Snowy Mountain Nights

If she wasn’t seeing him with her own eyes, she would have thought a sport like snowboarding completely unlike him. He seemed best suited for cold and emotionless things like chess, polo or even rowing. Not this howling and graceful sport that was all adrenaline, physical power and falling down in the snow. She couldn’t even see him falling, being messy and human enough to tumble and get up and try something again. She imagined that he always did everything right the first time.

Garrison had pulled his gray ski mask from over his mouth, revealing full lips and that unexpected dimple in his chin. His goggles reflected twin images of her sitting on the dark rock with her mouth open.

She snapped her teeth together with a sharp click.

Garrison turned skillfully on the board and stopped near her. He was dressed completely in gray. Gray? She did a double-take and glanced down the hill toward the man she had been sketching. He wasn’t there. She had a sinking feeling that he was the one at her side. He must have taken the lift back up and circled around.

Garrison clicked his feet from the latches on the snowboard. He was slightly out of breath, his lips parted to blow trailing heat into the air.

“I feel cold just looking at you.” He started to pull off his gloves. “Take these. Your friends would be very disappointed if you came back to the ski lodge with some fingers missing from frostbite.”

She shook her head and picked up the thick pair of snow gloves next to her. “I already have some.” She pulled on the gloves, wincing as her fingers burned from the cold.

Garrison resituated his gloves on his hands. He watched her, his face expressionless. No smile, merely his eyes hungrily moving over her, like a visual devouring. It left her with a strange feeling, that voracious gaze. Not unpleasant...but not exactly warm and fuzzy, either.

She stared back at him, refusing to look away.

They were hardly alone. Occasional skiers and snowboarders blew past them, whipping up snow and stirring up the cold in the air. But it felt as if they were isolated together on the mountain with only the sky and sun to look down on them. She didn’t want to feel that with him. Reyna deliberately turned away from Garrison. “What do you want?”

“You didn’t use my business card yet.”

“I’m not going to.”

Snow crunched, and the air moved as he came closer to her. Over the crispness of the pine trees and the cool bite of the snow, she smelled him. Sweat and a faintly woodsy cologne. The tang of sunblock. His gray jacket brushed her bright yellow one when he sat next to her. Although she knew it was impossible, it felt as if their skin touched.

“So, be honest.” There was amusement in his voice, although his face did not change. “Do you plan on hating me forever, Ms. Allen?”

“I don’t hate you.”

She sat with him, unable to get even that simple fact out of her mind. She was sitting with Garrison Richards. The man who she perhaps may not have hated, but had strong and poisonous feelings for. On that first day in his office, receiving the brunt of his cool and arrogant stare meant to unnerve her and make her give up everything else she had, she’d wanted nothing more than to rush from the conference room and out into the sun, letting it burn away the ice-cold bath that had been his gaze.

And now he was here with her in the snow. Under the burning sun, asking her about hating him forever. The world was a strange place.

“Isn’t there some sort of ethical problem with you being here with me?” she asked.

“You are the wife of a former client. Ian Barbieri doesn’t have me on retainer, and he and I have no business dealings. I see no conflict of interest here. But I can check if that makes you feel any better.” She heard the smile in his voice again. Bastard.

The only real conflict was probably in her. She remembered the past much too vividly and irrationally blamed him for what happened to her during the divorce. More so than even her ex-husband.

Reyna squirmed at that uncomfortable realization.

She wanted to get back to her sketching, but her hand hurt too much from the cold. She must have made some motion toward her sketch pad because Garrison looked over at it. Too late, she remembered that she had been working on a sketch of the snowboarder—of him!—just before he sat down. She didn’t justify his curiosity by trying to hide her work.

He took off his thick gloves, revealing thin black leather that clung to his fingers like a second skin. His hands were big, she noticed, but graceful.

“May I?”

She clenched her teeth against refusing him. Maybe the sooner he saw what she was doing, the sooner he would leave. His fascination with her was...distracting. She ignored the rational part of her that chimed in about her own unwanted fascination with the ruthless lawyer.

“Sure,” she said in response to his question. “Just don’t get my stuff wet.” Reyna froze and almost bit her tongue off at what she just said.

He arched a dark, slashing eyebrow. “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever had a woman say that to me.”

