Chapter Four
THE COOL AIR should have broken the spell she’d cast on him, but it sharpened it, making Crew even more aware of the petite bundle of energy beside him.
Trouble. He smiled to himself. He should probably ask her real name, but this one fit her so well, all bundled up in that outrageous outfit, looking at him with the most mischievous and expressive eyes he’d ever seen.
He’d always been drawn to tall, leggy women and had never thought of mischief as seductive, but everything about this brunette beauty drew him deeper into her.
“Brr,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself and leaning into his side.
He caught her hand before it disappeared into her jacket pocket and guided it beneath his jacket and around his back, tucking her under his arm. “Better?”
“Much,” she said, settling in like she belonged there.
Hell if it didn’t feel like she did.
The thought caught him off guard, rattling him.
He’d been honest with her about not being a one-night-stand guy, but his life was too complicated to even think about entanglements.
He had a lot of shit to work out, and he was under no misconception that any woman would be able to see past what he’d done.
So what the hell am I doing with this incredible woman?
Fuck if he knew, but no part of him was ready to walk away.
Swallowing that bitter pill, he said, “How’s your ankle?”
“Okay. Don’t worry, Ragnar. If it starts hurting, I’ll climb onto your back.” She smiled up at him, and it hit square in the center of his chest.
He liked that she assumed he wouldn’t mind and said, “Sounds good. Where to?”
“Down there.” She motioned to the path that led to the cabins.
Snow crunched beneath their boots as they made their way along the narrow path, the sweeping slopes and majestic mountains to their left, a smattering of trees and distant lights to their right.
Crew drank it all in deliberately and reverently, each detail a reminder of the freedoms he’d once taken for granted.
He found beauty in the littlest things now.
The way their breath fogged the air, the occasional snowflakes drifting by, and the scent of winter carried in the breeze laced with a hint of summer sun coming from the woman at his side.
“I love this,” she said easily.
“Walking along this path?”
“All of it. The cold, the snow. So many people think cold weather is miserable and wish it away, but I love how it makes everything shine and feel more alive. I even like the gray, gloomy days, when the sky doesn’t know if it wants to snow, sleet, or rain.”
Her enthusiasm was too passionate to be performative, and that made her even more intriguing.
“I could never live where there were no seasons,” she said. “Could you?”
“I used to think I could live anywhere.” But years of looking at the same angry faces and the same cold cell walls had taught him otherwise.
He’d spent his time in prison keeping his head down, working out, reading, learning as much as he could, and doing too much damn thinking.
Before that, he’d not only snowboarded and skied, but he’d ridden horses, taken part in most sports, and golfed, and he’d had a career in wealth management, which had given him a host of problems to solve every day.
He loved the work, but he was done with that elitist lifestyle and all the fake shit that went along with it.
One thing all that thinking made him realize was that as much as he needed to be intellectually stimulated, he needed nature in equal measure. He never wanted to be locked in a cell, an office, or anywhere else, ever again.
“It sounds like there’s a but coming,” Birdie said, drawing him from his thoughts.
“There is. I was wrong. I don’t think I can live without seasons either,” he said. “I need the cold wind on my face as much as I need the warm summer heat.”
“See? We have something in common besides excellent snowboarding skills. I like walking with you, Ragnar, not knowing for sure what the night holds. And don’t tell me,” she insisted, squeezing his hand. “I like not knowing.”
“That’s good, because I don’t have a playbook. I’m taking tonight as it comes.”
“Me too. Want to hear something weird?”
“That depends. How weird are we talking?”
“Not juicy-gossip weird,” she said. “Just a little strange.”
“In that case, I can live without it.”
“Oh. Okay,” she said a little dejectedly.
He hugged her against his side. “I’m kidding.
Spill the weirdness, Trouble. You don’t have to ask me if I want to hear what you have to say.
I like it when you talk. Say it all. Anything.
” He’d gone far too long without hearing the sound of a friendly female voice, and he happened to love the upbeat, challenging sound of hers.
“You might regret giving me free rein. I never really know what’s going to come out of my mouth,” she said lightly.
“But what’s weird is that when I’m out in the snow at night like this, it makes me feel free from all my responsibilities, no matter where I am.
