Chapter 4 Nicole
“So, wait—are you saying your parents just…got back together? After ten years? This week?” Cameron’s voice carried a mix of incredulity and amusement as he nudged open the paper cup lid for a sip.
“Crazy, right?” Nicole couldn’t keep the smile off her face as the two of them meandered along Park City’s Main Street, soaking up the explosion of Christmas and all things winter and Western.
“They divorced when I was eighteen, and it wasn’t pretty.
But then Dad came back to help at the lodge this Christmas, and…
they just clicked again. Like all that lost time didn’t matter. ”
She sipped her hot chocolate, taken in travel cups from Sugarfall. She’d been disappointed that Gracie was out getting Benny at camp when they’d met up there, but she’d introduce him to her cousin later.
Now, she just enjoyed Cameron’s reaction to the story she’d shared when he asked about her family and where she’d grown up. She enjoyed everything about him, to be honest.
For one thing, he looked maddeningly good in black jeans, a soft flannel shirt under a fleece jacket, and a knit cap over dark blond hair. He radiated easy confidence, the kind that made her feel both flustered and flattered just to be walking next to him.
“That’s…wow,” Cameron said, shaking his head with a laugh. “That doesn’t happen in real life. That’s like a movie.”
“It really is.” Nicole adjusted the gray knit beanie over her ears, and shifted the cardboard cup of hot chocolate from one hand to the other. They paused in front of an art boutique, glancing at Tiffany-style lampshades in the windows, created by a Park City artist.
“What about your family?” she asked. “Local?”
“Heber,” he said, referring to a town about half an hour away. “I live there, too,” he said. “In fact, I live in a small house on my parents’ property, so if that’s an issue, run now.”
She laughed. “Not an issue. My mom and I live in the same townhouse complex, only she owns hers and I’m renting with Bri, my roommate.”
“The phone number-giver,” he added with a grin.
“Do your parents ski, too?” she asked.
He hesitated, then shook his head. “Not as much as they used to. Right now they’re on a cruise ship on the way to Ensenada, Mexico. Their one big getaway every year.”
“Nice.”
He nodded, threading them through some tourists coming out of a boutique. She glanced at the window, and caught her own reflection with his, getting a little shiver of satisfaction. They made a nice couple, she had to admit.
They walked on, pausing at a beloved book store, then a jeweler that filled a window with sparkling diamonds.
“So, how did you end up doing ski patrol?” she asked. “Was that always the dream job?”
He thought about it for a minute, an expression passing over his face that she couldn’t quite read. “Well, I’ve been skiing since I was little, but I tried the nine-to-five thing after college—I worked in a mortgage company, if you can believe that.”
She laughed. “Not in character at all.”
“Amen. I wanted to crawl out of my skin, so I took the EMT basic training and honed my ski skills even more, and got the job, which I’ve had for about six years. In the off-season, I’m a firefighter for Summit County.”
She drew back, slowing her step.
“What?” he scoffed at her surprised reaction. “You thought I was a total party animal ski bum who probably did mountain bike tours in the summer.”
She laughed. “I admit…I wasn’t expecting a firefighter. It’s so…heroic.”
That expression crossed his face again, but disappeared when he smiled and pinned those achingly blue eyes on her. “Don’t be fooled,” he said, slightly haltingly. “Not a hero.”
“A firefighter and EMT?”
“Basic EMT. Not that impressive in the world of first responders. But I am midway through paramedic training, which is about two thousand hours of schooling. That’ll really help on the slopes because paramedics’ pay is well above mine. Now, I just stabilize and transport non-criticals.”
“And as a firefighter?” she asked. “What do you do?”
“Fight fires,” he joked. “Well, they use me as an EMT a lot, but I’m on the engine crew, standard shifts. I’m only on duty in the summer and fall when the wildfires are an issue, and when I’m not doing that, I’m in school, or taking care of…you know, life.”
She studied him, completely shifting her very wrong first impression. “I really did think you were a partying ski bum.”
“Well, patrollers are known to like to party after shift, so it’s a fair mistake. But I never really was like that. And now? I’m thirty, so…ouch.”
He spotted an empty bench on the corner, brushed off and just waiting for them. Guiding her there, he glanced down. “What about you, Nicole?”
“Two more years until thirty, so no ouch.”
He laughed. “I mean, what’s your deal? You manage a ski shop, your dad’s a legendary skier, and the only two times I’ve seen you on the slopes—they were bunny and you were down. What’s, uh, wrong with this picture?”
