Asking for Trouble (18 page)

 
Alec and Rae
left soon after breakfast, Alec and Joe carrying Rae carefully down the steps to
Alec’s car, Alyssa following with the crutches and another ice pack. She could
see Rae biting her lip, trying not to cry out as Alec put her in the back seat
and she swung her legs up, could hear the gasp that couldn’t help but escape her
at the pain of the movement.

Alec shut the door so she could lean back against it, went around
to the other side, handed her a pillow and the ice pack, and arranged a blanket
over her. “Want your laptop?” he asked her. “Want to watch a movie?”

“Yes, please. You’re spoiling me. I’m being a lot of
trouble.”

“Nah,” he said. “I normally don’t get to spoil you nearly enough.
But now you’re helpless to resist, and I get to let loose with all my
chivalrous impulses until you’re well enough to start in on me again about how you
can take care of yourself and I can just back off.”

Rae smiled, and Alyssa could see that Alec’s teasing worked
for his wife, completely unlike its effect on her. And she knew why that was,
too: because it was so obvious that Alec thought Rae walked on water. She felt
a stab of envy that was neither sisterly nor very spiritually evolved at all.
She was jealous of her sister-in-law because she was injured, and her husband
was making a fuss over her. Great.

She handed Alec the crutches once he had Rae set up, and he
tossed them into the Mercedes’s trunk on top of the bags.

“Well,” he said, “thanks for putting us up, Joe. We’ll have
to try it again another time, and hope for a better outcome. You two have a
good time today.”

Alyssa could see his comment hovering on the tip of his
tongue, and she went ahead and made it for him. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Joe
will give me another Emergency Preparedness Quiz before he lets me ski, I’m
sure. But I just want to say, I
would
have
kicked your butt today. Think about that, driving home.”

He laughed and gave her a quick, strong hug. “You would
have, and I’ll admit it right now. Maybe there’s a little part of me that’s
glad to save my ego from the battering.”

“Bye. Drive safe,” she called, waving as they pulled away. Then
she turned to Joe. “So, now that we’ve gotten rid of them, is it finally time
for the fun stuff?”

“You bet,” he said with a satisfied smile. “From now on,
it’s you and me and the snow.”

Three hours later, they were still headed endlessly up a
mountain, Joe breaking trail ahead of her through powder snow as if he didn’t
know the meaning of fatigue, switchbacking first one way, then the next, the
cold air nipping at Alyssa’s cheeks while the rest of her heated up with effort
to the point that she had to unzip her parka.

“You drinking?” he asked, turning on his skis to check in
with her for about the sixth time. “You all right?”

She held up her hydration tube and waggled it at him. “Aye
aye, sir. Oh, wait. That’s not the Air Force.”

He smiled. “Good up here, huh?”

She turned on her skis to look—cautiously, so she
wouldn’t go screaming down the mountainside—and had to agree. The peaks
of the Sierra rose to the south, tree-covered below, white crags above, blue
sky broken by long wisps of white cloud. The whole thing looking like a
postcard, but no picture, not even a video could have captured the feeling
of it, the space and the air and the
sound of the wind. And the solitude.

“This is why you love it,” she said. “This—” She
gestured. “Freedom. Even though it couldn’t be more different from sitting at a
computer.”

“This is it,” he said. “Route-finding, exploring, the
challenge. And I get some of my best ideas up here. Lots of time to think,
going up. Plus, you know,” and he smiled again, “skiing down, knowing you
earned every foot of it. No grooming, no help. Virgin snow.”

“Can’t wait,” she said happily.

Half an hour later, though, Joe had stopped again. “I know I
said we’d go to the crags,” he told her, “but we need to turn around now.”

“Why?” she protested. “I’m fine.” A little blown, a little
pushed, but fine. Settled and content to be here, enjoying the day, and
enjoying being with Joe. “And we’re, what, only two-thirds of the way there?”

He pointed to the peak above them. Well, to where she knew
the peak was. “See that cloud?” he asked, referring to the shield of gray that
had closed over the summit.

“Yeah, but we’re not going that far.”

“That’s wind,” he said. “That’s that storm coming in early.
“I’ve been watching that cloud grow, and it’s going to be down here soon, and
when it is, conditions are going to go south in a hurry. We need to turn
around.”

