowballs and with each other, giggling and rolling down the abbreviated slope. Couples and groups hiked up the hill, the sound of their conversations floating back down to Reyna as she watched her friends, one after the other, disappear down the ski slope.
“See you at the bottom!” Bridget flashed a brilliant white smile and took off after the others.
Boots planted firmly in the snow, Reyna waved her off.
She didn’t ski. After a disastrous lesson a few years ago that ended with a broken wrist, she gave up trying to learn. But that didn’t mean she enjoyed their annual ski retreat any less. She just got her pleasure a different way.
She climbed carefully through the snow and over the craggy rocks toward an even better view of the slopes and Halcyon’s lodge and cabins at the bottom of the mountain. As she climbed, she left more and more people behind. Her footsteps dragged through the thick snow, and her every breath misted the air.
Reyna was breathing hard when she finally found the perfect place to sit—a jutting dark rock she brushed the snow from to settle into the dip made perfectly for her butt. She was slightly breathless and warm under her clothes. Even her daily trek through New York streets had not prepared her for the impromptu hike.
From her perch out in the open, she watched the anonymous bodies whipping down the slopes and through the snowy fields far below. Their whoops of joy broke into the air like the sound of champagne, happy and celebratory. The sun reflected brightly off the field of white and into her eyes shielded by dark glasses. It was a gorgeous day.
Reyna took off her hat to better feel the bright sun on her head. She took a sketchbook and pencil from her backpack and pulled off her right glove. The air was cold, but bearable on her fingers as she began to sketch. Soon, she lost herself in the movement of her pencil across the page, the sweeping and scratching rhythm of it as she captured the mountain on paper. A blurred shape flew past her, whipping the nearby snow-laden spruce in its breeze. She lifted her head.
A snowboarder. Tall and graceful, dressed in head-to-toe gray. He whipped past her, a contained storm. And it had to be a he, with his very masculine silhouette and the aggressive way he took the mountain. Flecks of snow flew up under his board. Reyna watched as he soared off the mountain and hung in the air for a moment, one hand gripping the side of the board, the other outstretched. He was a dark outline in the bright landscape, a wild and beautiful thing, before landing once again among the white then disappearing around a bend in the mountain and from her sight.
A few more lightning-quick shapes whipped past her, each in brightly colored clothes that made them stand out against the snow, but it was the man in gray who caught and held her attention. The other snowboarders zipped down the mountain, as exuberant as children, calling out to each other, shouting in masculine camaraderie.
Distracted from her sketches, she searched for the man in gray. Ah, there he is. She followed his somber presence down the mountain, the way he sliced across the snow, beautiful and untouchable.
Before she was aware of what she was doing, Reyna began to sketch him, the sharp grace of him racing down the mountain, knees bent, arms outstretched as if he was flying, his entire face covered up. She lost herself in the rhythm of sketching, the world as she saw it coming to life under her fingers. Long minutes passed.
“Aren’t your fingers cold?”
Reyna stiffened at the sound of the shouted question. It was Garrison Richards. Again.
“No,” she said. “They’re fine.”
But she put down her pencil—her hand was actually damn near frozen—and curled it in her lap. Only a few feet away, Garrison was slowly skimming down the hill toward her...on a snowboard? Her mouth fell open.
If she wasn’t seeing him with her own eyes, she would have thought a sport like snowboarding completely unlike him. He seemed best suited for cold and emotionless things like chess, polo or even rowing. Not this howling and graceful sport that was all adrenaline, physical power and falling down in the snow. She couldn’t even see him falling, being messy and human enough to tumble and get up and try something again. She imagined that he always did everything right the first time.
Garrison had pulled his gray ski mask from over his mouth, revealing full lips and that unexpected dimple in his chin. His goggles reflected twin images of her sitting on the dark rock with her mouth open.
She snapped her teeth together with a sharp click.
Garrison turned skillfully on the board and stopped near her. He was dressed completely in gray. Gray? She did a double-take and glanced down the hill toward the man she had been sketching. He wasn’t there. She had a sinking feeling that he was the one at her side. He must have taken the lift back up and circled around.
Garrison clicked his feet from the latches on the snowboard. He was slightly out of breath, his lips parted to blow trailing heat into the air.
“I feel cold just looking at you.” He started to pull off his gloves. “Take these. Your friends would be very disappointed if you came back to the ski lodge with some fingers missing from frostbite.”
She shook her head and picked up the thick pair of snow gloves next to her. “I already have some.” She pulled on the gloves, wincing as her fingers burned from the cold.
