Four Nights to Forever (2 page)

Cassie laughed as she opened the passenger door and climbed in. “I’ve had flings with divorced businessmen. I’m going to Utah for the skiing.” A prospect that both frightened and excited her. She hadn’t been skiing since before Sam was born. Tom had preferred beach vacations. Where they would vacation, like where they would live, had been one of the arguments Cassie had always lost.

“Ah.” Karen waved away the three men Cassie had been on dates with since Tom had left. “They were safe and boring and Tom-like. Plus, the point of a fling is that there is
no
future. You were looking for more with those men.”

The three men had been comfortable, but also boring. Their kisses had been boring. The sex had been boring. Which, honestly, had made getting undressed and under the covers much easier. Butterflies in her belly would probably startle her so much that she’d freeze before she got her socks off.

But she could pretend the nerves weren’t there, and that she was looking forward to something that wasn’t going to happen. “If you see a man with no future, point him out to me. We’ll see if I remember how to flirt.”

Karen’s smile was wide and full of mischief as she started the car. “I have faith in you. My second suitcase is packed with nothing but condoms.”

“Karen!” Sex with a stranger was more frightening than skiing for the first time in twenty years. And sounded less exciting. “That’s a lot of sex for a forty-five-year-old man,” she joked to cover up how much the idea freaked her out.

“Thirty-five, then,” her friend said, looking over her shoulder as she backed out of the driveway. “Maybe thirty. However young we have to go so he’s able to use up all the condoms. Like when you were in college.”

“When I was in college, I was pregnant with Sam,” Cassie reminded her friend. After her freshman year, parties and spring breaks had been replaced by meeting and falling in love with Tom. She’d married him and quickly gotten pregnant.

“Better late than never.” Karen was dogged in her optimism, which made her an excellent nurse, as Cassie knew firsthand. When they’d met, she had been lying in a hospital bed after the miscarriage that had left her infertile. At first, Karen’s never-ending hopefulness had angered Cassie. Then she’d succumb to it out of sheer exhaustion. Now, after eighteen years, she’d come to rely on it.

Karen continued to chat about the mystery man Cassie would meet and seduce as she drove the car out of Framingham. Cassie doubted it would ever happen, but a small ball of nerves danced in her belly at the thought. Only maybe those nerves weren’t anxiety; maybe they were the pluck she’d forgotten she had.

It wasn’t until they got stuck in traffic on the Mass Pike that Cassie realized she’d been looking forward the whole drive. She hadn’t glanced back once.

*

Doug Vanderholt stood on the plaza outside of the ski school office, his skis in one hand and poles in the other, looking out over the crowd of people milling about. The hot-stuff skiers zipped down to the plaza, snapped out of their skis, and clomped past one another, back in line at the tram in the blink of an eye. A couple of elbows were thrown among friends as people jostled to get in line first. Mothers—and it was always mothers—plodded after their children, who ran to the group-lesson meeting area off the Little Berry lift. Occasionally, a reluctant child had to be pulled, cajoled, and begged to cooperate.

Tyson, Doug’s eight-year-old son, was the stereotypical boy racing for the lift, his poles clanging in his hand. But Mia, his six-year-old daughter, always hung back, leaving Doug to carry her—and three pairs of skis—as Tyson yelled for them both to hurry up. Whenever Mia got to choose what they did on their weekends together, she never chose skiing, and when Tyson chose skiing, she always asked to stay home. Doug would insist she go—over his ex-wife Madison’s advice—and the three of them would end the day in a state of frustration not even taquitos at Crown Burger could cure.

He sympathized with the fathers who were escaping for a day of hardcore skiing
and
with the mothers who were trying—and failing—to convince a child to enjoy an activity with the family.
One more winter
, he told himself, and then Mia would be off the hook. He couldn’t keep banging his head against that brick wall and next year he wouldn’t be a ski instructor any longer, so his weekends would be more flexible. Maybe Madison would agree to him having the kids more frequently than every other weekend, and they could pick different activities they would all enjoy.

But this winter he was still teaching. He looked around at the passersby, trying to identify the two women who had booked private lessons for the entire week. Guessing which of the people trudging across the bricks were his students was a game he liked to play while he waited, and after more than ten years as a ski instructor, he was only occasionally wrong. When two women exited the rental shop, Snow Falls, and came around the large pines of Snowdance Center, he had his quarry. They laughed, talked, and skidded their way across the bricks, nearly running into several other skiers and some tables along the way. The sun was already bright, reflecting off the snow on the roof of the buildings and making it difficult for him to get a good look at the two women until they were practically on top of him.

One had rented all her equipment, the telltale stickers of the shop were plastered on the skis, and carried herself easily in her heavy ski boots. The other carried skis Snow Falls neither rented nor sold on the premises. Her gear was a couple years out-of-date but had been top-of-the-line when it was new. Each step she took looked precise and uncomfortable, though, and Doug wondered how often she skied to justify the fancy equipment. Maybe it was borrowed.

The one with the top-notch skis confirmed his guess when she pointed at the door to the ski school office. He rested his skis against the railing and walked toward them.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m Doug. I think you’re looking for me. Karen and Cassie, right?” He reached out to take their skis, gathered them into the crook of his left arm, and held out his right for a handshake.

He looked back and forth between the two women. The one with the rented equipment was older—though maybe only by a couple years—and the chill in the air had brought a charming flush to her apple cheeks. A few fine lines played around the edges of her blue eyes. She had an attractive face that probably lit up in a delightful way when she laughed.

“Cassie,” she said, sticking out a gloved hand and shaking his. Her pink lips stretched into a wide smile. Her teeth were large and toothpaste-commercial white and she had a gap between the front two. Smiling with her mouth open and not hiding the imperfection was a great quality. He liked her immediately. This week was looking better already.

