Something icy cold and rather hard smacked into the back of his head and he turned to see Joseph swipe his snow-dusted hands against the back of his thighs.
“A snowball?” He raised his eyebrows. “Really? I thought I was meant to be the immature one?”
Joseph shrugged, a smirk playing with his lips. “Wasn’t me.”
With a laugh, Rob turned back to the hutless bloody hills and began walking again, doing his best to ignore the knot of unease twisting tighter in his gut.
Twenty minutes later, he clenched his fists and bit back a curse. Fuck it. He had to do the unthinkable.
He stopped walking, stabbed the nose of his snowboard into the snow beside his boot and gave Joseph a level look. “I think we’re lost.”
Joseph stared at him, his expression not even flinching. “I coulda told you that fifteen minutes ago.”
“Funny bastard.” Rob scanned the snow, squinting at the sun and its way-too-fast decline behind the hill to the west. “I’m serious. I think the compass on the snowboard is faulty.”
“Guess we better not stock it then.”
Joseph’s casual reply made Rob bite back another curse. He’d expected another punch. What this laidback attitude from Joseph meant was his best mate was going to make his life a living hell later. When he’d calmed down. “It shouldn’t be far,” he offered, scanning the area around them again and pointing a little to the left. “Unless the compass is totally fucked up, it should be somewhere in this direction.”
“Or it could be on the other side of the ridge.”
He gave Joe a sheepish sideward glance. “That would suck, wouldn’t it?”
“C’mon.” Joseph started walking again, his footfalls like gunshots in the icy air. “There’s no way the gods of lunatics would let you perish on a mountain in the US. Who’d they worship if that happened?”
“Ha ha. You really missed your true calling, Hudo. You shoulda been a comedian.”
Rob picked up his board and hurried to catch up with his best mate, casting the sinking sun a less-than-impressed look. Night would be on them soon. When that happened, the temperature would plummet. There were other less-appealing ways to die, but being turned into an icicle on the side of a bloody mountain was right up there with the worst. How the hell had he gotten this so wrong?
“Remind me to send an email to the manufacturers of that compass when we get back home,” he said to Joseph’s back.
The words tasted odd on Rob’s tongue. Like chalk dust and stagnant air.
Back home.
You’re not planning on going back home, are you?
“Y’know,” Joseph called over his shoulder, “I think I might write one as well.”
Rob couldn’t help himself. He laughed. Joseph may be the kid who needed a push to experience life, but when it came to business, he didn’t mess around. An email from Joseph Hudson pretty much spelt the end of any outdoor equipment supplier foolish enough to promote a product not ready for the market. Just like that.
“If it helps, you can have my beer.”
“Won’t say no.”
Rob laughed again. If they survived the night, he’d buy Joe a whole bloody brewery.
Chapter Two
Anna McCarthy lowered her binoculars and shook her head. Australians. What were they thinking?
She returned the glasses to her backpack, adjusted the straps on her stocks and pushed herself forward. The sun would be completely behind the horizon in less than fifteen minutes, which gave her less than ten to get to the two men wandering aimlessly at the base of Knife Ridge Chutes and get them into Wolf Creek rescue cabin number four.
After that, she’d spend a good fifteen minutes giving them a damn good lecture on mountain safety before charging them with reckless endangerment and presenting them with a hefty fine. Tourists, she’d learnt from experience, only learnt their lesson when their hip pockets were injured. And by the look of the equipment these two men were decked out in, the latest and greatest and very most expensive, their hip pockets could afford the pain.
Gliding through the terrain, she kept her stare locked on their dark shapes, each one a tall black streak of stupidity against the stark white snow.
The wind bit at her face, even through her protective gear, and she growled low in her throat. Australians. Thought they knew everything.
She’d noticed them at the bar last night, their accents drawing more than just
her
attention. By the time the tallest one with the sandy-blond hair and hawkish nose had finished his off-key rendition of that song from Kangaroo Jack and left, just about every woman in the bar had been gathered around their table.
Dodging a low-hanging branch, she stabbed her stocks into the snow, hurrying her speed. As far as she could tell, none of the fawning women had gotten lucky, much to their chagrin. The tall one, Joseph, she thought she’d heard his friend call him, hadn’t come back to the bar, and his friend had followed only a few hours—and beers and dances with said fawning women—later. Alone.