“It’s still pretty clear right now,” she said. Well, not really,
but it wasn’t bad at all. “Can’t we go a bit farther? You said 2,500 feet down,
and I’d love to ski 2,500 feet of virgin snow. I’ve skied in storms before. You
don’t have to worry about me.”

“No,” he said, “we can’t. You’ve skied in storms in a groomed,
patrolled ski area. You haven’t skied where the snow can change completely
every hundred yards, where you can’t see ten feet ahead, where your tracks up
are covered, and you don’t know where that ridge might be that you could ski over,
right off into space. We’re turning around.”

“Are you sure this isn’t about me? Would you turn around if
you were with Alec?” she asked him. “Or is this really about you thinking
you’re responsible for me, and you don’t want to risk anything happening to me,
no matter how remote the possibility actually is? I’m not your little sister,
Joe. I’m not
anybody’s
little sister.
I can take my chances, and I’m willing to do it.”

“It doesn’t matter what you’re willing to do,” he said.
“You’re right, I’m responsible for you, because I know how to do this and you
don’t. It has nothing to do with who or what you are. I’m telling you, turn
around, because we’re going down.”

She tried to be grouchy about it, but she couldn’t stay that
way for long, because he was right, skiing down was fantastic. It was
exhilarating to be alone up here with him, to have to find their own way, and it
was unexpectedly challenging, despite his warning, to cope with the changing
snow conditions. She hadn’t fully grasped, going up, how much of an effort that
would be. She’d be in deep powder, the going easy, and seconds later would hit an
exposed spot where the snow was packed and nearly icy, have to lean into a turn
to keep her skis from shooting out in front of her. It pushed her to the edge,
and there was no choice but to be right here in this moment, all-the-way alive
and knowing it.

Joe had been right about the storm, though. It was upon them
soon after they had started their descent, the wind blowing a few tiny flakes
at first, picking up force with every minute that passed, adding to the effort
of their descent. Joe turned often to check on her, and she couldn’t be sorry
about that anymore, because she was glad to have him finding the route. She
admitted to herself that it wouldn’t have been easy for her to do it.

Fifteen minutes, twenty, and the wind was stronger now,
until the push of it against her body, the difficulty of picking out the shape
that was Joe had her focusing on the task with every bit of her awareness, her
exhilaration tempered by caution and even an edge of fear that, truth to tell,
wasn’t entirely unpleasurable either. Until she saw the dark figure ahead of
her, dimly viewed through the blowing snow, turning once more to check on her,
taking an awkward slide into nothing. And then he was gone.

She searched for him even as she focused on navigating the
slope ahead, aimed herself toward where she’d last seen him. The seconds ticked
into a minute, then more as she approached the spot with all the speed she
dared to use, giving her plenty of time for her mind to run through possible scenarios,
how she’d cope. If he had fallen and was hurt, how would she get him down?
There was no ski patrol here, no sled, no way to call anyone for help.

If he were conscious, she realized, he’d tell her how to do
it. But what if he weren’t? She still couldn’t see him, and anxiety for him was
doing its best to cloud her reasoning as she forced herself to think it
through. She’d leave his ski poles looped around his wrists, tie them around
her waist with the ski skins, she decided, and pull him on his back behind her.
She’d put her hat on his head in addition to his own, his hood up to cushion
his head while she did it. She could do it. She’d have to.

She was sure she’d reached the spot where he’d gone down,
and she still couldn’t see him, and there
was
a ridge up here somewhere with a drop-off. She couldn’t be sure this was
the exact place, but she thought she remembered it. What if he’d gone over it,
like he’d said? All that time she’d stood arguing with him, and conditions had
been worsening, and now he’d gone over. Oh, God. Please, no.

“Alyssa,” she heard, and whipped her head around, barely
avoiding falling herself, and saw the dark shape to the right, low to the
ground, because he was lying down, or sitting, maybe. But he was there, and he
was conscious.

She skied down to him, cautious because of that ridge, the
hard-packed snow here in this exposed spot threatening to send her shooting
straight off, just as he’d warned her. She found him pushing himself up to
stand, leaning against a pole to get himself upright.

“What happened?” she asked, coming up beside him and brushing
off the snow that clung to his back, needing to touch him. “Are you all right?
Are you hurt?”

