JOLIE tried to wish herself away in the aftermath of Cole’s possession and her surrender. It didn’t work. She’d tried to wish herself away in the gondola too—that hadn’t worked, either. Maybe she could try wishing them back into the gondola instead, that being infinitely preferable to what had just happened here.
One kiss. Just one. And a lovemaking session so close to perfect it would haunt the rest of her days. Incandescent, deeply sensual, soul-exposing lovemaking.
With Cole Rees.
She didn’t look at him as she slid off him, all the way off him, and scrambled from the makeshift bed. His arms had tightened round her when first she began to move but after that he’d let her go, and when she glanced back at him—just once—on her way to the bathroom he was exactly where she’d left him, fresh lines marring his forehead and his eyes closed.
Clean-up time, sordid and shameful, her panties wet with Cole Rees’s semen and his scent, her body trembling with cold now, rather than unspeakable pleasure.
What had they done?
More to the point, how could they undo it?
Amnesia would be good. Selective amnesia, along the lines of being able to remember everything but Cole Rees’s lovemaking. Denial would work too. Just go back out there and find Hare’s coat and put it on and pretend nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Not for Jolie Tanner, who clearly did this sort of thing all the time.
What she wouldn’t give for a shower so that she could wash away every trace of him, of what they’d just done, but she made do with paper hand towels and warm water from the tap, and when finally she stepped from the bathroom every defence mechanism she’d ever cultivated was primed and ready for use.
Cole Rees meant nothing to her, ergo he couldn’t hurt her. Hadn’t hurt her. Their liaison was just … unfortunate, that was all. A product of circumstance and forced proximity, and … and … finding themselves alive after being so close to death. Oh, yeah, that excuse was a goodie. She could work with that.
Cole Rees was standing by the cooktops when she returned, the sleeping bag zipped up around him and the hood on his head holding it up. A saucepan of milk sat warming on one of the burners.
He sent her a swift, searching glance and she returned it with a measured look of her own. Hard to maintain what he called arrogance and she called defensiveness when wearing damp cotton boy bottoms and a vest top, but if the narrowing of his eyes and the tightening of his lips were any indication she managed it.
Jolie found her ski jacket and slipped it on, grateful for its protection never mind that it was cold to the touch. It covered her from neck to thigh and would soon warm up and so would she.
She spared him another glance. One arm and a shoulder were out of the sleeping bag now as he jiggled the saucepan, and the hood had slipped around to expose the cord of his neck where she’d grazed him with her teeth. He’d liked that. His control had shattered completely when she’d done that.
‘I thought coffee might help,’ he said grimly. ‘Or hot chocolate or something. You want some?’
Jolie dragged her gaze away from his neck and tried not to flinch as she looked into his fierce green eyes and saw the warning there. Don’t go there, that look said, and she was more than happy to comply.
Denial it was.
‘Yes,’ she said and found her boots and shoved her feet into them before heading for the cool room where the kiosk staff kept the food. ‘What do you want to eat?’ She didn’t mind putting something together for both of them, it’d give her something to do. ‘I see hams and cheeses and leftover carrot cake.’ Leftover Turkish bread too, so she piled them up in her arms and all but bumped into Cole on the way out. He backed off with excruciating politeness and what looked like a screaming need to be far, far away.
Oh, she knew the feeling.
He returned to the stove and busied himself with the making of coffee for himself and hot chocolate for her, while she made sandwiches for toasting and cut two generous wedges of cake.
Sex made her hungry. So did traipsing up mountains in a snowstorm. Nervousness, on the other hand, made her lose her appetite completely.
She figured her appetite for moderate, right up until she bit into the cake and discovered herself ravenous.
‘How long do you think it’ll be before they get people up here?’ she asked between bites. The clock on the wall said three-fifteen and she figured it for a.m. rather than p.m.
‘Maybe a couple of days,’ he said. ‘Sooner if anyone realises we’re missing and were headed this way to begin with. My trip up here wasn’t exactly planned.’
‘Mine was,’ she offered quietly. ‘My mother knew I was up here and I might have been missed by now. I’d say chances are fifty-fifty. I was due at the bar last night for a drink.’
‘Maybe he figured you for a no-show.’ Cole Rees couldn’t quite keep the bite out of his voice. ‘Easy come, easy go and all that.’
‘Only for you,’ she murmured, truly hating him in that instance. ‘For what it’s worth I was going to have a drink with my mother and anyone else who wanted to raise a glass to the memory of the man she’d loved without question for years. Go on,’ she said, with as much contempt as she could spare, given that most of it was currently reserved for herself. ‘Ask me who he was.’
‘You bitch.’ Cole Rees had a temper.
‘You provoked me.’ Jolie eyed him just as hotly. ‘We’ll get along much better if you don’t.’