She stared at him in shock. But he was reaching for her sketch pad, and his austere grace seemed even more so beneath the brilliance of the early-afternoon sunlight. Except for the reflective goggles crowning his head, he could have been in any boardroom in the world. Removed and critical. His powerful hands carefully handled her sketchbook, flipping through its pages, pausing at one or two before moving on. Yes, definitely critical.

“These sketches are wonderful.” He flipped another page of the book, going from the images of the snowboarder she’d captured more thoroughly, to her earlier on-the-fly doodles of the mountain, the snow, the dots of people winding below her toward the lodges. “You’re very talented.”

“Thank you.” She hid her surprise at his unexpected compliment, not quite knowing what else to say in response. If this was part of his campaign to satisfy his strange curiosity about her, he was choosing the wrong way to go about it. She didn’t respond well to insincerity.

But a brief look from his hawkish eyes made her realize that this wasn’t a man who said something he didn’t mean. An unwelcome warmth began to unfurl in her belly. Reyna hissed quietly and braced her gloved hands against the rock, glad for the dull pain that distracted her from his compliments, his nearness.

This was Garrison Richards, she reminded herself. Again.

“My mother draws, too,” he continued in his low and compelling voice. “And don’t tell her I said this, but your work is much more interesting, more fluid.” He flipped back to the sketch of the snowboarder. Of himself. “I admire the way you capture the image in a personal way. You’re there with the subject instead of just watching. The intimacy is very seductive.”

Was he playing with her? Didn’t he know he was talking about himself? But he turned to the sketches of the mountain that she’d begun to fill in with long strokes of the pencil. Craggy slopes, white snow, a feathering of trees. The wide and low-hanging sky that kissed the mountaintop just so. “It’s like you’re a nature sprite sitting in the cloud here.” He tapped the page at a cloud she had half drawn. “Watching this world that you love.”

Heat touched her cheeks at his suggestive and unexpected comments. She didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything.

She looked away from the sketchbook in Garrison’s hands, the white paper held between fingers that were an odd mix of rugged and refined. They were almost a working man’s hands, but the way he handled her work, even through the thin leather gloves, was like a curator touching something delicate and easily damaged. A contradiction she didn’t want to notice but was helpless not to. It made him even more interesting than she had first thought. Now he was more than his dangerously sexy looks, more than the unpleasant history between them. She forced her gaze away from his hands.

“It’s just a hobby,” she said finally, training her eyes on the vast mountain view spread out before her. The thick clouds tumbling through the skies promised another bout of snow.

“Somehow I doubt that. Talent like this has to be more than a hobby.” He nodded toward the sketch pad. “Do you do this for a living?”

She flinched when Garrison carefully replaced the sketch pad on the rock next to her. Reyna smelled him as he leaned behind her, the tang of his aftershave, sweat and sunscreen overwhelming her senses. She closed her eyes briefly to savor the scent of him, then snapped them open when she realized what she was doing.

What did he just ask her? She drew a steadying breath. “I’m a tattoo artist, so I guess I do. People occasionally ask me to do original sketches and portraits for their body art.”

“Really?” He glanced over her body as if he could see under her clothes to any ink she may or may not have beneath them. “Tattoos?”

“Yes. Tattoos.” Reyna stiffened, preparing for another of Garrison’s judgmental looks.

She rarely told people what she did for a living. Unless they came into the studio where she worked, people never assumed Reyna was any more than she appeared: a slightly boring, nice girl. Not that being a tattoo artist exempted her from being boring. Once people found out her job, men in particular, they only wanted to know one thing. Or maybe two. And they always assumed she had some hidden pain kink or was a bad girl looking for a bad boy.

“How unique,” Garrison said. “I’m sure your work is some of the most beautiful in the city.”

She warmed again at his compliment. And at his unexpected reaction to her job. It was such a very different reaction from the one she’d gotten from her ex-husband, someone who had known her for most of her adult life. With Garrison’s thoughtful silence, she drifted into the past to the one and only time she’d been in the same place with Ian after the divorce.

One night, he had wandered into her tattoo studio from off the busy nighttime street. Reyna was in her zone, the buzz of the needle vibrating between her fingers as she sat on a chair working on the large trail of red poppies a pale-skinned client wanted down her spine.

The bell above the door rang, announcing that someone had walked in, but she didn’t pay much attention since she was already occupied. A hum of excitement began in the shop. Then she heard Ian’s voice and couldn’t stop herself from freezing up in automatic rejection of him being in her space.