Garrison resituated his gloves on his hands. He watched her, his face expressionless. No smile, merely his eyes hungrily moving over her, like a visual devouring. It left her with a strange feeling, that voracious gaze. Not unpleasant...but not exactly warm and fuzzy, either.
She stared back at him, refusing to look away.
They were hardly alone. Occasional skiers and snowboarders blew past them, whipping up snow and stirring up the cold in the air. But it felt as if they were isolated together on the mountain with only the sky and sun to look down on them. She didn’t want to feel that with him. Reyna deliberately turned away from Garrison. “What do you want?”
“You didn’t use my business card yet.”
“I’m not going to.”
Snow crunched, and the air moved as he came closer to her. Over the crispness of the pine trees and the cool bite of the snow, she smelled him. Sweat and a faintly woodsy cologne. The tang of sunblock. His gray jacket brushed her bright yellow one when he sat next to her. Although she knew it was impossible, it felt as if their skin touched.
“So, be honest.” There was amusement in his voice, although his face did not change. “Do you plan on hating me forever, Ms. Allen?”
“I don’t hate you.”
She sat with him, unable to get even that simple fact out of her mind. She was sitting with Garrison Richards. The man who she perhaps may not have hated, but had strong and poisonous feelings for. On that first day in his office, receiving the brunt of his cool and arrogant stare meant to unnerve her and make her give up everything else she had, she’d wanted nothing more than to rush from the conference room and out into the sun, letting it burn away the ice-cold bath that had been his gaze.
And now he was here with her in the snow. Under the burning sun, asking her about hating him forever. The world was a strange place.
“Isn’t there some sort of ethical problem with you being here with me?” she asked.
“You are the wife of a former client. Ian Barbieri doesn’t have me on retainer, and he and I have no business dealings. I see no conflict of interest here. But I can check if that makes you feel any better.” She heard the smile in his voice again. Bastard.
The only real conflict was probably in her. She remembered the past much too vividly and irrationally blamed him for what happened to her during the divorce. More so than even her ex-husband.
Reyna squirmed at that uncomfortable realization.
She wanted to get back to her sketching, but her hand hurt too much from the cold. She must have made some motion toward her sketch pad because Garrison looked over at it. Too late, she remembered that she had been working on a sketch of the snowboarder—of him!—just before he sat down. She didn’t justify his curiosity by trying to hide her work.
He took off his thick gloves, revealing thin black leather that clung to his fingers like a second skin. His hands were big, she noticed, but graceful.
“May I?”
She clenched her teeth against refusing him. Maybe the sooner he saw what she was doing, the sooner he would leave. His fascination with her was...distracting. She ignored the rational part of her that chimed in about her own unwanted fascination with the ruthless lawyer.
“Sure,” she said in response to his question. “Just don’t get my stuff wet.” Reyna froze and almost bit her tongue off at what she just said.
He arched a dark, slashing eyebrow. “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever had a woman say that to me.”
She stared at him in shock. But he was reaching for her sketch pad, and his austere grace seemed even more so beneath the brilliance of the early-afternoon sunlight. Except for the reflective goggles crowning his head, he could have been in any boardroom in the world. Removed and critical. His powerful hands carefully handled her sketchbook, flipping through its pages, pausing at one or two before moving on. Yes, definitely critical.
“These sketches are wonderful.” He flipped another page of the book, going from the images of the snowboarder she’d captured more thoroughly, to her earlier on-the-fly doodles of the mountain, the snow, the dots of people winding below her toward the lodges. “You’re very talented.”
“Thank you.” She hid her surprise at his unexpected compliment, not quite knowing what else to say in response. If this was part of his campaign to satisfy his strange curiosity about her, he was choosing the wrong way to go about it. She didn’t respond well to insincerity.
But a brief look from his hawkish eyes made her realize that this wasn’t a man who said something he didn’t mean. An unwelcome warmth began to unfurl in her belly. Reyna hissed quietly and braced her gloved hands against the rock, glad for the dull pain that distracted her from his compliments, his nearness.
This was Garrison Richards, she reminded herself. Again.
“My mother draws, too,” he continued in his low and compelling voice. “And don’t tell her I said this, but your work is much more interesting, more fluid.” He flipped back to the sketch of the snowboarder. Of himself. “I admire the way you capture the image in a personal way. You’re there with the subject instead of just watching. The intimacy is very seductive.”
