Chapter 1 #2
“Nah. It’s gotta be the kid,” Sergio says and pokes at Henry’s side, eliciting a high-pitched laugh from him.
“Uncle Sergio! No tickles,” Henry shouts and continues to giggle, happy as can be.
Sergio puts his hands up.
“No, keep going!” Henry demands. Sergio dives back in again, grinning at Henry’s unbridled joy.
“How about you, Adrien. How’s the book coming?”
“Backburnered until I have more time.” Adrien sighs.
Holden nods his head. “Too busy keeping your brother’s career afloat, huh?”
“Exactly.” Adrien laughs in agreement.
“Hey!” Sergio exclaims.
“Oh, come on,” Holden says. “We can all agree Adrien is the most responsible of the three of us.”
“Only because he’s the most boring.” He looks at Henry and tips his head towards the front seat as if to say, ‘Can you believe these two?’
Henry smiles broadly at him while still zooming his new car around the confines of his seat.
“And what about Daphne? How’s she doing?”
Sergio strains to listen in from the back seat. Last he’d heard, much to Sergio’s relief, Daphne and Adrien were on the rocks.
“Oh, she’s fine,” Adrien says, a hint of sadness in his voice. “She’s been spending the holidays back home in Paris with her family.”
“I’m a little surprised you’re not in Paris with her,” Holden says. “I know this is tradition and all for us to be together for New Year's, but … you’re not obligated, you know.”
“Sure he is,” Sergio says, stopping his tickling of Henry to reach over the back seat to jostle Adrien’s and Holden’s hair simultaneously. “What would New Year’s be without my brothers?”
Brothers who somehow manage to balance each other when they are all together.
Holden works as a bit of a salve that keeps Sergio’s and Adrien’s rougher edges from slicing through one another.
It’s been like this for ages. The three of them are born and raised New Yorkers who grew up together in the same building, on the same top two floors, in two adjacent penthouses.
All of them are wildly rich, talented in their own ways, and genetic lottery winners.
The three are brothers in everything but blood.
“I trust you boys can find your rooms,” Holden says, leading them into his well-lit and warm log cabin-style mountain home. He beelines through the house's wide-open floor plan, heading straight for the kitchen.
“Is that damn cat still alive?” Sergio asks.
“Yes,” Holden says. As if summoned, a white and black cat jumps onto one of the stools lining the kitchen island and glares at Sergio, his tail lazily flicking behind him. “Gus is still alive, and he’s taken to sleeping under your bed. So play nice.”
Holden pulls three beers from the fridge, twists one open, and then places the other two bottles on the counter.
He gently strokes between Gus’s ears, causing the cat to purr in Holden’s direction before hissing at Sergio.
“I’m gonna take Henry down to the barn to get Rose if either of you wants to come with me. ”
Sergio flips off the cat, then grabs one of the bottles. He twists the top off and takes a sip. A broad smile lifts his lips. “Yeah, I’ll join you,” he says, then looks at Adrien. “Could you take my bag to my room?”
“Absolutely not,” Adrien says. He takes the last beer, then makes a swift turn and struts away from them towards the stairs with his suitcase in hand and his head held high. Gus follows him, walking behind just as proudly.
“Rude,” Sergio calls out to his brother.
“Come on, man.” Holden claps Sergio on the shoulder. “He’s on vacation. Let’s not treat him like your errand boy all week.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You kind of were.” Holden squeezes his shoulder, then jostles him slightly before he begins to lead him out the back door. “Come on, Henry,” he calls out, and the kid immediately comes running after them, his feet skidding on the large-planked hardwood floor.
“So what’s the deal with the new skater? Is Rose trying to keep her a secret or something?”
“Nah.” Holden brushes off the question and gestures towards a barn twice the size of their house, nestled between the tall fir trees. “It’s more that everyone involved likes the privacy of the barn over the public rink in town. Besides, this gave me an excuse to buy a proper Zamboni.”
Sergio bursts into laughter. His eyes spark with mischief. “Do you get to drive that thing?”
“All the time!” Holden’s face lights up with glee and a crooked smile. He takes a sip of his beer. “What a rush.”
“A rush?” Sergio laughs some more. “What does it go, five, maybe ten miles an hour?”
“I can get it up to a good twelve if I really hit the gas,” Holden says, nodding his head in continued excitement as he opens the barn’s side door.
It’s warmer inside the barn than it is outside, despite it being an ice rink.