He walked in like a big TV star, attracting the attention of everyone in the shop, signing autographs and pretending not to see her. But eventually, he hadn’t been able to help himself and walked over to her sectioned-off area.

Ian jerked his chin in her direction. “I bet you’re into bondage and all kinds of sick garbage now. You want a man to tie you up and make you bleed?”

Reyna continued her work, even when she felt her client’s body tense with interest at Ian’s proximity. She’d had months of practice keeping herself centered and calm. He drifted into her field of vision, but she acted as if he wasn’t there.

Among other things, he called her a pain slut, ready for torture and blood at the hands of a lover. She focused on the tattoo gun in her hand, the red poppies taking shape beneath the needle.

Her nonresponsiveness worked perfectly. He never came by the studio again.

Reyna returned from her reverie to find Garrison watching her closely with his usual unreadable expression.

“Tattooing is not my passion,” she said for want of some sort of barrier between them. “But it’s an amazing thing to walk around the city sometimes and see a client with my work on their body.”

“I can only imagine how satisfying that would be.” Garrison looked down the mountain, and Reyna followed his gaze.

Snow and fresh powder, nothing but cold white for miles. His hobby, or passion. Another surprise between them.

“You should go,” she said. “Don’t waste this. It won’t last long.”

She didn’t know if she was talking about the snow or the weekend or life.

“You’re right,” Garrison said. “Nothing really lasts, does it?” His intent eyes settled on her again. “All the more reason to enjoy it while you can instead of looking ahead to its end.”

Her mouth curled into a smile. “You can think of it that way, yes.”

He nodded as if he’d decided something. “I’ll be seeing you again, Ms. Allen.”

She watched him click back onto his snowboard, pull on his thick gloves and mask and lower his goggles. He seemed alien and untouchable against the landscape that was all sunlight, the cheerful dip of the evergreens, a clear blue sky. All around she heard the joyful shouts of people enjoying themselves in the snow.

“Until then.” She dipped her head in his direction.

He scudded down the mountain, kicking up snow in his wake, the movement of his dark shape on the bright snow pulling an aching cord in her belly. She drew in a breath at the warm feeling. No. She did not want this.

It was one thing to find him attractive. It was another entirely to find herself actually attracted to him. The subtle humor in his long-lashed eyes. His masculine scent. The fact that he wasn’t as boring and arrogant as she expected. Reyna swallowed thickly, and she watched him fly away from her. She had a feeling she was about to get herself in trouble.

* * *

Reyna spent another couple of hours sketching and enjoying her semi-isolation before her friends came back and dragged her from her mountain perch for sledding and impromptu drinks with some men they’d met on the slopes. Ahmed Clark was not among these eligible bachelors, but Bridget was happy enough.

Later on, in the cabin and under the influence of the hot toddies Louisa made, her friends tried to go back to the subject of Garrison Richards. But Reyna steered them toward something else. Louisa smirked, her look telling Reyna that she couldn’t avoid her feelings for the lawyer, or her discussion of them, for too much longer. But whatever respite she had, Reyna would gladly take. Garrison made her feel too uneasy, overheated and uncomfortable for her to talk about him just yet. Even to her closest friends.

They stayed up until late, talking about life and love and everything in between. At a little past three in the morning, the women all pled exhaustion, even Bridget. Reyna, however, was still wide awake. She didn’t need much sleep, and working at the tattoo studio, which was open until 4:00 a.m. some Saturdays, she was used to going to bed as late as six in the morning.

After her friends went to bed, she couldn’t slow down her mind. She couldn’t stop thinking about Garrison and his snow-flecked flight down the mountain. She couldn’t stop thinking about his smell. Spicy and masculine, like a long and back-bending night in a warm bed.

It was as if he was still next to her, body crowding her on the couch, inflaming her late-night imagination with thoughts of what it would be like to kiss him. Wondering what harm there would be to allow him this chase at the resort, allow him to catch her and be with her away from real life in the city.

The more her body marinated in thoughts of having him, the more her brain shouted at her to stop being so stupid. He wasn’t a good person. He was just as bad as Ian, maybe worse.

Her thoughts grew clamorous, too loud and too shameful to be cooped up in the cabin with so many sleeping souls. She got up from the couch and dampened the fire, pulled on her snow gear and stepped out into the cold.

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