Was he playing with her? Didn’t he know he was talking about himself? But he turned to the sketches of the mountain that she’d begun to fill in with long strokes of the pencil. Craggy slopes, white snow, a feathering of trees. The wide and low-hanging sky that kissed the mountaintop just so. “It’s like you’re a nature sprite sitting in the cloud here.” He tapped the page at a cloud she had half drawn. “Watching this world that you love.”
Heat touched her cheeks at his suggestive and unexpected comments. She didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything.
She looked away from the sketchbook in Garrison’s hands, the white paper held between fingers that were an odd mix of rugged and refined. They were almost a working man’s hands, but the way he handled her work, even through the thin leather gloves, was like a curator touching something delicate and easily damaged. A contradiction she didn’t want to notice but was helpless not to. It made him even more interesting than she had first thought. Now he was more than his dangerously sexy looks, more than the unpleasant history between them. She forced her gaze away from his hands.
“It’s just a hobby,” she said finally, training her eyes on the vast mountain view spread out before her. The thick clouds tumbling through the skies promised another bout of snow.
“Somehow I doubt that. Talent like this has to be more than a hobby.” He nodded toward the sketch pad. “Do you do this for a living?”
She flinched when Garrison carefully replaced the sketch pad on the rock next to her. Reyna smelled him as he leaned behind her, the tang of his aftershave, sweat and sunscreen overwhelming her senses. She closed her eyes briefly to savor the scent of him, then snapped them open when she realized what she was doing.
What did he just ask her? She drew a steadying breath. “I’m a tattoo artist, so I guess I do. People occasionally ask me to do original sketches and portraits for their body art.”
“Really?” He glanced over her body as if he could see under her clothes to any ink she may or may not have beneath them. “Tattoos?”
“Yes. Tattoos.” Reyna stiffened, preparing for another of Garrison’s judgmental looks.
She rarely told people what she did for a living. Unless they came into the studio where she worked, people never assumed Reyna was any more than she appeared: a slightly boring, nice girl. Not that being a tattoo artist exempted her from being boring. Once people found out her job, men in particular, they only wanted to know one thing. Or maybe two. And they always assumed she had some hidden pain kink or was a bad girl looking for a bad boy.
“How unique,” Garrison said. “I’m sure your work is some of the most beautiful in the city.”
She warmed again at his compliment. And at his unexpected reaction to her job. It was such a very different reaction from the one she’d gotten from her ex-husband, someone who had known her for most of her adult life. With Garrison’s thoughtful silence, she drifted into the past to the one and only time she’d been in the same place with Ian after the divorce.
One night, he had wandered into her tattoo studio from off the busy nighttime street. Reyna was in her zone, the buzz of the needle vibrating between her fingers as she sat on a chair working on the large trail of red poppies a pale-skinned client wanted down her spine.
The bell above the door rang, announcing that someone had walked in, but she didn’t pay much attention since she was already occupied. A hum of excitement began in the shop. Then she heard Ian’s voice and couldn’t stop herself from freezing up in automatic rejection of him being in her space.
He walked in like a big TV star, attracting the attention of everyone in the shop, signing autographs and pretending not to see her. But eventually, he hadn’t been able to help himself and walked over to her sectioned-off area.
Ian jerked his chin in her direction. “I bet you’re into bondage and all kinds of sick garbage now. You want a man to tie you up and make you bleed?”
Reyna continued her work, even when she felt her client’s body tense with interest at Ian’s proximity. She’d had months of practice keeping herself centered and calm. He drifted into her field of vision, but she acted as if he wasn’t there.
Among other things, he called her a pain slut, ready for torture and blood at the hands of a lover. She focused on the tattoo gun in her hand, the red poppies taking shape beneath the needle.
Her nonresponsiveness worked perfectly. He never came by the studio again.
Reyna returned from her reverie to find Garrison watching her closely with his usual unreadable expression.
“Tattooing is not my passion,” she said for want of some sort of barrier between them. “But it’s an amazing thing to walk around the city sometimes and see a client with my work on their body.”
“I can only imagine how satisfying that would be.” Garrison looked down the mountain, and Reyna followed his gaze.
Snow and fresh powder, nothing but cold white for miles. His hobby, or passion. Another surprise between them.
“You should go,” she said. “Don’t waste this. It won’t last long.”
She didn’t know if she was talking about the snow or the weekend or life.
“You’re right,” Garrison said. “Nothing really lasts, does it?” His intent eyes settled on her again. “All the more reason to enjoy it while you can instead of looking ahead to its end.”
Her mouth curled into a smile. “You can think of it that way, yes.”
He nodded as if he’d decided something. “I’ll be seeing you again, Ms. Allen.”
