Four Nights to Forever (4 page)

“You won’t need my instruction for that, I’m sure,” he said. She’d thought his wind-bitten voice sounded playful, but then his smile fell into a blank expression and he turned his head to look over the side of the chair.

She turned to her side to see what he was looking at, but there was only a smattering of skiers bouncing up and down on moguls. Nothing to justify his attention but maybe a good distraction from her flirting, which, judging by the lack of expression on his face, she hadn’t picked back up as easily as skiing.

But it didn’t matter. She’d already been turned down, and this was just for practice anyway. A trial run for when she actually went for a man she could get. Besides, she was here to ski and spend time with Karen, no matter what other plans Karen had.

Let’s see what kind of present we can get you for your birthday,
she’d said as they’d unpacked at the condo, and Cassie had seen that her friend had only been mildly exaggerating about the condoms.

The thought of using them with Doug was terrifying, but her belly warmed at the images swirling in her mind. Trying to turn those fiery thoughts to some unknown man left her chilled, even with all the layers she was wearing.

It was probably perversity mixed with trepidation. Even if he hadn’t been ready to turn her down, Doug was safe. She could fall head over heels for him and she’d still have to get on a plane at the end of a week and fly back to Massachusetts. Any fling she had here would end quickly and be mostly painless. No worries about running into the man at the drugstore or seeing him on a date with another woman at her favorite restaurant.

Easy.

And there was no denying that Doug was attractive. The weather-beaten look served him well. It made him seem taller—tougher, maybe—and his sun-darkened cheeks accentuated the sparkle in his eyes.

“Ready?”

Cassie looked forward again. They were approaching the end of the lift. She gathered her poles in her left hand, grabbed on to the armrest with her right, and tilted the tips of her skies up. The movements came right back to her and she swished to a quick hockey stop on the side to wait for Karen.

The child sitting next to her friend skied down from the chair minus one pole, but then the chair disappeared behind the post with Karen still on it. Just as Doug hollered at the attendant to stop the lift, there was a crack that echoed through the nearby bowls, followed quickly by a scream. The lift halted and chairs swung wildly with the change in momentum. Doug threw his poles down into the snow and clicked out of his skies, then ran for the lift easily, as if his ski boots were sneakers. Panic made Cassie’s movements shaky, and it took her longer to disengage from her gear.

When she got to where Karen lay on the ground, Doug was speaking into the walkie-talkie at his chest that they needed a sled at the top of the Snowdance lift. His voice was calm and his steadiness almost tricked Cassie into believing her friend wasn’t hurt too badly. But she’d heard both the crack and the scream, so she didn’t believe the voice, even though she appreciated its effect on her nerves.

Cassie knelt by her friend and grabbed her hand. “Are you okay?” she asked, concern making her voice shaky as the stupid question came out of her mouth.

“My leg,” Karen whispered. When she tried to lift her head to look, Cassie put her hand on her shoulder and eased her friend back down into the snow.

“Don’t move too much. It’s not so bad,” she lied. Karen’s foot, ski still attached, was pointed one way and her knee was pointed the other, her pant leg twisted like a rope. There was a bulge under the slick fabric that might be a bone. Cassie swallowed the urge to vomit. Despite her silliness, Karen had always been the reliable one in an emergency. And it wasn’t just Karen’s years of nursing; her joking manner hid a cool head and a near-obsessive desire to turn chaos into order. When Sam had broken her arm ten years ago, Karen had been the first person Cassie had called as they left for the hospital. Tom had been the second.

Cassie turned back to her friend, whose face was as pale as the snow she was lying on. “I looked and didn’t ralph. That’s how you know you’re going to be fine.”

Karen’s answering laugh was weak. “All that tells me is that there’s no visible blood. We’ve been friends long enough for me to know you only vomit at blood.”

“There’s no blood,” Doug said, his attention no longer at the walkie-talkie at his chest. “The sun’s out. Lots of things to be grateful for right now.” He was kneeling on the other side of Karen, and he put his hand on her shoulder. “Though I’m sure it hurts.”

