Chapter Ten
Nina woke to the strident beeping of the alarm on her phone.
She reached out and groped until she found it on the bedside table and shut it off, then shoved into a sitting position before she could fall back to sleep.
Still groggy, she surveyed the scene in front of her.
At some point in the night, both dogs had crawled into the bed with her and Liam.
She had a vague memory of him pulling on jeans and a fleece and taking them out before he returned to bed and pressed his naked, cold body against her.
They had made love again, and she had fallen into a deeper sleep, not even noticing when Angel and Sky wormed their way between them.
“What time is it?” Liam, his head buried under the covers, moaned the words.
“Five a.m. You don’t have to get up.” She slid out of bed.
He uncovered his head. “You have to go to work at five?”
“Five thirty. Avalanche mitigation this morning. We have to have it all done before the lifts start at nine. Or at least, the front side has to be done. I’m going to have a quick shower.
” She’d have to redress in the clothes she had worn the day before, but she could change at patrol headquarters.
She kept a second uniform there, ever since two years ago when a young girl with a broken arm had thrown up all over her one morning and she had had to leave work to go home and change.
When she emerged from the shower, Liam was sitting up on the side of the bed. Sky was asleep on her back in the middle of the bed, all four legs in the air.
Liam followed Nina’s gaze to the dog. “I was rubbing her belly and she fell asleep like that.”
“She is not a morning dog.” Nina pulled on her boots and looked around for her pack.
“I’m going to take those photos to Doug today,” Liam said.
“All right.”
“I’ll have some printed and bring them to patrol headquarters, too. Probably midmorning.”
“Text me and I’ll meet you there, if I’m able.”
“I’d like that.”
“Sky, come.”
Reluctantly the dog flipped over, stretched, then hopped off the bed and trotted to her. Nina put on the dog’s harness, collected her pack, then bent to kiss Liam. He was warm and sexy, and she deserved another medal for not crawling right back into bed with him. “I’ll see you later,” she said.
* * *
Liam spent an hour in the hotel’s business center, printing photos and other information to give to Doug and the ski patrollers. Then he snapped a leash onto Angel and headed across the plaza to Doug’s office.
Kristie greeted him with a smile. “Mr. Davies! It’s good to see you.”
“I need a few minutes of Mr. Elam’s time,” he said.
She stood. “I’ll let him know you’re here.”
She slipped into Doug’s office, but returned shortly. “He says you can have ten minutes, tops.”
“This won’t take longer than that.”
Doug, wearing an expensive looking sweater in a deep blue that matched his eyes, looked up from his desk, his expression wary. “What can I do for you, Liam?”
“Take a look at these.” Liam tossed the stills of the dark-helmeted man lurking on the outskirts of Nina’s photo shoots onto the desk.
Doug scanned the blurry images. “What is this?”
“That may be the man who’s been stalking Nina.”
Doug looked again. “These shots are out of focus. Or his face is covered. I can’t tell anything from these.” He pushed them away.
“There’s a sticker on his ski helmet for Mt. Hood Meadows.”
“So? Lots of people have helmets with stickers from places they’ve skied.”
“That’s the only sticker on his helmet. The ski resort is in Oregon. I haven’t seen even one other person here at SkyCrest with that sticker.”
Doug sat back in his chair. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“Pass that information along to resort security. Nina believes that could be Aaron Nicholson, the man who attacked her in Lake Placid four years ago. Make sure the lift technicians see it, too. Anyone who sees this man should call security and/or the sheriff’s office.
There’s a restraining order against this guy.
He’s not supposed to be within a hundred yards of Nina. ”
“Then if he’s eating lunch in a resort restaurant or standing in a lift line and Nina isn’t around, we have no right to stop him. He’s a paying customer like anyone else.”
“I have photographic proof that he’s been a lot closer to Nina than a hundred yards.”
Doug crossed his arms over his chest. “Then you need to take your photos to the sheriff. I’m not going to put my staff in a position to be sued by a guy who’s just here to ski. You don’t even know if this is Nicholson.”
Liam glared at him, disbelieving. “Don’t you want to protect Nina?”
“Of course I want to protect her. But we live in a litigious society. The sheriff can arrest this man if they have proof he has harmed Nina, or if they witness him less than a hundred yards away from her. But the law has declared he’s a free man.
