Chapter 20 - Paisley
How could I stay mad when Dan was bustling around the small cabin, trying all possible ways of making it warmer and more comfortable.
He even found coffee while I sat there stewing about my lost snowboard.
I’d never see it again, and I should just get over it, but it was like losing a bit of my past that was still important to me.
I could at least beat him at a few rounds of poker to get some of my own back.
He began to shuffle, grinning at me like I’d forgiven him already, solely because of some weak instant coffee, which in the circumstances, was actually pretty heavenly.
I was already feeling less ornery but still forced a scowl at him.
If he thought we’d get cozy together just because we were trapped, he was wrong. So wrong.
“I really am sorry about your board,” he said, offering to buy me a new one again. “Even if the old one is irreplaceable, you can’t go without one.”
I sighed, shaking my head. “Oh, I’m sure I’ll live. This trip is the first time I’ve been out in almost two years.”
He looked shocked. “I would have thought you lived on the slopes as soon as winter rolled around every year.”
“I used to,” I said. “When I was on the national team, we traveled to find the snow.”
“And your board went with you,” he said astutely. So, mister jokes had a bit of sensitivity in him.
“It’s not just that,” I said, feeling a crack forming in the dam I’d built against a whole host of unpleasant feelings.
“My parents were so proud of me when I was competing. They were super invested in me going pro after the Olympics and I think they were more crushed than I was after I got injured.”
I arranged my cards, thinking back to how hard they pushed me while I was in physical therapy, how their encouragement began to feel more threatening than supportive.
They were certain the pain I felt was all in my head.
Maybe it was, maybe I knew I’d never perform as well as I could before.
I got back out there and gave it my best, and I was still able to compete, but there was a difference between being good and staying at the top of a high level, elite team.
After I chose to accept reality and went to school to get my accounting degree, their disappointment was loud and clear.
We drifted apart and now rarely spoke, let alone had Christmases together.
“The board was a memory of happier times,” I said.
“You’re still great at what you do,” he said, just as he laid down three eights to beat my pair of jacks.
I took the cards to shuffle and deal them myself, frowning as new anxiety hit me. “Oh my God, Katie must be freaking out, wondering where I am. They were supposed to go into town this afternoon without the kids.”
He snorted, pointing at the windows, pure white behind the flannel curtains. “They’re not going anywhere, and it’s not like we can really help ourselves out of this situation at the moment.”
I didn’t bother reminding him we’d be at the resort at the bottom of the mountain with working phones if he followed my directions and went down the easy trail.
I had to keep my wits about me to keep from getting my butt kicked at poker.
I had been brash with my comment about kicking his ass, but I neatly lost another round even after dealing the cards myself.
“See, I’m not cheating,” he said. “I feel like my ass is safe.”
“Let’s switch to triple draw,” I said. “I’ll whip you at that.”
He nodded, reshuffling and dealing again. “It’s your money.”
“When did we agree to play for money?” I yelped.
“Come on, where’s your bravado now that you’ve lost a couple hands?” he teased. “I thought you were fearless.”
“I can be fearless about pride, but I’m fairly certain my bank account isn’t anywhere near yours.”
“Imaginary money then.”
“Okay, I can afford imaginary money.”
“So, your parents think being a professional nanny is a step down from professional snowboarding?” he asked, swerving the subject back to my sticky past.
I laughed. “Um, I kind of do, too,” I said, really referring to my decision to go into accounting.
He couldn’t know about that since I wasn’t about to besmirch Marlowe’s agency and admit I was a last minute replacement.
“It’s good work that pays well, but they believed I gave up without enough of a fight.
They could never forgive me for ruining their dream of managing a big time sports star. ”
He shook his head, looking disgusted. “Who could act that way to their own child? As if you weren’t suffering your own loss.”
Wow, he really did get it. I gave him a sincere smile, feeling a weight lifting off my shoulders I wasn’t even aware I’d been carrying. I never spoke about my estrangement from my parents, not even with my closest friend. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.
Then he just about gave me a heart attack.
“So who are these assholes at Axon?” he asked. “And what’s Axon, anyway? It sounds familiar.”
I blinked, feeling all the blood drain out of my face.
How did he know about that? Oh crap, I had been so angry about being trapped in the storm with Dan that I let it slip that I thought he was the same as my former coworkers with his deranged cockiness.
I cast around for a believable lie and finally just decided to stick close to the truth.
“It’s just a place I worked before I started at Marlowe’s agency,” I said. “It was full of obnoxious, sexist pigs who couldn’t keep their eyes or their hands to themselves.”
He put his hand on his heart, acting like he was wounded, while at the same time glancing down at my chest in my snug thermal underwear. Then he scowled.