“See,” Karen said, turning her head from Doug to Cassie and back to Doug, her voice laced with pain and her lips stretched into a tight smile. “I told you Cassie and I needed a big strong man in our lives right now.”

“Well, there’ll be more men in your life soon. Ski patrol will be taking you down in a sled.” He patted Karen’s shoulder before he looked up and Cassie caught his gaze. “Keep hold of her hand. I’m going to get her out of her skis and the movement will probably hurt.”

Karen’s face screwed up in pain as Doug unlatched her skis. She tightened her grip on Cassie’s hand, crushing Cassie’s fingers until her joints pressed in together and she had to bite her lip not to cry out, but Karen didn’t scream again.

“Don’t want to be known as a screamer.” The joke slid out of Karen’s mouth like a ghost hidden in the whisper.

Cassie laughed and gave her friend’s hand a return squeeze. “I don’t think that matters right now.” She ached to know what had gone wrong, but she kept her questions to herself. There would be plenty of time for that later, in their condo, because whatever Karen had done to her leg, a hot tub wasn’t in her future. When Cassie squeezed Karen’s hand a second time, she didn’t know which one of them she was reassuring.

Three ski patrolmen in bright-red coats arrived quickly, the emergency sled gliding along behind them, and the young boy Karen had shared the lift with was walking alongside a woman in a blue coat like Doug’s, his head hanging down and his shoulders slumped. As soon as Karen was zipped in, the boy walked up to her and, at an encouraging nod from his ski instructor, knelt down in the snow. “I’m sorry,” the boy said, his voice full of guilt, sadness, and fear.

“It’s okay, Nicky.” Karen hadn’t been crying when the ski patrolmen loaded her into the sled, but as she talked to the boy, Cassie was pretty sure there were tears welling up in her goggles. “It wasn’t your fault.”

The boy looked like he wanted to say something else, but his ski instructor called him back and he hopped up and ran off, his relief evident in his now-straightened shoulders. One of the patrolmen got between the two handles at the front of the sled and the other man and the one woman each grabbed a rope by Karen’s head. They traversed to the edge of the cat track, and before they took off down the mountain, one of them called out to Doug. “Didn’t even make it down one run this time.” And then they disappeared over the lip and down the slope.

At some point, Doug had removed his goggles, and his eyes were scrunched closed when Cassie turned her attention away from her friend. Wrinkles bunched between his eyebrows and at the corners of his eyes, and his previously cheerful lips were turned down in a frown.

“What did they mean by that?” Cassie asked.

He lifted his head to the sky and sighed. Then he lowered his gaze to look Cassie head-on, regret deepening the brown of his eyes. “It’s not a very funny joke.”

“Explain to me how it’s a joke at all.” If only there were something Cassie could punch. Or if the young patrolman wasn’t out of sight already she could yell at him for making a joke about her friend who had been lying broken in the snow.

Instead, Cassie stomped over to her gear and snatched up her poles, using the time to take deep breaths. Doug had been kind to Karen. He hadn’t made jokes at her expense. He’d teased her friend and taken her mind off her pain. He didn’t deserve all the anxiety Cassie wanted to throw at him.

She stabbed her pole tips into the snow and looked at him. The rhythm of the lift had returned to normal quickly, with pairs of children getting off sliding off the chairs and milling around the top of the cat track waiting for their ski instructors. The occasional nonstudent skier hopped off the lift, gazing at them before skiing past. Not only had Doug stayed put in his spot in the snow, but he was still looking at Cassie, his head cocked and the corners of his mouth tight in frustration.

“The woman in that sled is my friend,” she said, using her breath to control her anger. “I want to know what they meant.”

“We don’t have many students injured during their lessons, but—” he sighed again and rubbed at his sun-ravaged cheek “—a quarter of the injured students are mine. ‘Doug luck,’ the patrolmen call it.”