He can come to this resort, buy a lift ticket and ski here, as long as he doesn’t interact with Nina. ”
“He sent her those notes.”
“Calling someone darling and telling them you hope they had a good night is not threatening. And you have no proof he sent them to Nina. No signature. No fingerprints. No one saw him put the notes on her door or her car.”
Marlena had been talking to Doug, and clearly they were reading from the same script.
Liam wanted to protest that Doug was wrong, but strictly speaking, he wasn’t.
Unless Nicholson approached Nina in public or sent a note that contained more than innocuous pleasantries, he was free to be in the same town and at the same ski resort.
“Give security the photos,” he said. “Tell them to watch for this guy anywhere near Nina.”
“I’ll do that, but you should talk to Nina about this. Maybe it would be a good idea for her to get out of town for a while. If she’s not here, this guy, if he is harassing her, will leave.”
“You want her to leave in the middle of the season. What about her job?”
“We get applications for ski patrollers every week. We’ll find someone else. Nina can try again with us next year. Or any resort would be happy to have a silver medalist on staff.”
Liam wanted to protest that they couldn’t just let Nina go so easily. But he wouldn’t waste his breath. He turned and left and hurried past Kristie without saying a word.
SkyCrest was where Nina was happy. Where she had made a home and found a family in ski patrol. Nina would never agree to leaving. She had vowed not to run away again.
He stopped by a coffee cart for a black coffee, then sat on a bench in the plaza, studying the people who passed by.
No one with a Mt. Hood Meadows sticker on their helmet passed.
No one who matched Nicholson’s description came within view.
Was that because he was already on the slopes, stalking Nina?
He was headed back toward his hotel when he passed the gyro truck. Derek was out front, setting up a chalkboard with the day’s specials. “I need to talk to you a minute,” Liam said, stopping in front of him.
Derek looked confused. “Who are you?”
“I’m Nina’s friend, Liam Davies.”
“Oh, yeah. The photographer.” Derek straightened and crossed his arms over his chest. “What do you want to talk to me about?”
“About Nina. You obviously like her a lot.”
“Everybody likes Nina.”
“But I think you especially like her.”
The tips of his ears reddened, and his gaze shifted away from Liam. “What are you getting at?”
“Do you know where Nina lives?”
His gaze snapped back to Liam. “I’m not going to tell you, if that’s what you’re after.”
“I already know where she lives. I want to know if you know.”
Derek shrugged. “I have friends who live in her neighborhood, so I’ve see her around.”
“Have you been to her house?”
“No!” He dropped his arms. “Is that what this is about? Do you think Nina and I have dated or something?” He chuckled. “As if. I mean, yeah, if I thought she was interested…” He met Liam’s gaze at last. “Is she interested?”
“You know she was attacked by a stalker once before?”
“I read about that. Pretty horrible stuff.”
“I want to make sure nothing like that happens again.”
Derek’s eyes widened. “So you think I’m a stalker? No way!”
“I’ve seen you staring at her.”
“She’s a beautiful woman. Lots of people stare at her. And her picture is everywhere around here.” He indicated the banners around them. “Nina’s gorgeous. And she’s sweet. We’re friends. But I would never do anything to hurt her. Does she know you’re here right now, questioning me?”
“No.” And if she knew, she’d probably be upset.
“Then you need to back off. Nina’s a good person, and she deserves better than some jealous, controlling goon like you.” He turned away and went into the food truck, slamming the door behind him.
Liam stared after him, considering getting Derek back out here to explain that Nina could be in real danger and that trying to protect her was not being jealous and controlling.
But maybe that would only prove Derek’s point.
Nina hadn’t asked him to interrogate the young man.
She might even think he was going too far.
He wanted more than anything to protect her, but he had to respect her, too.
A little before noon, Liam headed to ski patrol headquarters. Nina stood by the desk with Connor and Brian and smiled when he entered. “Come to take more photos of our resident fashion model?” Brian asked.
“I’ve brought some photos for you.” Liam handed a manila envelope to Connor, then stood close to Nina.
Connor slid the photographs from the envelope. “They’re stills taken from the background of videos I shot of Nina,” Liam said. “So not the best quality, but you can see it’s the same man in each one, filmed on different days at different times.”
“And this guy was always lurking around,” Connor said. He looked at Nina. “Is this the guy who stalked you before?”
“I think so,” she said. “You can never see his face clearly in those pictures, but he’s the same height and build.”