She watched him click back onto his snowboard, pull on his thick gloves and mask and lower his goggles. He seemed alien and untouchable against the landscape that was all sunlight, the cheerful dip of the evergreens, a clear blue sky. All around she heard the joyful shouts of people enjoying themselves in the snow.
“Until then.” She dipped her head in his direction.
He scudded down the mountain, kicking up snow in his wake, the movement of his dark shape on the bright snow pulling an aching cord in her belly. She drew in a breath at the warm feeling. No. She did not want this.
It was one thing to find him attractive. It was another entirely to find herself actually attracted to him. The subtle humor in his long-lashed eyes. His masculine scent. The fact that he wasn’t as boring and arrogant as she expected. Reyna swallowed thickly, and she watched him fly away from her. She had a feeling she was about to get herself in trouble.
* * *
Reyna spent another couple of hours sketching and enjoying her semi-isolation before her friends came back and dragged her from her mountain perch for sledding and impromptu drinks with some men they’d met on the slopes. Ahmed Clark was not among these eligible bachelors, but Bridget was happy enough.
Later on, in the cabin and under the influence of the hot toddies Louisa made, her friends tried to go back to the subject of Garrison Richards. But Reyna steered them toward something else. Louisa smirked, her look telling Reyna that she couldn’t avoid her feelings for the lawyer, or her discussion of them, for too much longer. But whatever respite she had, Reyna would gladly take. Garrison made her feel too uneasy, overheated and uncomfortable for her to talk about him just yet. Even to her closest friends.
They stayed up until late, talking about life and love and everything in between. At a little past three in the morning, the women all pled exhaustion, even Bridget. Reyna, however, was still wide awake. She didn’t need much sleep, and working at the tattoo studio, which was open until 4:00 a.m. some Saturdays, she was used to going to bed as late as six in the morning.
After her friends went to bed, she couldn’t slow down her mind. She couldn’t stop thinking about Garrison and his snow-flecked flight down the mountain. She couldn’t stop thinking about his smell. Spicy and masculine, like a long and back-bending night in a warm bed.
It was as if he was still next to her, body crowding her on the couch, inflaming her late-night imagination with thoughts of what it would be like to kiss him. Wondering what harm there would be to allow him this chase at the resort, allow him to catch her and be with her away from real life in the city.
The more her body marinated in thoughts of having him, the more her brain shouted at her to stop being so stupid. He wasn’t a good person. He was just as bad as Ian, maybe worse.
Her thoughts grew clamorous, too loud and too shameful to be cooped up in the cabin with so many sleeping souls. She got up from the couch and dampened the fire, pulled on her snow gear and stepped out into the cold.
Chapter 4 (#ulink_4024581f-d7cf-57a2-b9ea-b94f3fdd81fe)
Garrison sat in the armchair by the fire, shirtless and wearing jeans. His sock-covered feet were stretched out toward the fireplace. The heat from the flames flickered over his bare chest, warming and sweet.
At four in the morning, the snow was coming down outside, whirling in pale flurries against the dark sky. The fire burned hot and high behind the grate. The heater was on. It was nearly eighty degrees in the cabin, just how he liked it. The book he had started to read lay turned down on his thigh, but his mind was far from immersed in its chapters. Instead, his thoughts were full of Reyna.
Garrison had been surprised to see her on the trail earlier that day. It was as if he had been given a gift when he saw her sitting on that rock, removed from the chaos and rabble around her, a queen surveying her lands. He saw her as he came down the mountain then whipped past her on his board. A bubble of exquisite feeling popped to life inside him. It had overtaken the euphoria and freedom he usually felt from being on the mountain with the board under his feet. And he had damn near broken his neck to quickly get down the mountain then back up again to reintroduce himself.
And now, more than twelve hours later, he was still thinking about her. Reyna Allen. The artist. The woman.
Although he wasn’t one for commitments—his career as a divorce attorney forced him to see the futility of those sorts of arrangements—there was something about Reyna that made him want her. Want her badly.
On the mountain, he had only just restrained himself from kissing her. Her lips, glistening and red from the ChapStick or lipstick or whatever she’d applied, distracted and tangled his thoughts. In her presence, all clarity disappeared. All he wanted to do was kiss her and sink his fingers into her hair and make her sigh his name. Even now, the thought of her mouth made the muscles in his belly tighten.
Garrison had never had a vacation hookup before, but the fire in Reyna’s eyes made him want to try something new. A flicker of movement outside the window drew him from his thoughts. The brief flash of a woman’s face under a yellow hooded jacket. Reyna.
