Chapter Fourteen
Max picked Caroline up after lunch.
He gave her the afternoon’s itinerary. They were going to drive to a place called the Lost Forest. There was snowshoeing, and cross-country skiing, and a restaurant at the top of the mountain. The best part was the alpine coaster. It was a roller coaster that wound through the forest and ended with a thrilling drop.
“This is from Lily.” He handed her a package. “She apologized for taking up my time last night.”
Caroline unwrapped it. Inside was a Nutcracker toy soldier Christmas tree ornament.
“It’s lovely, but please tell her she didn’t need to give me anything.”
“Lily believes female friendships are important.” Max kept a serious expression. “Especially where men are involved. She didn’t want to come between you and me.”
Caroline glanced at Max curiously. She put on a flirty smile. “Am I important to you?”
Max smiled back. “Lily seems to thinks so. She said I showed all the signs of having feelings for someone. Last night, I checked my phone for messages from you, even when I forgot I had turned it off. And today, I brushed my teeth twice before I picked you up.”
Caroline felt a small jolt, like an extra-strong cup of coffee. It was fun to flirt with Max. Maybe Daphne was right, she just had to try harder.
“I’ll hang the ornament on the Christmas tree in my hotel room,” Caroline said. Aspen trees sped by and she pushed herself to keep talking. “Maybe we can order room service tonight, and you can see the Christmas tree.”
Max pulled his eyes from the road and glanced at her.
“I thought inviting me to your place was against the rules.”
She couldn’t show Max that she was changing her rules all at once. He’d ask why and she’d have to tell him about her dare with Daphne. It was better to bend the rules gradually.
“A hotel room isn’t the same as my apartment,” Caroline reasoned.
“Then I accept.” Max’s tone was light. “Now, let’s say that at dinner we drink a few glasses of eggnog and I’m too tipsy to drive home.”
“That could be a problem,” Caroline agreed. “Especially if all the Ubers in town are taken.”
“It’s a real problem over Christmas week. There are always more tourists than Ubers.”
“You could walk, Aspen isn’t very big.”
Max shook his head. “It’s supposed to snow tonight. The sidewalks will be slippery.”
“Wear boots?” Caroline said with a laugh.
They reached the Lost Forest and Max stopped the car.
“My boots will get wet when we ride the alpine coaster. They won’t have time to dry out.”
Before she could say anything else, Max leaned over and kissed her. It was longer than their last kiss, and his lips were sweet and warm.
“We’re two intelligent adults,” she said when they parted. “I’m sure we can work it out.”
The next hour was spent snowshoeing through the forest. There was a lookout where they stopped and took in the entire Elk Valley. Aspen and Snowmass snuggled next to each other like two clusters of Monopoly houses.
It didn’t snow every year in Hudson. But when it did, Caroline and Daphne loved to snowshoe near the cabin. Anne would pack sandwiches, and nuts for the squirrels. For a moment, Caroline wished it were the previous Christmas, with Daphne snowshoeing beside her, and their mother pottering in the cabin’s kitchen.
Daphne was right. Life was precious, it had to be lived now. But that didn’t mean falling recklessly in love, even if Max was handsome and fun. It would be too easy to get her heart broken. Besides, for the first time in months, Caroline was excited about a new author. And she was enjoying reading Nina’s letters.
After they finished snowshoeing, they sat at a table on the restaurant’s terrace. Skiers piled out of the gondola and started eagerly down the mountain. Caroline watched them in their bright ski parkas and felt happy. It was wonderful to sit outside, drinking a cold beer and tipping her face up to the sun.
They ordered bowls of beef chili and fresh-baked corn bread.
“I love this restaurant, everything is locally grown,” Max said. “The chili is made from grass-fed cows, and the corn is organic. Even the beer comes from a local brewery.”
“That’s important to you, isn’t it?” Caroline said.
Max nodded. “If we don’t take care of the environment, we won’t have anything to leave to the next generation. That’s why I started the distillery. It doesn’t take anything from the planet that it doesn’t give back.”