‘Maybe,’ he murmured. ‘Wouldn’t be nearly as interesting, though, would it?’
Interesting wasn’t quite the word she’d have used for this encounter. Horrifying seemed a hell of a lot closer to the mark, what with the almost dying, and then the life-affirming coitus, and now the childish bickering …
Jolie bit into her cake with more anger than delicacy and tried to ignore him. Hard to do when the cream cheese frosting ended up on her lips and she had to lick it off, and Cole’s eyes darkened and he stabbed into his cake as if executing a demon or ten.
‘One kiss,’ she said, throwing him a dark glare. ‘That’s what you said. One.’
‘It was just one,’ he countered grimly.
‘And the rest?’
‘That was … unwise,’ he muttered, his gaze on her mouth again momentarily before he hastily turned away. Maybe she still had cream around her mouth? Hastily she wiped her hand over the lower part of her face. Nope.
Jolie studied Cole’s hands as he brought the simmering milk over to the counter and started fixing the drinks. He chose to make instant coffee and hot chocolate, rather than wrestle with the cafe’s espresso machine that he might or might not have known how to use. Jolie didn’t care how he made her hot chocolate so long as it was hot and sweet and soothing. A little bit of soothing would go a long way towards settling the knives in her stomach every time she looked Cole’s way.
So he had nice hands. Big, square-palmed, long-fingered hands. So he used those hands in ways that were slow and sure and put a woman in mind of a song that recommended a lover with an easy touch. Surely the way Cole had savoured the feel of her against him wasn’t that uncommon? He wasn’t the only one out there who knew what it was to honour a woman’s body and her needs. There were plenty of men out there who could satisfy her the way he had. Plenty.
She just hadn’t found them yet.
‘Sugar?’
‘What?’ she said, still lost in the imaginary world of plenty. ‘Oh, yes. One sugar. Thank you.’
He handed it over and Jolie sipped her hot chocolate while she found a pan for toasting sandwiches and went back to the cool room for margarine. Cole ate his cake while Jolie fried the sandwiches, the heat of the pan a welcome distraction from the heat of Cole’s brooding gaze. They ate the sandwiches in silence, and the knowledge that she was safe and warm and fed and that there was nothing else to do but wait for the blizzard to pass was enough to make Jolie’s eyelids droop and her shoulders slump. Her day might have started out with a sleep-in and a lazy brunch, but it had got considerably more demanding thereafter. She couldn’t even contemplate the kind of day Cole had put in.
Somewhere amongst it all had been a funeral.
‘You should get some sleep,’ said Cole Rees coolly. ‘You look tired.’
‘What about you? What’ll you do?’
‘I’ll stay up for a while. See if I can raise Hare. Or base. Anyone. Let them know where we are and not to go looking for us on the slopes.’
Jolie looked longingly at the bedding piled up on the ground. Her legs were cold and her jeans were still damp and not for putting back on just yet. The makeshift bed was mighty hard but she could snuggle down into it and get warm and dream of fluffy bed socks.
Clean, dry socks being her second-best fantasy of the moment, right after the hot-shower fantasy in which she scrubbed Cole Rees from her skin and her memory.
‘Go,’ he murmured. ‘Get warm. Get some rest.’
‘But what if you get tired? Or your head gets worse? And don’t you look at me as if you’re invulnerable because I know damn well how close you came to freezing. I was there.’
Hard for a man wearing nothing but a dove-grey sleeping bag to look haughty but Cole Rees managed it.
Jolie just raised an eyebrow and waited.
‘If I need to lie down I’ll wake you,’ he said finally. ‘Then we can either swap places or rearrange the bedding so that we don’t—’
‘Exactly,’ said Jolie hastily. No need to elaborate. ‘That’ll be fine.’
With one last wary glance for Cole, Jolie headed for the pile of bedding and started burrowing into the layers.
‘Just one more thing that needs to be clear between us,’ she murmured, her coat still buttoned to her neck as she tried to find the most comfortable spot within the blankets. ‘My mother never took money from your father. Or jewellery. Or clothing. Or houses. Or favours. She bought the bar with money that came to us when her mother died. My mother came from a wealthy family, you see. Not that anyone around these parts would believe it. Your mother and all her cronies made sure of that.’
Cole Rees glared at her. Jolie glared back. She wasn’t finished yet. There was more. Years and years more and she’d lived every minute of them.
‘My mother’s a very good businesswoman. The bar runs at a decent profit. Your father had nothing to do with that. As for me, I work as a graphic artist for a film special effects studio in Christchurch. As far as I know I got the job on my own merit. I live in a one-bedroom rental I can barely afford. I have education debts that I’m still paying off. And I sure as hell don’t own any house.’
‘Have you finished?’ he said, icily polite.
