He flashed her a crooked smile. “Kick ass today, Bailey,” he said.
And then he was gone.
Chapter 10
Hud left Bailey’s knowing he’d be deeply distracted by the memories of her, soft and warm from sleep, in those teeny-tiny PJs that spurned even more fantasies—all of them down and dirty—for the entire day.
Not two minutes after leaving her, his body still thrumming with want, ski patrol was called to the top of lift eight.
Two young twentysomethings, brothers, had been seen fighting on the lift as it neared the top. Apparently one brother had started out with angry words that degenerated into fists. Somewhere along the way, one of the brothers slipped off the lift and fell about twenty feet. Wearing a helmet had definitely saved his noggin, but he’d broken his arm and possibly his clavicle as well.
Which hadn’t slowed down the fight much. Reportedly, the other brother had climbed down the lift to join his brother.
When Hudson and Mitch and a bunch of other ski patrollers arrived on scene, the pair were still rolling around on the snow, fists flying, directly beneath the lift, which the lift operator had stopped.
This meant that there was a long line of people hanging over the mountain, skis and boards dangling as they waited for the lift to get moving again, watching in rapt fascination as the idiot brothers wrestled and yelled at each other.
“I didn’t say you could sleep with her!” one yelled.
“She dumped you!” the other yelled back. “You said she was a crazy bitch!”
“Yeah, so why did you screw her?”
“Because she’s a hot crazy bitch!”
“I’m going to kill you!”
Hud dragged one free while his team grabbed the other.
They looked so much alike that they were clearly brothers. And they continued to fight, though now they were united in that fight as they tussled with the ski patrollers instead of each other. But Hud and his team quickly got them under control and restrained.
One of the brothers, the one who’d slept with the “crazy bitch,” was cradling his clearly broken arm.
“Shit,” the other said, staring at the arm. “You broke it again.”
“You broke it!”
They argued about that the entire time Hud and Mitch were strapping the injured brother to a sled, preparing to take him down the mountain.
As they began the descent, the uninjured brother stayed alongside so that the two of them could continue to yell at each other.
“And don’t think I’ve forgotten that you owe me fifty bucks,” the injured one yelled from flat on his back. “I won our last two bets and you’ve never paid up! Cheapskate!”
“I don’t owe you shit! You stole my bike and crashed it!”
“That piece of shit was no good anyway!”
And so it went on.
When they got to the bottom, they loaded the injured brother directly into an ambulance. Yet another fight broke out when the uninjured one wanted to make the ride with his brother and the EMTs refused to take him because he kept stirring up their patient.
The ambulance drove off and the uninjured brother stared after it, suddenly silent and looking deflated. He lifted his head to Hud, eyes shiny and miserable. “They’ll take care of him, right? They won’t let him die?”
“They won’t let him die,” Hud promised, and turned away to get back to work.
But the guy grabbed Hud’s arm. “You swear it?”
Hud looked into his devastated face and was propelled back to another time, another fight, with his own brother. Ten years ago this had been them. Young. Cocky. Hotheaded idiots. “I swear it,” Hud said.
“I can’t be without him,” the guy said quietly, the fight gone, the adrenaline draining.
Yeah, Hud got that too. Once, he and Jacob had been like a pair of porcupine siblings, constantly needling each other but unable to be apart either.
How quickly they’d gotten okay with that. Except Hud had never gotten okay with it, not really. Every single fucking day he missed Jacob, like he’d miss a damn limb.
“I need a ride to the hospital,” the guy suddenly said.
“How did you get here?” Hud asked.
“My brother drove his new truck. I crashed his last one, so I’m not supposed to drive this one. He said he’d kill me if I did.”
Hud shook his head and pointed to the shuttle’s pickup spot. “Every twenty minutes a bus comes by and drives into town.”
“Twenty minutes is a long time.” The guy looked thoughtful. “Maybe I should hot wire his truck… you know, since it’s an emergency situation and all.”
Normally Hud was excellent at compartmentalizing his life. All the Kincaids were. Family was family. Play was play. Work was work. And while he was most definitely affected by what he did on the job, and occasionally also moved by the people he helped, for the most part he didn’t allow any of it to stick to him. Couldn’t, or he wouldn’t have anything left to give the next day.
But these guys were brothers. They’d fought, and one had gotten hurt.