It’s like something changes in my head, and poof, they don’t exist, even though I know they do, and I can just be a girl enjoying the snow. Do you ever feel like that?”
“Like a girl enjoying the snow?” he said as the lights of the lodge faded behind them. “Can’t say I do.”
She laughed. “First of all, that’s a shame. It’s fun being a girl. Second of all, I meant have you ever felt like you’ve been gifted a few hours or a weekend away from the stress of real life to simply breathe?”
After the hurt I’ve caused, every breath feels like an undeserved gift.
Keeping that to himself, he said, “I don’t know.”
“I’m not buying that, Ragnar.” She led him down another path, lamps casting golden halos in the snow. “You seem like a deep thinker, and deep thinkers usually overanalyze everything. I have a couple of brothers like that.”
He clenched his jaw, hoping she didn’t have brothers that carried the kind of burdens he did.
“Which means you probably don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “That’s cool. There are things I don’t want to talk about, too.”
She paused, and her energy shifted, like she was holding something in. He waited for her to say more. When she didn’t, he let the silence linger. But then he remembered she worried when things were too quiet, and he didn’t want that.
“Is winter your favorite season?” As the words left his lips, he realized he wasn’t just breaking the silence. He was curious about her.
“Yes,” she said enthusiastically. “I used to stay out until my toes went numb. My mom had to coax me inside with promises of hot chocolate with colored mini marshmallows. Everyone else liked the plain ones, but I would only eat the colored ones. Here’s a fun fact.
When I was in eighth grade, I got a really bad case of the flu, and I wouldn’t eat anything.
I mean, nothing. One of my brothers was worried about me, so he made a whole tray of different foods like sandwiches, cereals, mac and cheese, and they all had little colored marshmallows on them. ”
He liked knowing her brother wanted to take care of her. “Did you eat it?”
“Kind of. I picked off all of the marshmallows and ate them. But later that night, he got me to eat chicken soup by putting colored marshmallows in it. To this day, when I’m sick, that’s what I eat.
And between you and me, those little marshmallows don’t disintegrate.
They get kind of filmy and gross when they’re soggy, but they still make me happy. ”
He squeezed her against his side, liking that she didn’t feel the need to justify that happiness.
“What about you?” she asked. “Are you more of a snow guy or a sun guy?”
“I like both, but snow was my first love.” And the smell of summer is quickly becoming my favorite scent.
“Your first love,” she said dreamily. “I’m still searching for mine. Why was it your first?”
He was still processing her first love comment, but she switched gears so fast, he didn’t want to slow her down by asking about it. “Some of my best memories are from the winter.”
“Why?” She smiled up at him with genuine curiosity. “What makes them the best?”
“The people. My mom and my younger brother, Robbie, used to love the snow. She’d stay outside all day with us, sledding and having snowball fights, laughing the whole time.
She taught us to ski and learned to snowboard with us, too.
And then there were her winter pies. She made the best orange chocolate ricotta pie.
She’d put extra chocolate chips on top of the crust a few minutes before it came out of the oven, and man.
There’s nothing better on a cold night.” The admission caught him off guard.
He never talked about his mother and Robbie with anyone, and he had no idea why he shared them so easily with her, but it felt good to talk about them.
Their memories were never far from his mind.
They’re what had pulled him through the last few years.
“Did they stop enjoying it or grow out of it? Sometimes that happens. People get so busy making their mark on the world, they forget to have fun. I hope that never happens to me.”
He hadn’t expected her to ask about them. His ex didn’t like to talk about anything real, and he’d never realized how often she had changed the subject until after he was locked away. He briefly considered keeping the truth to himself, but he was tired of pretending they weren’t always on his mind.
“No. Robbie never got to make his mark on the world. He died when he was nine.” Crew walked slower, the loss still raw after all these years.
Her hand tightened around his waist, and she looked up at him with so much empathy, it tugged at those painful places deep inside him. “That’s awful. Robbie was so young. How…?” she said softly. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how painful that must’ve been, or still is. I’d fall apart.”
She pressed closer to him without saying more, as if proximity itself was an offering.
For him, it was.