Chapter Seventeen

Next morning, Mia and Colby had arranged to be on the first gondola up to the top, and since he was actually patrolling today, Mia was on her own. She met up with some of the patrollers and their wives and girlfriends, and skied hard till lunch. She’d already made nine runs and had skied out the trail all the way to the bottom, to take the gondola back up, by the time she met Colby for an early lunch.

It was one of those perfect days that skiers dream about. Not too cold, not too many people, and with enough powder snow from the night before, that the moguls were soft and easy to navigate. The sun was so bright it made your eyes hurt, and the glare off the snow made goggles a necessity to avoid snow blindness. Mia had been snow blind once, with her eyes swollen shut, and feeling like she had ground glass in them. She didn’t care to repeat that experience.

Colby had a couple of skiers with leg breaks and sprains and had spent some time in the Patrol hut up top, waiting with the radio to see if he was needed to bring a toboggan down for an injury.

Mia unwrapped sandwiches in the Patrol Hut as Colby began to tell her a hilarious tale about one snow boarder who motioned for Colby to follow him behind the Patrol shack, but wouldn’t tell Colby what was wrong. Once behind the shack, the guy lowered his ski pants, and presented a naked bum to Colby. The boarder had skidded into some gravel at the bottom of the run, and Colby spent the next half hour picking gravel out of the boarder’s butt with a pair of tweezers! Mia and Colby roared with laughter, and figured that story would keep Colby in free beer for the next few weekends. Mia skied a more leisurely afternoon, and left the hill without seeing Colby again that day.

Her work week was hectic as always, and it was Thursday a couple of weeks later, before she realized she needed to make her reservation at the cabin so she’d have a bed for the weekend—her first weekend as a full-fledged Patroller!

She stopped by the grocery store on her way home, stocking up on cold cuts, buns, cheese and sparkling wine, as well as two cases of beer, as her contribution to the communal kitchen at the cabin. Once home, she hastily packed her knapsack, loaded her ski equipment into the trunk of the car, had a TV dinner and flopped into bed.

Mia awoke to the phone, about ten p.m. A slow drawl of, “Hello, there, Darlin’.” clued her in to the fact Colby had a drink or two, but he was calling to find out if she would be up to skiing on Saturday. When she told him she had already signed up to Patrol on Saturday with a Sunday option if they were short patrollers, he invited her to a party on Saturday night, and said he’d see her on the hill.

* * * *

All day Friday, Mia was on a dead tear, and it was getting dark by the time she was on the road to the mountains. She thought about Colby and what she imagined or hoped might happen between them after their steamy start last weekend. Thinking about sex with Colby inevitably brought her thoughts around to Rob.

With Colby, she was pretty sure it would be only sex. She had no illusions about the professional Patroller. He was up at the hill all week long, and Mia was pretty sure he could qualify as the poster boy for Ski Bum of the Month. Professional Patrollers worked the hills all week long, and usually didn’t have to patrol on weekends, because that was when volunteer patrollers like Mia were there in abundance, and able to take over the first aid on the hills.

Mia vowed she’d at least find out a bit about the sexy Patroller before she made a decision to sleep with him. She was still embarrassed she had reacted so hungrily to his probing hands that weekend in the hot pool, and she wondered what he thought of her reaction to him.

Mia had told Ava about Colby, and Ava had told her she and Noah wanted to meet him before she picked him instead of Rob. Mia told Ava once again there was no chance of her choosing Rob, because there was no Rob in her life to choose.

Ava said Noah and Rob corresponded regularly by email, and Rob always asked about Mia. He had skied at Cortina twice, Grenoble, Gstaad and even a new ski area close to Moscow that was drawing lots of skiers.

According to Noah, via Ava, Rob always gave Noah his itinerary for skiing, and asked Noah and Ava each time to offer Mia a free plane ticket and free skiing if she would join him.

Mia couldn’t say she wasn’t tempted, after seeing all those hills during the Olympics, and hearing about various ski trips to the same areas with the Ski Club. She had never been to Europe, and always planned to go.

Of course, there was the lure of being in Rob’s arms again. Had she been too harsh with him? She had second guessed herself several times a week since he left, but she had her pride to consider. Her mother had always said, “Pride goes before a fall.” However, Mia wasn’t ready to admit her mother might be right…at least not yet.

Mia was skiing and patrolling every weekend, and sometimes she had caught a glimpse of Colby on the hill, but it seemed he was busy, and so was she, so there weren’t many chances to get together on the hill. Mia hadn’t been to the local patrol watering hole for the past two weekends, and there hadn’t been any Ski Club parties set up yet either. Mia didn’t have Colby’s cell phone number, and she wondered briefly how he had found her number to call on Thursday night inviting her to the Saturday party.

She supposed he could have found her number by going through any of their mutual skiing friends. She wanted to see him again, but she was still worried what he thought of her behavior that time in the pool, and all that she had allowed him to do to her body that night. After all, he was basically a stranger.

After a hard day’s skiing, Mia was struggling to place her skis on the trunk rack of her little red convertible, in the midst of a white out, and not having an easy time of the task. Suddenly she felt the skis lifted out of her hands and placed effortlessly on the rack, and just as quickly, she was turned around and hugged soundly to a solid chest.

“You sure don’t make it easy for me to find you, Little Patroller. I’ve been following about a half a lift ride behind you all day,” he growled in her ear. “You must be exhausted with about thirty runs behind you today.”

“Come on, let’s get inside the car and warm up before we turn into snowmen,” he coaxed. They piled into the car, which was overcoming the cold, but only barely. Once inside, out of the wind, Colby grabbed Mia’s head with both gloved hands and kissed her cold, but rapidly warming lips soundly.

Mia was in the driver’s seat, with Colby as passenger. The gear shift made it hard to do anything but kiss, and soon the windows were completely fogged with their warming bodies and passion.

Mia broke away, breathless. “Wow—what a way to warm a girl up! We hardly even need the car heater!” she gasped. Colby laughed and held her closer again.

“How about a drink, dinner, and a warm bed—in that order?” he teased.

Mia allowed as how the drink and dinner sounded fine, but she’d reserve judgment on the warm bed till some time later. Colby said he’d arrived at the hill on the bus, and had left his skis in his locker, so he wanted to hitch a ride back to the bar with Mia.