“I hope you don’t teach children,” she said, her nerves pushing the words out of her mouth in bites of irritation.

Doug shook his head, brushed the snow off his knees, and headed to where he’d left his skis. “No, I only teach adults.” He stopped when he passed her. She leaned forward, her weight resting on her poles, all her worry pushing the tips deep into the hard-packed snow.

“Let’s go.” He reached out a hand as if he were going to touch her shoulder but pulled it back. She wished he hadn’t, though; she could use a hug. Or at least a comforting pat on the shoulder. Even from him.

“We can meet her in the clinic,” he continued. “If the break isn’t bad, they’ll be able to set it. Otherwise, she’ll need to go to the university hospital in the valley.”

Cassie nodded, unable to reach out for the touch she needed and not certain how to ask a stranger for it. She didn’t move as he walked away, and it took the sound of his boots snapping into his skis to break through the concern clouding her mind and propel her to move. When she’d gotten into her skis and secured her poles around her wrists, he said, “Follow me,” and slipped over the edge of the cat track. There was nothing else to do; Cassie obeyed.

‡

O
range rubber mats barely muffled the
thunk
of their ski boots against the concrete floor as Doug led Cassie through the bowels of the resort center to the small urgent care clinic that served both the resort and the tiny town of Pines, Utah, that surrounded it. He opened the glass door in front of them and gestured for Cassie to take a seat in one of the red, molded plastic chairs. They were just as hard and uncomfortable as they looked, but it could be awhile.

“The doctors here are great,” Doug said, sitting down next to her. His ski pants rustled as he tapped his fingers on them, stopping himself from reaching out and patting Cassie on the leg. He wanted to reassure her, but he also wanted to touch her simply to touch her, and the hospital clinic wasn’t the place to give into that urge.

“Thanks.” Her smile was a washed-out version of what he’d seen this morning when she’d introduced herself on the plaza, keeping the somehow-endearing gap in her teeth hidden. She looked down at the floor, giving him a chance to admire her profile and the flare of her nose against her cheeks. Her throat moved as she swallowed three times in succession, hard enough that he could hear it. She was blinking rapidly, and tears danced at the corners of her eyes.

Hell, even if Karen hadn’t hurt herself and they weren’t sitting in the waiting room watching the crowds stomp past the windows, he wasn’t going to act on his interest in Cassie. But he would try to comfort her; she was clearly very worried. He put a palm on her knee. The muscles under his hand tensed, then relaxed. When she turned her gaze from the floor back to his face, tears still flickered about her eyes, but her smile was stronger.

Doug set his elbow in the curve between the chairs. Cassie’s shoulders relaxed, and she rested her head against him. Feeling a bit like a confused teenager at the movies, he put his hand around her shoulder. Her arm was warm under the silk of her thermal underwear top, and she was more toned than he’d expected. The position twisted his spine in strange ways, but he would stay here as long as Cassie needed him.

“Thank you.” His fleece vest muffled her voice. “I needed this.”

After an hour, they had only moved from their positions to remove layers of clothing and talk with the doctor about Karen, who was getting a cast and wouldn’t be skiing anymore this winter, but would otherwise be fine. Each time one of them had moved, though, they had returned to this position without exchanging a word.

Doug’s right hip was starting to go numb when there was a knock on the glass door to the waiting room. The boy who had been riding the lift with Karen walked in, followed by Larissa, the kid’s ski instructor. Doug checked his watch. They must be taking an early lunch.

“How is she?” Larissa asked with a tilt of her head toward the back area of the clinic.

Cassie lifted her head off his shoulder before she answered, leaving his arm cold. “It was a clean break, so they’re setting it here. She should be out soon, if you want to talk to her.” The last bit was directed at the boy, who nodded.

As if she’d been summoned, Karen swung out from the patient area on crutches, and Cassie eased up to her feet. “I forgot how much of a bitch these are to use,” Karen said before catching sight of the boy. “Oh, sorry, Nicky. I didn’t see you there.”