So is that why you’ve followed them for most of the day? They didn’t pick up anyone last night?
She grunted at the ridiculous notion, swerving a cluster of jagged boulders as she forced herself faster over the snow. No, she’d followed them most of the day because she’d heard the friend—Rob? Bob?—mention to one of his many admirers they were going to heli-jump onto Knife Ridge Chutes and planned to stay overnight in the unused Wolf Creek rescue cabin.
The trouble was he hadn’t informed her. And as the local ranger in charge of controlling Wolf Creek’s slopes and ski runs, anyone planning on spending the night on the side of Knife Ridge, no matter how gorgeous and well-equipped and obviously daring-do, had to tell her of those plans.
And something about them had told her they were going to get themselves into trouble.
Maybe it was the devilish glint in Rob/Bob’s way-too-sexy blue eyes? Or the dimple in his cheek? Or the way Joseph moved his hips on the table dancing to that annoyingly catchy song? Or the way your pussy fluttered and squeezed and got all warm and prickly when Joseph looked at you this morning in the lodge. Or the way you woke up covered in sweat after dreaming about them both undressing you with their teeth while their hands—
She cut the embarrassing thought dead before her face could get any hotter. She hadn’t had a wet dream since she was a teenager, and she sure as hell didn’t have one last night. She didn’t. And no, none of those reasons were why she now followed the Australian men. She’d followed them because her gut had told her they’d need her, and she always listened to her gut. Not her pussy.
Yeah, right.
“Oh, shut up,” she muttered with a savage thrust of her stocks. The push flung her past the last of the blanketed trees and, with another quick dig, she propelled herself closer to the two men. Close enough to hear them singing—singing of all things—some weird version of AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top” with the word “top” replaced by “hut”.
She ground her teeth and slid to a halt behind them, showering them both in snow, not even remotely interested in hiding her anger. “What the hell do you two morons think you’re doing?”
They spun to stare at her, their faces—flushed by the icy chill on the air—registered their shock.
Before they could say anything, she poked a finger at them, her stock dangling from her wrist to bang against her right knee. “Do you have any idea how dangerous what you are doing is? How stupid?”
The tall one—Joseph—gaped at her, his eyes locked on her face. “Err…”
“What my mate means to say—” Rob/Bob began, that evil dimple she’d seen last night flashing into existence on his right cheek.
“Is he’s a moron?” Anna snapped, cutting him off. The dimple was doing all sorts of unnerving things to her anger. And all sorts of unnerving things to her sex, damn it.
“Actually, I’m really very smart.”
The statement, falling from Joseph’s lips in a hurried jumble of accented words, seemed to surprise him. He blinked. And his friend burst out laughing. “Bloody hell, Hudo.” Rob/Bob smacked a fist into his friend’s shoulder, blue eyes twinkling. “It’s a good thing you’re loaded.”
Anna frowned at them both. She had no idea what Rob/Bob had just said—loaded? Surely Joseph wasn’t drunk on the mountain?—but whatever it was, it made Joseph glare at him. “Put a sock in it, Thorton,” he growled.
Hudo? Thorton? Singing when they should be scared stiff they were going to freeze to death? Laughing in the face of her anger? Who were these people?
Still chuckling, Rob/Bob turned back to her and fixed her with a direct blue stare. “We kinda fucked up, thanks to a wonky compass. You wouldn’t happen to know where the number four hut is, would you?”
Keeping a tight grip on her anger, Anna fixed him back with her own level glare. “I do. And if you promise not to sing anymore, I’ll take you there.”
Much to her dismay, Joseph started laughing. Much to her horror, her pussy started to flutter. Really quickly. And insistently.
Oh, Anna, don’t go getting turned on by two Australian idiots.
“Any chance we can persuade you to stay overnight with us?” Rob/Bob grinned, dimple still there. “I promise Hudo here won’t sing again.”
“Shut the hell up, Rob,” Joseph growled. “You sing worse than me.”