There were too many similarities between them and himself and Jacob for him not to be moved. “Listen,” he said to the guy. “You can do what you want, but I’m telling you to think about this long and hard. One of these days you’re going to pull a stunt that he can’t get over or forgive, and he’ll leave you. Do you understand me? So do yourself a favor and take the damn bus.”
The guy blinked. “Okay, jeez.”
When he’d stalked off, Mitch came up beside Hud. “That was a little harsh.”
“It was the cold, hard truth,” Hud said, and walked away. He headed for his office but then decided fuck it, he needed to take a ski run to clear his head. Ten minutes later, he was flying down Devil’s Face, the wind in his face, his thighs burning, his lungs taxed, and feeling much better.
When the lodge came into view, he slowed and then stopped.
From here he could see the wall, which for as long as he could remember had been blank.
No longer.
It was crisscrossed with the scaffolding and he could see a small figure on the third tier. From here he couldn’t see much else since she was just sketching things in, but he knew that over the next few weeks that would change. Soon enough he’d be able to see himself and his family portrayed on that wall.
For better or worse.
He wanted to stay stoic about it, but there was something about the free-spirited Bailey Moore that grabbed him by the heart he’d thought long dead.
He liked her. There was no denying that. But he didn’t like the feelings she invoked from deep inside him. He could feel himself being drawn into her more each day.
But that didn’t—couldn’t—matter. His head was too full. He needed to help get the resort out of their dad’s debt before they lost it. His mom was getting worse and that weighed on him. And then there was Jacob. The guilt and regret were killing Hud. He simply didn’t feel like he deserved to be happy until he had Jacob home where he belonged.
Even if that meant missing out on what he suspected was the best woman to ever happen to him.
The following week was both painstakingly slow and whipping by. Hud visited his mom on the only night he could get away from the mountain and took her for her favorite—pizza at the local brewery, the Slippery Slope. He had a few of her friends there, including Char—Aidan and Gray’s mom.
At the end of the meal Char had the waitresses bring in a cake and they all sang “Happy Birthday.”
It wasn’t Carrie’s birthday but she liked to celebrate birthdays. If they didn’t do hers, then they had to celebrate his—which he hadn’t done since Jacob left.
Char had brought a roll of quarters and they loaded up the jukebox with ’80s hair-band songs, and then they sang each and every one word for word. Char had them using spoons for microphones and she even got up on a table to dance—until her boyfriend and Cedar Ridge equipment manager, Marcus, got her down.
?
??Enough beer for you,” he said.
Char beamed at him. She and Carrie were a huge hit and it took another hour to get them out of there.
“Best birthday ever,” Carrie said on the way home. She always said that.
When Hud got her tucked in, she smiled hopefully.
Hud dropped a wrapped present in front of her and she clapped in delight. “Oh, baby! You shouldn’t have!”
She always said that, too, every single week. The presents he gave her ranged from her favorite candy bar to movie tickets to a preloaded Visa that she could use online, though right now she had his credit card—which he needed to get back from her. They were going with preloaded from now on.
She squealed and nearly pierced his eardrums. She’d opened the iPod that he’d filled with her favorite music because she refused to listen to music on her phone. She saved her phone battery for “talking and shopping.”
“Oh, Hud!” she cried. “You shouldn’t have, but I’m so happy you did!” She shook the thing and he realized she had no idea what it was.
“It’s an iPod, Mom. For your music.”
“Well, I know that!” She stopped shaking it and held it up to her ear.
He found a smile. “Want me to turn it on for you?”
“No, I’ve got it. I love it, Hud.” As she always did, she carefully folded the wrapping paper into a square and untangled the ribbon, both of which he’d stolen from Kenna’s desk drawer.
He stood to leave, watching while his mom turned the iPod over and over. “The power button’s on the side,” he said, and tried to show her but she clutched it to her chest.
“I’ve got it!”
He had to laugh. He and Jacob were both stubborn to the end. The apples hadn’t fallen far from the tree. But this part of the visit with his mom always made him feel awkward. They hadn’t done presents when they were little. She’d never been able to keep dates straight. So that had meant no birthday celebrations, no Easter. No Christmas. At least not on the correct dates. He and Jacob had done their best to keep some semblance of normalcy, but they’d had their hands full with things like making sure bills had been paid and that they had food and a roof over their heads. Holidays and birthdays had been a luxury they’d never given themselves.
