Snow Job (22 page)

“Because you’ve already made it pretty clear you don’t take it the wrong way.” He was pushing into her gently as he spoke, nudging her until she was backed up against the door to the hal closet, until she couldn’t retreat any farther when he took a final step to close the distance between them. “We never used to fight. Now we’re fighting, and it just makes me want to take you up against the nearest wal and fuck you into next week, until you’re forced to see my side of things. Or put you over my knee again. Not the most logical way to conduct an argument.”

Elyce could only whimper in reply as her body responded to Karl’s closeness and his words despite common sense, despite the gathered family in the next room. Despite the certain knowledge that any arguments fought along the lines Karl had described would have to be counted a loss or at best a draw for both participants in the long run. That knowledge crumbled under the tense bind of his fingers around her wrist, the possessive way his other hand shaped itself around her breast.

“But I’ve given in to that the past few days, figuring it was worth a shot, and unfortunately it seems to have a pretty short-term effect as far as convincing you to see reason. So I think I’m going to have to go back to the logical approach. At least where persuading you is concerned.

Thanks for sending the picture, by the way.”

And he backed away, face smooth and control ed once more, and left Elyce standing on quivering legs in the entry hal , alone with her unslaked hunger and a tangle of emotions ranging from confusion to utter regret.

The skiing was fun but heavy. The morning’s snow had laid a fresh tier of powder on the slopes, and only a few other skiers had made it down to carve tracks in the fluffy stuff by the time the Nashes arrived to make their own marks in the Christmas snow.

As Karl had suggested, the Winter family headed for the slopes they thought they could manage most easily on snowboards. Karl and Elyce, the only other two who had decided to hit the slopes that day, headed back toward Peak Ten. The upper lifts had actual y been shut down earlier in the morning due to the weather, but as it had cleared toward afternoon they had opened up again. Skiers were stil sparse on the slopes and the whole landscape bore an idyl ic, dreamy quality.

They spent the first leg of the lift ride in silence, each wrapped in thought and only saying as much as necessary to navigate getting onto the lift and off again. Not until they had sliced their way through the creamy new powder to the next lift line and started the much chil ier ride to the top of the hil did Elyce break the silence, unable to stand it any longer.

“So what were you going to say last night?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Last night. You looked at the door at one point. When we were in bed, I mean. And then you stopped and when I asked you what you were about to say, you said that it was nothing and maybe you’d tel me later.”

“Oh.” He smiled, looking a little abashed. “Yeah, that. It real y was nothing. Just weird stuff, you know, stuff that popped into my head. It wasn’t real y about you. You probably wouldn’t be that interested.”

“It’s a long ride up the hil and I’m freezing my ass off here. Just about anything to take my mind off that would be welcome. And I can only assume you asked me along to talk, so just talk. Let’s talk.”

“You assumed? Haven’t we had enough assumptions?”

“Karl…”

“Maybe I invited you along for decoration.”

“Thanks. I guess. Are you trying to avoid tel ing me about whatever it was?”

“Maybe.” After a few seconds, he growled in frustration and then spoke again. “Okay, fine. It’s stupid, okay? I looked at the door and thought about the kids out there hearing us if we got loud, and al of a sudden I just thought about our house, the way the bedrooms are arranged, because there’s the big closet and bathroom between the master and the other bedroom on the second floor, plus the other bathroom and that linen closet. And the wal s are pretty thick. So I thought we wouldn’t have to be nearly as quiet in our house as we have to be in the cabin. A little bit of extra soundproofing and we could pretty much make whatever noise we wanted to. Which would be good, by the way, because I’d real y like to hear what you’d sound like if I’m spanking you and you don’t have to be quiet. Anyway.

And then I thought about Wil and Kel y, having Alicia on a cot in their room, and figured they’re probably not getting any action at al this trip. And that made me think about our house again, and how that room that’s the guest room right now should probably be the nursery if we ever had kids, but that once the kids were old enough we should look at redoing the third floor like we’d talked about, finish off the bathroom up there and the bedrooms.”

For a moment Elyce sat stunned, not having expected either such a long speech, or that particular speech, from Karl. He coughed, embarrassed, and then continued.

“And then I started thinking about the kids’ room in the movie
Mary Poppins
, how the kids slept in that one room even though it was a boy and a girl, which would seem sort of weird these days, and how few toys kids had then compared to what they have now. And then you asked me what I was thinking.”

“I see.”

“So. Some guys recite basebal scores in their heads to distract themselves, I guess I think about remodeling the house. Are you happy now that I told you? Burning curiosity satisfied?”

Elyce had already filtered out most of the unimportant information, however, and focused on only those parts of Karl’s speech that intrigued her most. “You stil think of it as
our
house?”

“Yes,” he said immediately, clearly not needing to think it over.

“Even after this morning?” She was almost in tears, panicked over what his answer might be.

“Yes,” he said again. “Even after this morning. Can I ask you something now?”

“It seems only fair. You answered the heck out of my question. Oh, look out, tips up.” The end of the lift was approaching and they skied off smoothly, with hardly a break in conversation.

“Do you think of your little shack in the woods as home now? I don’t mean ‘shack’ in a bad way. Forget I said

‘shack’. Your little place in the woods?”

“No.” She said it before she even had a chance to think, and then wondered if she should have revealed that much. “I love it in a way. But it isn’t home.”

“Is home stil home?”

He had stopped by the trail sign, turning to face her, and they leaned on their ski poles and looked down at their skis, because it was too hard to meet one another’s eyes.

“Yes,” she admitted. “But it isn’t that simple.”