He smiled at her, snow clinging to the stubble along one
side of his jaw, and she was flooded with relief. “Well, my pride’s pretty
bruised,” he said. “I was worrying about you coming down that rough patch,
started to check on you, missed seeing a trouble spot, and caught an edge. Took
a hard fall and did some sliding, but I’m fine.”

“You sure?” He had more snow on the back of his hat, and she
brushed at that, too, with a gentle hand. “Did you hit your head?”

“No, that wasn’t the part of me that took the beating,” he
said, taking a whack at the seat of his pants and wincing.

She laughed with the relief of it. “Are you telling me the
Professional Skier, my protector and advisor, fell on his butt?”

He smiled back. “Afraid so. You going to give me a hard time
about it?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, happiness filling her. “I think so. I
think you’re toast.”

They skied across the last long, shallow slope, saw the gray
shape of the Audi looming through the blowing snow, and Joe took an easy breath
at last. It wasn’t quite true that it hadn’t mattered who she was. That
wouldn’t have changed his decision to turn around, but it sure had changed how
he’d felt about it.

It took another ten minutes to get their gear stowed, of
course, hindered by the storm. “Go on and get in the car,” he said when she had
her skis off. “I’ll do this.”

She looked up at him in surprise, continued to scrape the
snow off the bottom of a ski with her pole. “I can clean off my own skis.
Besides, we’ll get it done faster this way.”

He pulled her bag and moccasins out of the back, took the
ski and pole out of her hands and shoved the bag into her arms. “Man, you argue
a lot. Go change. Because you’ll just do it halfway, and then throw everything
in.” He had to smile at her, because he was so relieved to be back safe with
her, and she was opening her mouth in indignation, and it was pretty funny. “I
like my car neat. There’s a right way, and you won’t do it.”

“Huh.” She did her best to pout, but she was laughing.
“You’re right. I won’t. And besides, I really have to go to the bathroom.”

“Well, then,” he said, “better go do it before there’s a
line.”

She laughed again, opened the front door of the car and
shoved her bag inside, then headed for the blue Port-a-Potty on one side of the
parking lot, and he smiled and worked on the skis some more, and put everything
away. Neatly.

“Going to take me out for a beer?” she asked when they were
on their way to town again. “Because you know what? I think I earned it. And
I
didn’t even fall down.”

“Rub it in, why don’t you? Maybe that didn’t embarrass me
enough. But, yeah, I’ll take you out for a beer, because I think you earned it
too.”

She sat back and closed her eyes in the warmth of the car,
and he switched the music to some Peruvian stuff he liked, guitars and flutes, and
concentrated on keeping the car between the orange poles as the snow blew
around them. He wondered if she’d gone to sleep. She’d worked hard enough to wear
anybody out. He hadn’t been kidding, she
had
earned it. She’d impressed the hell out of him today.

She stirred, though, when he pulled to a stop at a light on Tahoe
Boulevard. “Ooh,” she said. “There you go. My favorite date. Don’t you think?”

He looked at the western-style Bar & Grill sign,
“Billiards” winking in red neon, and hesitated. “Blowing hard,” he said. “Maybe
we should just get back.”

“We’re, what, five miles from the cabin? Come
on,
Joe. Buy me a beer and a hamburger.”

“Five miles can be a long way, if the storm’s bad enough.
Anyway, I thought you were high-maintenance,” he said, pulling into a spot on
the street all the same.

“That’s what they say,” she said, sassy as ever.
 

“A woman who wants a beer and a hamburger at a bar isn’t
high-maintenance,” he informed her, grabbing her coat out of the back along
with his own and handing it to her. “A woman who wants to go to Switzerland to
ski,
that’s
high-maintenance.”

“Huh.” She looked surprised, but pulled her coat on and
climbed out of the car.

He waited for her, grabbed for her elbow as she slipped a
little coming around to where he waited to cross the street. “Those boots
weren’t really meant for snow,” he told her.

“They’re cute, though, aren’t they? Guess I’ll just have to
hold on to you on the slippery parts,” she said, reaching for his forearm and
hanging on tight to cross the street, slick now with blowing snow.