She let out a noisy breath as they sat, crossing her suede boots in front of her. She never liked telling the story. It never got easier or funny or less like a genuine brush with death.
But with him? For one thing, he’d know exactly what she was talking about. For another, well…he was protective by nature, so she trusted him.
“You know, when your dad is Flying Jack Kessler, skiing is not a hobby. It’s a biography,” she started.
He smiled a little, a flicker she liked. “I did put that together.”
“And when you’re nine and you’ve inherited his speed and fearlessness and low center of gravity, along with…I’m quoting him now, ‘fast twitch muscle dominance and trunk stability’—”
“You’ve got an Olympian in the making.”
She laughed softly, having heard all of that so many times.
“Not quite at nine, but the hopes were there. Except there was this tree well…” She looked hard at him.
“And that nine-year-old went face down into suffocation and near death. After that, I was just one scared little girl who refused to put skis on until”—she closed her eyes—“last week.”
“Oh, wow,” he whispered. “That’s…wow. I’m sorry.”
She nodded, throat tightening. “There’s really not that much more to the story than that,” she said. “It was a bad, bad day. I was with my dad, getting the old Kessler push to go faster, farther, and off the well-groomed trail. I thought I was invincible.”
“The biggest mistake on skis.”
“No kidding.” She swallowed, closing her eyes and seeing the white powder, the green trees, soaring on her skis until…she wasn’t. “The minute I went under, it felt like the mountain was eating me alive, like a mouth closing over me.”
He sat very still, listening and letting her continue.
“I panicked. I struggled. That makes it worse, you know? You wriggle deeper. You try to scream, which is bad. And then you realize whatever breath is in your lungs will most likely be the last one you ever take.”
His eyes shuttered as he took her hand. “How long?”
“Not very, but it felt like a year until Dad got to me. He says it was seconds. It seemed like forever. He dug and dug, found my face, cleared my mouth, flipped me, and I came up like a fish. Everyone was on me, shouting, so grateful, and I was…done. With skiing, not life.” She looked down at her hands.
“I couldn’t get back on skis. Not that season.
Not the next. And then it became a fact about me, like my brown eyes and dark hair. Nicole doesn’t ski.”
“Therapy?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “My parents talked about it but I just…no. I didn’t want to ski, but I didn’t need counseling. Well, maybe I did, but I never had it.”
“Tree wells are no joke,” he said, full authority in that statement. “They’re monsters that look like pillows. I’ve pulled probably seven people out. I’ve seen someone…” He just shook his head and she knew exactly what he was going to say.
He’d seen someone die. Because it happened, just not to Nicole.
“I’m really glad you came back out,” Cameron said finally. “Because the world wouldn’t be as nice a place without you.”
She smiled at the compliment, turning to him, wanting to be deeply honest, but not really understanding why.
“You know why I skied last week?” she asked. “I made a deal with my dad when I went to see him in Vermont over Thanksgiving weekend. If he’d come back and run our sleigh rides, I’d ski with him again. He did—and reunited with my mom—which was kind of my secret dream.”
“It worked,” he said. “And you skied.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. I put on skis and fell on my backside twice—which I expected but it’s okay. I did it and my dad was happy.”
“And you went again with Bri, right?”
She nodded. “I thought maybe I’d do better without Flying Jack. But I just wiped out.”
“Would you go again?” he asked, his voice just gentle enough make her heart do silly things.
She didn’t answer right away, but held his beautiful blue gaze.
“I did a back-country run a week ago,” she said. “After my horse went down a slope at our lodge and I needed to get him.”
He drew back, impressed. “You did? And you have a horse?”
She nodded. “It was a breakthrough, though. A big one.”
“Enough that you’d go to Deer Valley with me tomorrow?”
She nodded slowly, not committing but clearly on her way.
“You can’t be much safer than with a patrol,” he added, as if she needed a push. “I know the very most gentle runs at DV, I know how to pace a beginner, and I…” He smiled. “I’d really like to ski with you, Nicole.”
Realizing that they were still holding gloved hands, she squeezed his fingers. “You know what, Cameron? I will go with you. If you promise to take care of me.”
“I promise.” He looked right into her eyes and she melted like all this snow in the sun. “We can go down—” He frowned and fished out his phone, mumbling an apology as he looked at the screen. “I gotta take this. Hang on.”
He stood, biting off his glove to tap the phone and put it to his ear, stepping a few feet away. “What’s up?”
She looked ahead, not wanting to eavesdrop.