Now that the sun has gone down, the crisp winter cold has settled in between the tall aspen trees.
“I’ll let you take it for a spin if you like. ”
Sergio sips his beer and grins around the mouth of the bottle. “I would definitely like.”
“You will definitely not,” Rose says, narrowing her ice-blue eyes at Sergio and sliding in between the two of them to give him a loose, welcoming hug.
“I will not have this menace destroy my dream home ice rink.” She lets go of Sergio, picks up Henry and places him on her hip, then turns to look at Holden.
She points at him. “You're lucky I let you drive the thing.”
She turns back to Sergio, but he ignores her and moves on.
His attention is now focused on the ice.
Or rather, who’s on the ice. He’s staring at two people.
One is a tiny woman with rich brown skin and a head of dark, tight, corkscrew-curly hair piled high atop her head.
Any loose wisps and curls are held in place by a silk scarf tied around her hairline.
She’s stunning and perfectly put together despite the fact that it’s nearing seven p.m. and she’s likely been on the ice since eight this morning.
Working with her is an average-sized man with creamy skin, slightly disheveled, warm, light brown hair, and a smackable ass Sergio immediately recognizes as that of Jeremy Owens.
They’d carried on a mild flirtation that went nowhere at the last Olympic Games (where both Holden and Rose won gold.
Holden technically won two golds that year, but who’s counting?).
Jeremy had seemed interested but ultimately brushed Sergio’s advances aside, claiming he needed to focus on the competition and that maybe they could go out for dinner after the games were done.
But Sergio had never heard from Jeremy again.
Had he not been so busy chasing other athletes around the Olympic Village after his rejection from Jeremy, he might have known why. Jeremy’s dramatic exit from the games was the biggest tear-filled news story on the world’s stage at the time.
“So, what do you think?” Rose asks him, breaking him from his stupor of staring at Jeremy.
He rakes his eyes back over to the young woman Jeremy is working with. “She looks good. Promising.”
Rose rolls her eyes. “I meant the rink. Pretty awesome, right?”
“Oh, yeah. Definitely …” Sergio says, his voice trailing off as he continues to watch the two skaters on the ice.
He’s now giving them equal attention while his libido argues over which one he should try to pull into his bed tonight.
The way the woman moves is mesmerizing. She practically floats across the surface, as if her blades aren’t carving deep edges into the frozen water.
Jeremy, however, looks less sure-footed as he skates slowly beside her, giving her choreographic directions to lead her through a series of flourishes of the arms as well as careful loops, turns, and crossovers of the feet that she mimics in time to the classical music softly playing through the barn’s speakers.
“Allison. Jeremy. Let’s wrap it up!” Rose calls as she skates onto the ice with Henry in her arms. Eventually, she lets him down onto the surface. He slips and slides on the soles of his shoes, his little voice calling Jeremy’s name the entire way.
“Careful, buddy. Remember what we talked about,” Rose says.
“I know, Mom!” Henry yells back. “Be careful around Jeremy on the ice.”
“Yeah, Henry!” Holden says beside Sergio. “If you want to knock someone over, your uncle Sergio is a much better target.”
Sergio mocks being offended by placing a hand over his heart. “How dare you turn my godson against me?”
Holden smiles and laughs, his eyebrows lifting in a playful challenge. “It’s not like we all haven’t wanted to knock you over from time to time.”
“And again, it’s back to pick-on-Sergio day,” Sergio says with a light-hearted laugh, but he wonders what’s with all the cutting remarks leveled at him at first by Adrien and now Holden. He supposes it must be brotherly teasing, and he goes back to watching the skaters.
Allison gracefully makes her way to the low step on the side of the rink and takes a seat. She grabs a sip of water out of a nearby bottle. She looks up at Rose. “That new sequence leading into the triple flip feels more natural. It’s an easier flow.”
“You hear that, Jeremy?” Rose says. “You were right about changing up that footwork pattern.”
“I’m glad that worked. If we need to tweak it some more, we can,” Jeremy says as he carefully skates to meet Henry where he’s fallen yet again.
A big, dimple-filled grin lights up Henry’s face when Jeremy gets to him.
He grabs Henry’s hand and attempts to hold him steady.
“Easy now, Henry. Remember what I taught you.”
“So what’s with this guy?” Sergio asks Holden, jutting his chin forward.
“Jeremy?”
“No, the other guy on the ice.”
“You’ve met him before.”
“I know that.” Sergio takes a sip of his beer. “I meant, why is he here?”