It was like an old movie, having her on his arm like that,
and he loved it. And her boots, he thought, sneaking a quick look down as he
opened the outer door of the bar for her, stepped into the tiny vestibule and
stomped snow off his own boots, really
were
cute. The soft, fringed deerhide over her calves, the stretchy skin-tight black
pants above, not quite underwear, but way too close for comfort. And the silky red
turtleneck she wore over them, which was pretty tight too, revealed, now, as
she pulled her coat off, let him hang it up on the hooks near the door. All of
her, in fact, was nothing but cute, in addition to a few other adjectives he
could name, and his hands itched to touch her, to feel those curves for
himself.

She pulled her purse around when they were sitting down in the
warmth, hamburgers ordered and beers in front of them, and started scrabbling
through it, finally pulling out a little bottle of ibuprofen and shaking out a
couple caplets.

“You sore?” he asked, taking a grateful swallow of Anchor
Steam.

She looked up at him in surprise. “No. These are for you.”
She held them out. “I thought about suggesting that you ask for an ice pack to
sit on,” she said with a naughty smile, “but I figured your manliness wouldn’t
allow for it.”

She was making insistent little circles in the air with her
hand, so he took the caplets from her with a sigh. “I don’t need these,” he
said. “Not two, anyway.”

“Yeah, right,” she snorted. “Tell me that doesn’t hurt. It’s
not going to kill you to take something. It’s not even going to destroy your
he-man image. It’s not morphine, it’s
Advil.”
She leaned across the square, dark-varnished table, opened her blue eyes
wide, and said in a loud whisper, “I’ll never tell.” She made a giant
X
over her chest, which meant he had to look
at her chest. It was only polite, after
all. “Cross my heart. I’ll take your secret to the
grave.”

He reached across, grabbed her half-drunk pint of beer and
slid it his way. “I think I’d better cut you off. You’re the one who’s been
into the morphine.”

“Give it
back.”
She
was laughing, and slapping at his hand, and taking back her beer. “I can’t help
it. I had a near-death experience. I’m entitled.”

Now it was his turn to snort. “You did not have a near-death
experience. You had a little bit of an exciting time coming down a mountain
with somebody who knows what he’s doing. Somebody who made you turn around,
could I point that out? So he could keep you safe?”

“Somebody who
fell
down,”
she had to insist. “And take your pills. Or I swear I’m asking the
waitress for an ice pack, and telling her exactly where your bruise is. I could
tell she wanted to know.”

He laughed, popped them into his mouth, and washed them down
with a swallow of beer. “Nah.” He glanced around at the pretty blonde. “Way out
of my league.”

“Why do you do that?” she demanded, not laughing now. “Why
do you pretend I don’t know that you’re attractive to women? Why do you act
like you don’t notice that Sherry wants to go out with you, and that waitress
wants to go
home
with you, even
before they find out that you’ve got, what? Ten million dollars? Twenty? Whatever
it is. Why do you act like you’re some . . .” She made an extravagant gesture,
and he thought,
OK, maybe one beer’s
enough.
“Some truck driver?” she finished. “Although even if you were a
truck driver, you’d still be hot, and you
know
it, Joe. You
have
to know it. You’ve
got a motorcycle. You’ve got a
tattoo.
I
haven’t seen it for a while, but unless you’ve had it removed, and I bet you
haven’t, you’ve still got it. Don’t you?” she demanded.

“Yeah, I’ve still got it,” he said, a little stunned.

“I bet it still looks good, too,” she said, her voice
softening. “Because, Joe. You’re huge, and you’ve got
muscles. Serious
muscles. And they look
good,
and women
love
muscles.
We
love
them. And I
know
you have to know that.”

She still talked in italics. And she was making him
seriously uncomfortable. Luckily, the blonde waitress showed up with their
burgers and fries, and yeah, she smiled at Joe, and he saw it, but he didn’t
care.

“Can I get you folks another beer?” she asked.

“Yes,” Alyssa said, just as Joe said “no.”

“Yes,” she said again, and glared at him, and he smiled at
the blonde and said, “Yes for her. No for me,” and Alyssa sighed extravagantly
once the woman left and said, “What?”

“What?” he asked, trying and failing not to smile back at
her.

“You can’t have two beers? Because, what would happen? You’d
get all wild and crazy and dance on the bar? Start stripping and show us your
tattoo?”

Would she
stop
talking
about taking off clothes? And now
he
was talking in italics, even if only in his head. “Eat your hamburger,” he
said, and started in on his own, because he was getting rattled. “Now I know
why your parents never serve alcohol,” he muttered.

