Hud scooped up the helmet and, giving Devil’s Face one last longing look, headed toward the lift as well, catching up with her halfway there.
She’d stopped and had her weight braced on her poles. Bent over a little bit, she was huffing and puffing, out of breath. They were at well over eight thousand feet and altitude could be a bitch. It affected everyone differently, but breathlessness was the most common side effect.
Although an uncomfortable and worrisome thought came to him that maybe it wasn’t the altitude at all. When he’d lifted her before, she’d been light, almost… frail. People didn’t realize it took a lot of strength and stamina to ski, and he was nearly positive she didn’t have either. He put a hand on her shoulder.
She whirled to face him, saw the helmet dangling off his finger, and pulled out an earbud with an apologetic smile. “Sorry, I think the altitude’s getting to me. I really should’ve gotten some caffeine down me before facing the mountain.” She slid on the helmet. “Thanks, Prince Charming.”
“Huh?”
“You know, Cinderella,” she said. “The prince had her slipper and you had my helmet… Never mind,” she said with a pat to his arm when he just stared at her. “Ignore me. Probably I should’ve put far more practical things on my list than skiing in the Rockies.”
And then before he could ask her what the hell she was talking about now, she’d tightened the strap beneath her chin, put her hands back into the handholds at the top of her ski poles, and pushed off.
He watched her head for the lift that would carry her back to safety, thinking two things. One, he really hoped she knew how to stop. And two, she was definitely a nut, but possibly the prettiest, most bewildering nut he’d ever met in his entire life.
Chapter 2
Bailey Moore considered it a win-win when she got herself situated on the lift without breaking another binding, falling on her face, or making a fool of herself. Especially since her concentration had been shot thanks to the mountain hottie she’d just skied away from.
Don’t you dare look back, she told herself firmly. There’s absolutely no reason to. Not a single one…
She totally looked back.
And there he was on his skis like they were an extension of his own body, as if the rugged badass mountains behind him had nothing on him.
He was watching her as well, or so she assumed since his dark lenses were aimed her way. She waved at him.
He didn’t wave back but the very corners of his mouth turned up. Then he planted his poles, executed a lithe jump to turn his skis in the other direction, and skied off with an effortless motion that Bailey knew she could never in a million years of lessons hope to replicate. It was… well, incredibly sexy.
But as Bailey also knew, the sexy ones weren’t the keepers. For the most part, they’d never been disappointed or hurt by love or life, and as a woman who’d faced it all at one time or another, she had no patience for the weak, shallow, or clueless.
And actually, she had no patience for this line of thinking at all. She had other things to concentrate on. Laughing a little at herself, she turned her head to take in the top of the peak as the lift carried her away from it. It had been the top, the very tippy top, and the stunning view suddenly made her glad for her map incident.
She’d never seen anything like it. Most anywhere you stood in Colorado, you were surrounded by mountains—towering, rugged, intimidating alpine peaks that you had to tip your head back to see and that always seemed to frame the entire world.
Not on Devil’s Face. For the first time, she’d been the highest point, and everything below her—the world—was at her feet. And as someone who until very recently had never been in control of her own destiny, it staggered her.
In a really great way.
The lift hit a snag and jerked. Bailey gasped and grabbed the steel bar in front of her for all she was worth. With nothing below her but thick pines and an endless blanket of snow, she could do nothing else. There wasn’t a building in sight, not even the comforting view of the base lodge.
When the lift jerked again, her hand ached from the tight grip, but she didn’t let go. If she was going down, she was going down holding the sissy bar all the way. And wouldn’t that be pretty effing ironic if after all she’d been through, she was about to expire right here, now, alone on a mountain?
And if by some miracle she didn’t die from the fall, her mother would kill her.
But miraculously the lift held firm and she lived to breathe another day. Ten minutes later she glided off without so much as a hitch. Perfect execution, she thought proudly and looked around, really wishing Mountain Hottie could see her now, that anyone she knew could see her.