Without giving himself a chance to think, Garrison quickly pulled on his cold-weather clothes and rushed out the door after her. His heart raced as the primitive side of him, long buried by an exacting and regimented life, rose up to follow Reyna as if she were his female, scented temptingly on the wind.
The door clicked shut behind him, and snow crunched under his boots. Pale flurries swirled around him in the brisk breeze, melting against his face. The cold night groaned with its particular noises.
Reyna walked slowly up ahead, hands in the pockets of her yellow jacket while the furred hood obscured most of her face and covered her head. He didn’t try to be quiet. But he didn’t call out to her, either. He quickly caught up with her, using his slightly longer legs to his advantage.
“Ms. Allen.”
She turned, startled, her large black eyes widening even more. Dark curls tumbled into her face, and she took a step back.
“Are you following me?”
“Yes.”
She looked surprised again. Then turned away from him to continue walking. Garrison took that as an invitation to fall in step with her. Reyna glanced at him.
“I don’t want you following or stalking me,” she said. “I had enough ruin from you to last a lifetime.”
“Ruin?” He frowned. This wasn’t the almost welcoming woman he’d talked with on the slopes earlier that afternoon. Reyna was acting as if that conversation between them never happened.
“Yes. Ruin.” Her face grew harder, a beautiful mahogany mask under the falling snow. “Ian was not smart enough to think of all those conditions in the divorce papers by himself. It had to be you.” Reyna’s black eyes crackled with anger. There seemed to be some sort of fever burning inside her. She walked faster. “You helped him to leave me on the edge of desperation. After the divorce I had to start over completely.”
Garrison nodded silently, feeling again the weight of the blame for how the Barbieri divorce had been settled. In hindsight, he should have never allowed Ian Barbieri to do the things he’d done to the woman he’d supposedly loved since high school. Reyna hadn’t known what she was getting into. She hadn’t even retained a lawyer of her own, for heaven’s sake! But despite his attraction to her then, Garrison had been too caught up in his job, in the pure facts of the case, to do what was right.
“The divorce left me vulnerable and more alone than I’d ever been.” She slowed her steps, and her harsh breaths steamed the air. Then she looked annoyed with herself that she’d told him that much.
Because of Reyna and her divorce, he’d become more human, more aware of the larger picture where both parties in the separation were concerned. Garrison was almost ashamed to admit that it had been because of his attraction to her that he’d even begun to second-guess the methods that had worked so well for him in the past. Shallow, but true. After Reyna, it was no longer about simply allowing his client to escape a previous romantic entanglement with the most money possible. It was about being fair.
“It wasn’t my finest hour,” he said finally. Inadequately. “And although it means nothing now, please allow me to apologize.”
He’d spent untold weeks and months torturing himself with what he could have done to be fair to her five years ago. Then he dreamed about being the man to come to her rescue and save her from her marriage. Now he simply wanted to be the man in her bed.
He swallowed and fisted a gloved hand in his jacket pocket. The fierceness of his desire for her was almost frightening. Before he saw her on the train that morning, she had existed at the back of his mind as a sort of angel, inspiring him to be a better man. Now he wanted to pull her down in the dirt with him and kiss the innocence from her lips.
Reyna walked quietly by his side, thankfully oblivious to his yearning. She pushed the hood back from her face, and the snow fell on her hair, the white settling in her beautiful black curls. She tilted her face briefly up at the sky. Garrison watched a lucky snowflake melting against her lips. He watched, burning in his thirst, as those lips parted, and her tongue licked away the wet.
“Why apologize now?” she asked. “It’s been five years.”
“Because I didn’t mean to hurt you then, and I don’t want you to hold the past against me now.” He paused. “And I want you to know that I’m not that man anymore.”
“Why do you care what I think?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I want to...woo you.”
She made a disbelieving noise, the corner of her mouth tilting up. “Is that what they’re calling it these days?”
Embarrassed heat rushed through him. Was it possible that she knew his thoughts? Did she know how badly he wanted to pull her down into the snow with him and beneath him? Beyond the pounding of his lustful heart, he could almost hear the sounds she would make, her sighs and moans and gasps of pleasure, while he lost himself in the heated clasp of her.
Garrison cleared his throat. “Yes, that’s what I’d like to call it for now. Wooing is not such a bad word, is it?”
She looked at him again, and it was as if she could see into him, through him. “Wooing? Really?”
“Yes. Definitely,” he said. “At least at first.” Garrison allowed the humor to surface in his voice. And a hint of his desire.
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