‘No. I’ve lived in the shadow of your father’s affair with my mother since I was twelve years old. I never wished James ill … I did not … but now that he’s gone, I hope to hell the shadow he cast goes too, because I hated it. I hated the rifts it created. I hated the way rich boys like you looked at me and wondered how much it was going to cost them to get in my pants. I hated the reputation I got without ever earning it, because it was a reputation that stuck, no matter how I tried to fight it. I hate the way men in this town treat me as if I’m something to be conquered and the women here take one look at me and decide I’m out to enslave their men.’
Cole said nothing.
‘So I’m telling you plain, and I’m saying it twice in case you didn’t quite catch it the first time round. I received nothing from your father, and I sure as hell want nothing now that he’s gone. Don’t presume to know me or my mother, because you don’t. Don’t presume to judge us without looking to the failings of your own family first. If you can manage a little garden-variety courtesy I’d be surprised, but also grateful. Failing that, leaving me alone would work too.’
‘Now are you finished?’ he asked in a soft, lethal voice that set Jolie to swallowing and wishing she hadn’t been quite so forthright.
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Go to sleep, Red. I can’t speak for my sister or mother but rest assured that if you and I ever get down off this mountain and run into each other again I shall be civil. I shall be courteous. And I will definitely be leaving you the goddamn hell alone.’
Jolie slept the rest of the night away. Cole woke her at ten a.m. the following morning with the smell of bacon and eggs and the sound of coffee beans grinding. Apparently he did know how to use the espresso machine. That or he’d figured it out in the hours she’d been asleep. He looked exhausted but his eyes were clear and his gaze was measured as she stirred and sat up and rubbed at her face to chase away the last of the sleep.
‘How do you feel?’ he said from his post by the cooker.
‘Like I crashed into a mountainside, fought my way through a snowstorm, and fell asleep on the floor.’ She pushed her hair out of her face and discovered a tenderness of jaw she hadn’t noticed last night. Tenderness in other places too. ‘I don’t suppose anyone clouted me while I slept?’
‘Funny girl.’ But his eyes were sharp on her face. ‘It looks bad.’
‘It probably feels better than it looks,’ she said, working her fingertips gingerly over her cheek. ‘I mark easily. Goes with the colouring. How about you? How’s the head?’
‘Woolly, though that might be from the painkillers I found in the medical kit. I can’t remember half of how we got here. I don’t remember getting undressed.’
‘Good,’ she said, getting to her feet and hunting down her snow boots. ‘It wasn’t memorable.’
Much.
‘I do remember promising you a certain level of courtesy,’ he said, and paused long enough for Jolie to mentally list all the events that had occurred in between Cole’s getting naked and his grimly delivered vow of courtesy. She stopped just short of replaying in her mind their unfortunate slip into the land of mutually intense sexual satisfaction. She still couldn’t find a good enough reason for why they’d done that. ‘How do you like your bacon and eggs?’ he asked next.
‘Crispy and sunny side up. Thank you,’ she said, common courtesy not being his province alone. ‘Did you manage to get anyone on the radio?’
Cole nodded. ‘Twenty minutes ago. The crew at base station now know we’re here. They’re letting your mother know. And mine.’
‘Oh,’ said Jolie faintly. ‘That’ll go down well.’
‘Indeed,’ he murmured as he scooped her egg out onto a nearby plate. He flipped the other eggs in the pan and pushed the bacon about. ‘No one’s been able to raise Hare.
They’re sending a helicopter up as soon as there’s a gap in the weather, which they’re predicting will be within a couple of hours.’
Jolie nodded. Surely they could manage the next hour or two together in civilised fashion? If she kept her mouth shut and her opinions to herself … If Cole did the same, and they avoided all talk of family. ‘Hare should have called in by now,’ she said quietly.
‘I know.’
‘Should we look for him? Not mountainside, I know, but we could check the control tower and whether the ski mobile’s gone or not. We might even be able to get out to Hare’s cabin.’
‘No,’ said Cole. ‘I think we should leave it for the rescue crew to look for Hare. They’ll be here soon enough and they’ll come prepared.’
‘But—’
‘Jolie, we don’t have the clothes and we don’t have specialised equipment. If Hare’s been out in that all night he’s not going to be in good shape. If he’s holed up in one of the buildings he should be fine, just like us.’
‘Can we not use the us word?’ So much for keeping her mouth shut. ‘I’m really not comfortable with it.’
‘I’m guessing you’d rather I didn’t use the phrase together when talking about us, either,’ he said blandly. Jolie shot him a worried glare. Cole favoured her with a dangerously angelic smile. ‘As in you and me—meaning we—battled the elements together, struggled to safety together … I think we should get our story straight now, don’t you? Because heaven knows people are going to ask you and me what happened. Note how I avoided using the word us, by the way. As requested.’
‘You are such a gentleman.’