Caroline thought again how much she liked Max when he talked about the distillery. The beer combined with the high altitude was making her flirty.
“So, tell me more about you. You’re charming and successful. There had to have been a great love somewhere.”
Max glanced at her in surprise. “You’re interested in my dating history? Doesn’t that go against the rules?”
“I just want to know if there was anyone serious,” she said playfully. “I can see you dating an indie musician whose latest song had five hundred thousand downloads.”
“There was a woman a few years ago,” Max offered. “Her name was Jessica, I thought we were in love.” He sipped his beer. “My parents own a winery near Santa Barbara. I was helping my father run it, and Jessica worked in Santa Barbara.
“After we’d been dating a few months, I invited her to the winery for dinner. I selected a bottle of my father’s reserve wine for our meal. I told Jessica that I wanted to get serious and she agreed. A few weeks later she convinced my mother to let her throw a surprise party for me at the winery. She invited all her friends, and opened half a dozen bottles of his best reserve wine. The next day it was all over her Instagram. It turned out that she wanted to be an influencer and thought dating the owner of a winery would be cool. My father was furious with me, and I couldn’t blame him. I shouldn’t have let it happen.”
“Is that why you came to Colorado?” Caroline asked.
Max shrugged. “I’ve always loved the mountains. And I like being my own boss. I get to make all my own mistakes.”
Caroline’s heart went out to him. Everything in Max’s life seemed so perfect—the Queen Anne mansion on Walnut Street, the sleek, modern distillery.
He took out his phone and started typing.
“Enough about me,” he said. “Now, let’s say I spend the night, do I stay for morning coffee?”
Caroline peered at his phone.
“You wrote that down?” she asked.
Max stopped typing. He gave his most electric smile. “I guess Lily’s right, you are important to me. I don’t want to get anything wrong.”
After they finished their chili, they climbed into the alpine coaster. Caroline sat in front and Max wrapped his arms around her waist. The coaster started slowly, then gradually picked up speed. It ended at the foot of the mountain with an almost vertical drop. Caroline loved the wind in her hair, and the feeling of weightlessness.
They drove back to Aspen, and Max went to run errands. There were a few hours until dinner. Caroline decided to go and see Nick.
Nick was in a supply room at the Limelight Hotel. He was sitting on a folding chair at a folding tray table, tapping on his computer.
“My boss lets me write here before my shift,” Nick said when she entered. “It’s not very big, but I do my best writing here.”
Caroline gave a small smile. “Lots of writers work in odd spaces. I know an author who writes on the floor of her closet. She doesn’t do her revisions there, those are done on the window seat in her bedroom.”
“Writing and revising use different parts of the brain.” Nick nodded. “I’ve been working on your revision notes. I’m having trouble with chapter four.”
“That’s where Josh realizes how much he cares for Maggie,” Caroline recalled. “Most love stories are the same. Boy meets girl, they fall in love, then something pulls them apart. What I adore about your book is that we don’t know until the end whether they’re going to make it. But we need some foreshadowing. How far will Josh go to hang on to Maggie?”
“I don’t know,” Nick said truthfully. “Sometimes it’s hard to get inside his head.”
“At the beginning, Josh is unknowable,” Caroline agreed.
She remembered how much she loved discussing books with their authors.
“We need a hint, one extra scene,” she said thoughtfully. “Draw from your own experience. The first time you thought you might lose Savannah.”
Nick’s cheeks flushed. He looked even more boyish than usual.
“It was a few weeks into the summer. We were having a wonderful time. We went on long rides together. We even went camping.” He smiled ruefully. “Savannah wasn’t a good camper. She had never slept without thousand-thread-count sheets in her life. Then Elliot arrived. It was a surprise to Savannah, she didn’t know that he was coming.”
“Who was Elliot?” Caroline wondered.
“I thought he was just another guest.” Nick’s calm expression changed. “It turned out he was the guy she was supposed to marry.”
Nick closed his laptop and told her the story.