Which reminded him what he’d seen on his Visa bill. “Mom, did you order water balloons from Amazon?”
She pretended to be vastly interested in something on the iPod. He was pretty sure she still hadn’t gotten it turned on but there was no way she’d admit it. “Mom?”
She lifted a shoulder. “I don’t think so. Why would I do that? You’re a grown man.”
Okay so she was with it tonight. Or at least at the moment. And if she was, then he had another question for her. “And cigars?”
“Of course not,” she said, now shaking the iPod like it was an Etch A Sketch. “You can’t smoke at your age.”
And there went the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reality portion of the evening…
Bailey got out of Denver on Friday heading toward Cedar Ridge only to get stuck in mountain traffic, all of them slowed down by unexpected icy conditions. It stressed her out making the drive at night on the windy mountain roads, and she white-knuckled it the whole way. By the time she got to Cedar Ridge, she literally fell out of her car and into her unit.
And slept straight through until her phone beeped an incoming text from Aaron the next morning.
You never texted me that you’d arrived in C.R. last night. Let us know you’re safe or I’m coming up to find you.
I’m fine, she quickly texted him back, hating the royal use of the “us”—which in this case meant Aaron and her mom.
They were quite the pair.
It drove her nuts in the worst way. She felt like such a jerk, but she hated that Aaron was still close to her mom. He’d friended her on Facebook and she kept him up to date on all things Bailey.
She got that there’d been a time when the two of them had needed each other, when they’d been each other’s support system, when they’d taken turns going to the doctor with Bailey and compared notes on everything from her mood to her temperature to her numbers to her damn bodily functions.
But these things weren’t necessary anymore.
She was fine.
She was more than fine. She was alive and planning on staying that way.
And yet they still maintained that unhealthy link, even now when she and Aaron were no longer seeing each other.
It didn’t work for her on any level. She was tired of trying to convince them both separately and as a team that she was not working herself into an early grave, that she was loving her choices. They both meant a lot to her, a whole lot, but she and Aaron had broken up for a reason.
He was a saver.
And she didn’t need saving.
Since the Breakfast God didn’t knock this morning, she showered and dressed and hit the cafeteria herself. She grabbed a coffee to go and a quick breakfast burrito, which she ate on the walk to her car.
Once there, it took her three trips to unload the supplies she’d brought and another half an hour to get herself situated on the scaffolding.
She’d finished penciling in her grand plan, using a big carpenter pencil that she loved working with. The Kincaid family tree had started to come to life, complete with drawings of each of the Kincaids in such a way as to present their unique personalities on the mountain.
Now it was time to start painting.
Challenging as it was, some of it was easy. The background and the tree itself were fun and the actual people would be even more so. She knew exactly what she wanted for each of the siblings. Well, except for Jacob, who she still didn’t have a handle on.
And Hudson… but that wasn’t because she didn’t have a handle on him. That was more thanks to the fact that just thinking about him turned her upside down and sideways.
After she had started with the tree and got it situated the way she wanted, she took a moment to just sit there high up off the ground, cradling her coffee, staring at the mountain in front of her.
The day was… glorious. A painfully blue sky streaked with a few long tendril-like clouds. The rugged peak dotted with the dark green pines, whose tips were frosted in the morning sun. There were people on the mountain, traversing their way down.
It was all so perfect it could have been a painting, and she sat there momentarily overcome by gratitude that she was here to experience it. She tipped her head back and let the sun warm it, let the fresh pine-scented mountain air fill her lungs, and let herself just enjoy and appreciate that she was even here to have the moment.
“Working hard?” asked the now unbearably familiar masculine voice that never failed to send the most delicious kind of shiver right through her body. The sensation pinged off some parts more than others, leaving her both warm from the inside out and also a little dazed. It was a lot of reaction to get from just a voice, but he was also a lot of man.
Chapter 11
It’d been a whole damn week since Bailey had heard that voice, an entire week to replay the feel of his mouth on hers, his body warm and hard against hers. She’d told herself she’d exaggerated his effect on her.
Turned out nope.
She forced herself to remain still, cool, calm, and collected as he leaned his skis against the scaffolding and climbed his way up to her with an effortless ease that had her mouth going completely dry.
There were other reactions, too, reactions she planned on firmly ignoring. Even when he crouched down at her side, balanced