“And I’m Karen,” the other one said. “And we’ve got you for a week,” she added with a giggle. “Good.”

“All yours,” he said with a smile he directed mostly at Cassie. Maybe she would smile wide and bright again.

“I’ll hang on to your gear while you go to the office to sign the last of the waivers. Then we’ll talk some about your experience and decide where to start. Sound good?”

They both nodded and headed off in the direction of the ski school. Amid the noise of ski boots on brick and chatter, he was pretty sure he heard the words
fling
and
married
come from their direction. He also caught Karen gesturing at him with her head. Maybe she had been trying to be subtle, but ski helmets made inconspicuous head gestures nearly impossible.

He balanced their things with a sigh and trekked the short way back to his skis. Doug didn’t
do
flings, especially not with students. The resort generally turned a blind eye to such affairs, but they did so with a frown. He’d done it once, and that single bad decision had been enough to wreck the life he’d been creating for himself here. It didn’t matter if Cassie was beautiful, which she certainly was; he was sticking to his hands-off policy toward students. And coworkers. Actually, his blanket
no
covered everyone associated with the resort. Hell, it covered anyone who drove past the first avalanche gate on her way up the canyon.

He should probably stop saying he was “all theirs,” too.

Cassie was tucking a folded piece of paper into the inside pocket of her bright-purple-and-black waterproof shell as the two women walked out of the ski school office. Karen elbowed her friend with a wink. Cassie rolled her eyes. It was obvious Karen was trouble and even Cassie knew it. She was interesting, with her rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes. And Doug had always preferred interesting to trouble. Not to mention that he liked the way Cassie’s ski jacket hugged the curves at her waist. The sleeves were a little too long and the front hung low against her thighs, but she seemed to have a lush figure that filled out the GORE-TEX nicely.

No flings
, he reminded himself.

“Before we head up to the lift,” he said, handing each woman her skis, “what kind of experience do you have?”

Karen lowered her goggles from their perch on her helmet to cover her eyes as she answered. “I ski one week each winter, but I’ve never had lessons beyond my husband yelling at me to plant my poles.” Her laugh was too hollow for Doug to believe she actually found the story funny—or her husband’s comments that helpful.

“Then my goal for you is to end the week a better skier than your husband.” The man should have spent his money on proper ski instruction for his wife rather than such fancy ski boots.

“He’s a really good skier,” she said, uncertainty in her voice.

“I’m a really good ski instructor,” he assured her.

Karen’s smile was tentative at first, then became broad and genuine, with the mischief he’d already sensed about her lighting up her voice as she said, “I’d like that.”

“And you, Cassie?” She was biting her lip when he looked over at her, and heat shot to his groin. Skiing wasn’t billiards, so even if she hadn’t ever skied before, he wouldn’t have an excuse to get closer to her, to lean in and see if she smelled as good as he thought she would, despite wanting to. But a chance to impress her would be nice. Just because he couldn’t hook up with her didn’t mean he couldn’t try to impress a pretty woman. Or even flirt with one.

“It’s been awhile,” she started, “but I’ve been skiing since I was three.”

Karen’s mouth gaped open at Cassie’s answer, and her eyes were still wide when she lifted her goggles back off her face to look more closely at her friend. “I didn’t know you could ski. I planned this trip so you could have a new experience.”

“I haven’t skied since I was nineteen. When I got married,” she said flatly. Her previously warm smile was gone, and the flush to her cheeks no longer looked welcoming, just cold. “Before then . . .” She shrugged.

It was irrational, he knew, but his first thought was if she was still married. If so, maybe he’d completely misread Karen’s body language and the jokes he’d overheard her make. And if Cassie were married, well, the no-flings rule went double for married women.

He watched the disappointment sweep over her face. He understood all too well what it was like to be married to someone who didn’t support your hobbies. His ex-wife didn’t like skiing any more than his daughter did.

Doug smiled at her, both to cover up his lingering questions and to coax her to smile in return. “My goal for you, then, is for you to end the week feeling like as much of a hotshot now as you did when you were a teenager.”

Cassie’s light-brown eyebrows lifted enough that the smile probably wasn’t just to humor him, even if it was laced with skepticism.

“Cassie . . .” he said.

“Hmm?” They both stared at the hand he put on her arm, the uncertainty in her eyes fading.

Oh, to be a billiards instructor.
Or beach volleyball. Or anything where their skin wouldn’t be separated by layers of fabric and padding.

After a couple of seconds the doubts in her eyes disappeared and the humor he’d seen when he’d first introduced himself was returning.

“It’s just like riding a bike,” he promised. “It’ll come back to you.”

“Sure, but I haven’t ridden a bike in ten years, either.” The side of her mouth kicked up in a half-smile. “Maybe you can teach me to do that next week,” she said with a lift of her shoulders. Her playful smile widened and her rosy cheeks lifted almost up to her eyes. This was the smile he’d wanted to get out of her, the smile he wanted her to be wearing the entire week.

He removed his hand from her arm, and they both turned to Karen, whose eyes darted back and forth between them. Whatever the devilish woman was thinking, what she had seen was nothing more than flirtation and it wouldn’t become anything more.

“Those are some big promises,” Karen said.

“I’m not an easy instructor,” he warned. “So long as the lifts and tram are running, I’ll give a lot of orders and I expect them to be followed. Snowdance doesn’t have many green runs, so we’ll start down some easy blues today, and by the end of the week, you’ll be bouncing down the blacks with no problems at all.”

“I like a commanding man. Don’t you?” Karen turned to her friend, her brow lifted.