“Elliot was in his mid-twenties. He had New England prep school good looks. Crew-cut hair, firm jaw, wide shoulders from playing lacrosse,” Nick began. “But he was friendly and he was good with horses. The second night he was there, I heard him and Savannah talking. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. They were sitting on the porch. I was doing the dishes, the kitchen window was open. They were arguing that Savannah should have accepted his mother’s invitation to spend the summer in Cape Cod. Savannah was going to be there for two weeks. She didn’t want to spend more time there. She didn’t like sailing and she wanted to be on her own.
“That’s when Elliot said he was in love with her. I turned off the faucet in the kitchen. I had to hear her reply. Savannah took a few moments to answer. The time seemed to last forever.
“She suggested they do something special the next day, which was her day off. I was tempted to run out to the porch and confront Elliot. What would I say? Savannah and I had only kissed a couple of times. I hadn’t told her my feelings.
“I waited until Elliot went to bed, then I tapped on Savannah’s door.
“Savannah looked so pretty. Her hair was even blonder from spending so much time in the sun. She told me that she and Elliot had been together since freshman year. He was going to law school. Both sets of parents thought they were a perfect couple.
“When I asked if she was in love with him, she shrugged and said she wasn’t sure. She had to get married someday, that’s how things were done in her circle. Elliot was better than most of the guys in Atlanta.
“I should have said that I was in love with her then, but I was scared. Elliot had a combination of smoothness and good looks that I couldn’t compete with.
“The next morning Elliot asked me to pack a picnic. He was taking Savannah to the top of Smuggler Mountain. Then he pulled a velvet box out of his pocket. Inside was a square-cut diamond ring. He wanted to hide the ring in the dessert.
“I packed ham and turkey sandwiches, strawberries, a couple of sodas. I rummaged through the fridge and found two slices of sponge cake. Elliot could hide the ring in the whipped-cream topping.
“When I finished, Elliot was looking at his phone. There was supposed to be a thunderstorm. That was my chance. If the picnic got washed out before Elliot proposed, I’d have time to tell Savannah that I was in love with her. I told him the weather app was often wrong. Thunderstorms usually passed by our part of the valley.
“That wasn’t exactly true. We occasionally got summer thundershowers. But they weren’t dangerous and they didn’t last long. It wouldn’t hurt Elliot and Savannah to get wet.
“The moment they set off, I felt guilty. Elliot wasn’t a bad guy. But they had already left, and my feelings for Savannah were too strong to ignore.
“Several hours later they returned. It had started raining as they reached the peak of Smuggler Mountain, before Elliot had a chance to pull out the ring.
“That night, I confessed to Savannah my feelings, and she acknowledged she felt something for me too. Elliot left the next day. He made up some excuse that his father bought a new sailboat, but I knew the truth.”
Nick stopped talking. He brushed hair out of his eyes.
“I’d never done anything like that before. I couldn’t help myself. Savannah was like a drug.”
“You have to give some of that emotion to Josh. Write a scene where Josh behaves out of character to keep Maggie in his life.”
The tension in Nick’s shoulders eased. He opened his computer and started typing.
After Caroline left the Limelight Hotel, she strolled down Main Street. It was late afternoon and the sun was setting over the mountain. The sidewalk was filled with couples looking for a place to have après-ski cocktails.
Her phone rang, Max’s number flashing on the screen.
“This is a surprise,” Caroline answered. “Dinner isn’t for a couple of hours.”
“I can’t make dinner,” Max groaned. “I was helping Lily hang a Nutcracker ornament on the Christmas tree. I fell off the ladder. I’m lying on the sofa with a twisted ankle.”
“Would you like me to bring you something? Frozen peas are good for sore ankles.”
“I’m stocked up on frozen vegetables, but a bottle of wine and two glasses would be nice.”
“You want me to come and see you?” Caroline gulped. Somehow the request was more intimate than Max asking her to dinner.
“As long as it’s not breaking any rules.” His tone grew softer.
A small thrill shot through Caroline’s body. “I can’t think of a single rule. I’ll see you in an hour.”