“Looking is hard not to do,” he said. “You’re completely fucking gorgeous. But touching? Get me names so I can make a list and end them.”
He was joking. Of course he was joking. But I nearly slid off the hard wooden chair. He reached across the counter and held onto my shoulder, going from teasing to concerned in no time.
“Hey, are you okay?”
I had to get it together. There was no way he could know about Axon, or he might end up on their list directly below my name, because I suffered no delusions that I wasn’t on it by now. I patted my cheeks and shrugged off his concern.
“I didn’t eat breakfast,” I said. A good enough excuse for nearly fainting at a joke.
He jumped up and grabbed one of the protein bars, sticking the kettle back on the stove so he could top up my coffee. Unwrapping the chalky oatmeal monstrosity, he placed it in my hand, still looking concerned.
“Okay, you don’t need to baby me,” I said, tearing off a bite. “It’s your deal, and this time I’m beating you for sure.
We got back to playing with minimal conversation, joking back and forth as he continued to win almost every round.
He was right, it was nicer getting along, and I was sick to death of being angry and worried about things I couldn’t control.
Certainly no one from Axon was going to find me here in this cabin. But they weren’t the only danger.
Dan’s smiles were infectious, and so damn handsome.
Every time I snuck a glance at him, he was looking at me, and that proprietary gleam in his eyes kept me warm.
Well, until the fire started dying down and I began shivering again.
Dan popped up at the first sight of me rubbing my arms to calm the goosebumps. He checked the wood box and frowned.
“There’s not much,” he said, then pulled back a curtain. Gusts of snow still swirled outside, the sky pure white. “If there’s a woodpile out there, I don’t know what my chances would be to find it.”
“You are not going out there,” I said authoritatively. “Absolutely not. You’ll get lost after ten steps.”
He grinned, probably thinking I cared. We decided to ration the wood and let the fire die down until nightfall when it would be really cold. “Come and sit with me by the stove while it’s still going. Don’t worry, it’s just for warmth.”
Since I already owed him an imaginary thousand dollars, I threw down the cards and sat beside him on the bench, as close as we could get it to the woodstove. He draped a couple of blankets over us and we huddled under them as he told me stories about his childhood in Moscow.
“My uncle has a bar on the outskirts of town and I was doing some work for him, unloading boxes because I had… well, don’t worry about what I did to get the punishment,” he said, refusing to tell me no matter how hard I poked him in his rock hard side.
“It started snowing and he made me keep bringing the boxes in off the truck. It wasn’t even an hour before the snow was higher than the tires and he still wouldn’t let me quit. ”
“What did you do?” I asked for the tenth time. “It had to be bad for such a hardcore punishment.”
“You don’t know hardcore punishments until you meet my parents or my uncles,” he said, then continued to tell me more stories about various snowstorms that were worse than this one.
“That has to be made up,” I said, to the outrageous claim he’d been stuck on the side of the road and his entire car was buried before anyone found him.
“No, you can ask Aleks when we get back. I was seventeen and everyone thought I was finished. And you know what? Since I wasn’t supposed to be driving in the storm that day, I got punished for that, too.”
The fire was down to embers and even under the blanket with Dan radiating heat a half a foot away, I began to shiver again. I may have loved winter sports but I was a southern California girl and hadn’t been out in the snow in a couple of years.
“Get closer,” he said, putting his arm around me and pulling me flush against him.
His big hand slid down my arm, then back up, trying to smooth away the goosebumps under my shirt. The feel of it sent a jolt of electricity through me and I skittered away, shaking him off as well as the blankets that covered both of us.
“You’ve been working up to this,” I accused. Trying to be nice, acting friendly, then pouncing. “You really did plan it.”
He rolled his eyes, removing one of the blankets and throwing it back over me. “Even I’m not powerful enough to control the weather, and I would have picked a much nicer place if I could, little girl.”
A shiver went through me that had nothing to do with the chill air in the cabin. He was powerful though, and not just physically, with his hard muscles and tall frame. He oozed confidence, even now as I glared at him. Confident he’d get his way, probably used to it from being rich as hell.
Well, not from me.
After an awkward silence where I grew steadily colder without the natural furnace of his body next to me, I finally bit back my pride and slid over to his side again.
“Just to stay warm,” I told him firmly.
“I’m perfectly comfortable as I am,” he replied. I gaped at him until he finally laughed and put his arm around me.
It was a lot warmer. Downright cozy. “So what do you do?” I asked. “Is everyone in your family in the same business?”
He made a rumbling sound in his throat. “Something like that,” he said, as cagey as I had been about Axon.
We continued talking about inconsequential things as he absentmindedly rubbed my arm while we huddled together. The fiery trail of his fingers left me feeling almost too warm, but I didn’t move away again.