She laughed, and choked on her beer, and he had to reach
across and pound her back.

“Thanks for taking me backcountry skiing,” she said when
she’d got her breath back and had finally taken a bite of her hamburger, and he
was feeling a bit more settled too. “I never said that, so thanks. Even though
you made me turn around.”

“And I was . . .” He made a beckoning motion at her.

She laughed again. “Right. You were right,” she admitted. “I
was glad we weren’t any higher. That was hard.”

“So next time,” he said, “you’re not going to complain about
my checking your gear before we start? You’re not going to argue with me when I
say we need to turn around?”

“Well,” she said with that sassy smile, “I wouldn’t get
carried away.” And she took another big bite and smiled at him while she
chewed, and he thought,
Damn. I am in
love with this woman,
and tried to put it down to the beer. But he’d still
only had one.

Then it got worse, because after they’d eaten, she said,
“I’m bad at pool. Are you good at pool?”

“I’m OK,” he said.

“What does that mean? That you’re some kind of Western District
Billiards Champion?”

“No,” he said, and she had him smiling again. “It means I’m
OK.”

“Then let’s play pool,” she said.

“Uh . . .” He glanced out the front window. It was only four
or so, but it was looking dim out there. “Maybe we should get back.”

“Come on, Joe.” She stood up, grabbed his hand, and was
tugging him to his feet. “Have another beer and play pool with me. I’m bad, but
you can show me. Come on. Teach me.”

She wasn’t all that bad, actually. She wasn’t great, but she
had too much natural athletic ability to be bad.

Except, yeah, she was.
When she was draping herself across the end of the table to take her shot,
one knee pulled up to rest against the cushion, looking back at him over her
shoulder, that was bad. And when the guys at the next table were pausing in
their game to stare at her ass while she did it, so Joe had to glare at them to
get them to turn away, knowing they’d be checking her out again as soon as he
turned his back, that was bad, too.

He knew exactly what they were thinking, watching her bent
over like that. All a man would have to do was get up close behind her, pull
those stretchy pants down, and he could have her right there. She was perfectly
positioned for it, and every guy in the bar could see it, and every guy in the
bar was thinking it. And Joe was having one hell of a time not showing what she
was doing to him.

“You’re not doing too well either,” she said as he misjudged
a shot, failed to sink the 4-ball. “Guess you
aren’t
the Western Division Billiards Champion.” She lined up to
take her shot, and he came around behind her to watch. And there she was, bent
over again, actually wiggling her hips in the tight pants that left absolutely
nothing to the imagination, and looking over her shoulder again. “This one’s hard,”
she complained.

Yes, it was, and he couldn’t help it.

“Is this right?” she asked, and it wasn’t, so he had to
reach around behind her and re-position her hands, and that wasn’t improving
matters one bit, especially when she leaned back into him, straightened up a
little, and made contact, and he tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. He
failed miserably, of course, because she was warm and soft and had her lower
back snuggled right up to his groin, and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

Well, he could pull back, he realized after a couple frozen
seconds, and he did, and tried his best to maintain.

“Just stroke it with the cue,” he said, stepping to one
side. “All you need to do is kiss that ball. Gently.”

She hit it way too hard, of course, sent the cue ball into
the pocket along with the one she’d been aiming for, and stood back. “I’m bad,”
she sighed. “I guess I need a lesson.”

That’s when he had
to excuse himself and go to the men’s room. He looked in the mirror at the
confused, besotted face staring back at him, and knew he was losing the battle.

“Get a grip,” he muttered, and reminded himself for the
hundredth time that making any kind of move on Alyssa would be a bad idea. A
very, very bad idea. Her brother was his business partner and his best friend. Both
her brothers were so protective of her, they’d probably kill him if things went
south, even if her dad didn’t. And anyway, her parents were the closest thing
to parents he had himself, which made it practically . . . wrong.

It would be asking for trouble on so many levels, and it was
way too risky for a guy who couldn’t afford to take anything like that kind of
risk. Did she know what she was doing to him? It had seemed like it at times,
and it had
definitely
seemed like it
while they’d been playing pool. But if he was wrong . . .

Even if he was right, it would be putting his hand right in
the fire, and he knew it. The only problem was, that was exactly where his hand
needed to be.