Anna felt like she was watching a game of tennis. She couldn’t stop moving her stare from one to the other. They couldn’t be for real. She was dreaming this. She’d fallen asleep thinking about how they’d need saving and this is the scenario her psyche had come up with: two gorgeous, sexy-assed Australians asking her to stay overnight in the deserted, unused rescue cabin with them. All three of them locked up together, with nothing to do all night except—
“Shouldn’t we be getting a move on?” Rob’s deep voice, complete with that sinful Australian accent that made her pulse quicken, jerked her out of her confused trance.
She blinked, giving them both another hard stare, hoping like hell her cheeks weren’t as red as she thought they were. “Follow me,” she snarled, snatching at the grips of her stocks and pushing herself away from them. “And try not to get lost.”
For an answer, Rob laughed.
“You’re a fine one to laugh, Thorton,” she heard Joseph say, his accent just as sinful as Rob’s, “you’re the one that got us in this predicament to begin with.”
“And you can thank me later, mate,” Rob replied.
For reasons Anna couldn’t understand, her pulse kicked up a notch. And her sex grew damp.
Oh, Anna. You know where this is leading, don’t you?
She pushed her way through the snow and trees, leading the two men to the rescue cabin on the northwest side of the valley. she had to admit their snowboarding skills were quite impressive. Better than their navigational skills, that was for certain. Much better than their singing skills, even if their accents were sexy as hell. The pit of her belly knotted and she scowled, doing her upmost not to think about staying overnight with them. She didn’t have to stay. None of them did. If she got to the cabin quickly enough, she could contact base and tell them to send up a chopper. They’d be back in the lodge, no doubt singing on tables again, before midnight.
And that’s what you’re going to do, isn’t it? That is, because that’s the right thing to do. The sane thing.
Not
calling the chopper,
not
going back down the mountain, that’s the wrong thing to do. Staying overnight in the hut with them, that’s just plain…
“Silly,” she muttered, rounding a grove of pine.
The
grove of pine. The grove beside which sat—
“The hut!” Rob cried, his enthusiastic cheer making Anna’s nipples pinch into hard little points. “See, Hudo? I wasn’t that far off.”
Joseph chuckled. “Yeah, you’re a regular Saint Bernard.”
The warm, happy sound made Anna’s nipples pinch harder, and she bit back an exasperated groan. God help her, she wasn’t just getting turned on by their accents, she was almost coming thanks to their foolhardy attitude to getting lost.
She titled her hips, preparing to swing around to face them, when Rob swooshed past, his tall, lean body looking deliciously confident on his snowboard. He cut to a halt at the door of the rescue cabin and flashed his dimple at her again. “So,” he said, blue eyes shrouded in shadows cast by the almost sleeping sun, “you going to join us inside?”
Anna narrowed her eyes at him, refusing to acknowledge the eager throb between her thighs. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you two are in? How much this rescue is going to cost you? I can lay charges. I could—”
“Have the best night of your life,” Rob finished with a grin.
Behind her, she heard Joseph moan. Low and almost inaudible, but a moan all the same. One filled with…hope?
She turned her head and looked at him over her shoulder, the memory of her dream flooding through her. No, it wasn’t just her dream making her body thrum with an inexplicable, hungry urgency. It was the way Joseph had looked singing on the table—like all the happiness in life, all the joy and fun, had somehow been poured into this one man. It was the memory of how her lips had curled into a smile watching him. It was the disappointment she’d felt when he’d left the bar before she could get the chance to muster up the courage to introduce herself. Not to mention the relief she’d experienced when he’d left the bar alone.
His eyes moved to her, their cookie-brown depths asking a question her body knew the answer to, even if her head didn’t.
Oh, Anna.
“I dare you.” The three words passed Rob’s lips with silken devilment, and her pussy contracted in eager want. She stared at him, her heart racing, thumping in her throat with such force she could barely draw breath. Two men, two Australians. Both somehow the embodiment of every fantasy she’d never known. Both dangerously gorgeous, both sinfully sexy. Both capable of making her almost orgasm just by speaking, let alone what they could do with their hands. Two men. One mountain. One momentous dare.
Without saying a thing, she bent down and unlatched her boots, disconnecting them from her skis.
Her blood roaring in her ears, she crossed to the cabin’s door and searched for the key to its lock in the top pocket of her jacket. Her fingers brushed her breast through the thermal material of the garment and she hitched in a gasp, the jolts of pleasure darting through her body at the completely un-sensual contact making her head spin.