“Maybe it is,” he said. “Maybe that’s the problem, Elyce. Maybe you’ve been thinking it has to be complicated, when it’s real y just that simple.”

complicated, when it’s real y just that simple.”

“But…it isn’t. It just isn’t. How can—”

“Come home.”

“Karl—”

“It’s stil home, you just said so. Elyce, just come home.

We’l work it out. Come home with me after this trip.

Please.”

His voice, low and urgent, tugged at her emotions, making her wish they were anywhere but out in the open in this brightly lit public place. She wished they could be somewhere in the dark, unable to see one another’s faces, able to speak without fear of being overheard by passersby.

“I…”

Karl’s look faded from earnest and hopeful to guarded once again at her hesitation. “I’m just so tired of this. I miss you so much. And if it’s stil about this morning, I may have something else to show you about that. I didn’t want to, but

—”

“I was going to say I’d think about it.”

The light came back to his eyes, and Elyce felt a glow of warmth at the knowledge that she had final y done something to improve his mood.

“Okay. Okay, fair enough. Thank you.”

“Wel . We should get going, we’re going to freeze if we just keep standing here. But what were you going to show me?”

“No, no, it was nothing. Real y nothing, this time. Let’s just go. Pick a trail, any trail.”

Elyce pointed with her pole to the trail she favored and Karl let her lead off, fol owing with a vibrancy in his movements that she hadn’t seen in a long time.

The nice thing about skiing was that it al owed a certain amount of time for quiet reflection, because the members of the party were not always close enough to al ow for comfortable conversation on the open, windy mountainside.

Elyce schussed down the slope, letting her body take over, and considered what Karl had said. Maybe it was true, if he was wil ing to forgive her temporary loss of faith in him—maybe it was as simple as going back to the place she stil thought of as home. Of course she knew it wasn’t quite as simple as returning to a house. It was Karl she would be returning to, Karl she stil considered a necessary component of “home”, not the house at al . If Karl had moved to her shack in the redwoods, the shack would have been home—although Elyce had to smile at the idea of Karl attempting to live in the tiny house. He barely fit through the doorways, and there would be no way for him to maneuver in the kitchen wel enough to prepare a meal. Even Elyce found it cramped. Karl, the modern-day Viking, would end up hurting himself if he tried staying there very long.

Al too soon they were at the foot of the slope and it was time to ride the lift again, a solid ten minutes of uninterrupted privacy on the two-person ride back up the hil .

To Elyce’s surprise, Scott was there at the lift line, waving his hand to get their attention as they finished the run.

“Em did something to her ankle,” he cal ed as they whooshed to a halt next to him. “We were just at the top of the slope and she went down pretty hard. We had to help her slide down on her board, sitting down. She couldn’t put any weight on it at al . The medic down the mountain said she needs to go have it x-rayed. I tried your cel , but there’s never any signal up here.”

“I know. I don’t even have a missed cal .” Karl had pul ed his phone from his pocket and flipped it open, then closed it in disgust before stowing it away again. “Where is she now? The base camp medic?” Scott nodded, already flipping his snowboard down to begin the run to the bottom of the slopes.

They made record time down the hil , and after Karl had retrieved the SUV the two men lifted Emily into the vehicle from the wheelchair the medic provided, ignoring her protests that she could just as easily hop in by herself, and her hiss of concern to Scott that if he fussed over her the girls might be frightened.

“We’re not scared, Mom,” Nash reassured her, taking over the mothering role as natural y as a duck took to water.

“We just need to make sure you’re okay. You could make a break worse if you accidental y put weight on it.”

“Mom, put your leg up this way, you should elevate it.

And take this ice pack. Me and Nash can sit in the way back.” Reese had folded a blanket to act as a support, and wadded up her father’s jacket to serve as a backrest so that her mother could sit sideways on the seat. The girls soon had their mother settled comfortably, though stil protesting, with her leg iced and elevated and a bottle of water in her hand to ensure proper hydration, the better to avoid shock.

Scott had to work to keep from smiling at their earnest efforts. He bit his lip and maintained control masterful y as he squeezed into the third-row seat next to his daughters, letting Elyce and Karl take the front.

* * * * *

Emily’s ankle, it turned out, was not broken but only badly sprained. Her foot, however, was indeed broken in two places, hairline fractures that she insisted hurt far less than the sprain.

The doctor assured her, as he fitted her with an air cast, that the sprain would probably take longer to heal and trouble her more overal than the breaks ever would.

“For the ankle it’s rest, ice, compression, elevation, and take
these
as sparingly as possible,” he said, writing a prescription. “But you may need to dose up tonight and especial y tomorrow, because what you’re feeling today is just a little practice for how much you’re going to be hurting by then.”

He sent them on their way and the group was back at the cabin within another hour, Emily already under the comforting influence of the medication he’d prescribed and the two girls stil taking unseemly enjoyment in their self-appointed roles as caretakers.

“Since I was edged out,” Scott said with good humor, upon returning from his bedroom with a cardigan that Nash had insisted her mother needed in order to be comfortable,

“I went ahead and took a minute to look at that thing you sent me.”

Karl and Elyce had been sitting in slightly awkward silence at the kitchen island again, and Scott had started talking immediately upon joining them, without noticing the tense mood between them or Karl’s instant shushing gesture in response to his words.

“So I don’t know where that image came from,” he went on, oblivious to his brother-in-law’s efforts to silence him,

“but it can’t have been a cel phone. Not original y, anyway, I mean. Not from a cel phone camera. There isn’t a phone on the market that takes a picture with resolution like that. It had to have been taken with a regular camera or something, and then put on the phone to forward. But whoever sent it said it came from a phone in the first place?”