‘Occasionally I try.’ Cole turned off the heat to the pan, scooped the remaining egg out onto another plate, and divvied up the bacon before adding toast and bringing both plates over to the bench and setting the one with the sunny-side egg in front of her. He found cutlery and put a set in front of her. ‘So where were we storywise?’
‘We struggled to safety,’ she said. ‘We could probably stop there.’
‘Agreed. It’s not as if anyone will want to know if we came together as one in our efforts to stay warm. I’ve always liked that phrase, by the way. Coming together as one … It implies a certain level of … competence, wouldn’t you say?’
No, it implied a certain level of needling on his part, about an event she was trying desperately to forget.
‘It’s not a phrase that appeals to me,’ she offered tightly. ‘It’s trite. Sentimental. It also implies an emotional intimacy that for most people simply isn’t there. As for competence—all competence requires is a bit of practice and certain basic skills. You really should be aiming for excellence.’
‘That’s right, I forgot,’ he murmured silkily. ‘You like to come first.’
He really shouldn’t have put non-plastic cutlery in front of her. What if she decided to stab him with it?
He smiled at her as if he knew her thoughts, and picked up his own cutlery and tucked into his meal.
Eyes narrowed, Jolie did the same. It wasn’t to her advantage right now to point out the latest manner in which he liked to come. As in hard and long. Inside her.
‘Are you likely to get pregnant?’ Cole kept his gaze on his plate and his hands busy with loading up his fork, but his words were clear enough, and they hung there, blade sharp and shiny.
‘No,’ she said coolly.
‘I’m not usually so careless.’
‘And you think I am?’
‘I didn’t say that.’ This time Cole’s bright green gaze did meet hers, heavy on the frustration. ‘Look, just call me if anything comes of this.’
‘It won’t.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Cole, I appreciate the belated concern—I really do—but I’m well protected against such an event. Let’s just assume for now that nothing is going to come of this. That way, when we finally get off this mountain top we can forget all about what happened, and move on with the rest of our very separate lives. You get to be master of all you survey here in Queenstown, I’ll go back to my job in Christchurch, and everyone gets to live happily ever after.’
‘It won’t be as easy as you think,’ he muttered. ‘Forgetting what happened up here.’
‘I didn’t say I thought it would be easy. Just necessary.’
‘Is it?’ he said finally, and something in his sombre gaze made Jolie tense and tremble. ‘Maybe I can buy you a drink some time.’
‘Cole, don’t do this.’
‘Why not?’
‘You know why not. What are you asking for? The same sort of set-up your father had with my mother? The answer’s no.’
‘That’s not what I was asking for,’ he said grimly.
‘What, then? Your usual? One night? Haven’t we done that already?’
Cole’s eyes flashed with a warning Jolie chose to ignore.
‘Here’s a thought,’ she murmured, defensive beyond reason at the thought of allowing Cole Rees close enough to hurt her, at the thought of him wanting to get close enough to hurt her. ‘How about champagne and roses and a loving partner for Jolie Tanner? Someone who’s proud of her and supportive of her and doesn’t give a damn what other people think or say about her?’
Cole said nothing.
‘Yeah, that’s what I thought,’ she said bleakly. ‘I’m sorry, Cole, but you and I … what happened up here in the dark when no one was watching … I can’t do that out in the open with you. Even if the feel of you inside me was … intense. I just can’t. And neither should you.’
Cole spent the next two hours pacing. He couldn’t settle and didn’t want coffee. He still had no phone signal. He didn’t want food. What he wanted was a woman who didn’t challenge his every move. One who would’ve said yes to that drink and bored him within moments of doing so.
Only Jolie hadn’t said yes and she hadn’t bored him yet.
Screwed with him, yes. Taunted him, challenged him, blamed James for all manner of things. But she hadn’t bored him.
She’d found a copy of yesterday’s paper and started filling out the Sudoku. When that was done she started in on the crossword. She had a habit of tapping the top of the pen against her lips. He had a nasty habit of getting aroused every time she did so.
It seemed like an eternity before the radio crackled to life again and the base crew informed them that the helicopter was on its way. In reality only an hour and a half had passed.
‘They’re on their way?’ she asked when he finished the call, even though she had to have heard most of it. He nodded. Time to get out of the sleeping bag and back into his clothes, even if half of them were still damp. Appearances were important and apparently Jolie Tanner thought so too, because she favoured him with a tight smile as she walked past him, collected her jeans from the kitchen chair she’d hung them over, and disappeared into the ladies’ room.
Maybe she would be able to make herself look as if she hadn’t just tumbled out of his arms and his bed. Maybe between them they could convince people that nothing untoward had happened.
The problem being that something very untoward had happened between them, and, like it or not, he wanted it to happen again. In a proper bed this time and with all the time in the world to explore what could happen when all their antipathy and awareness translated into something else entirely.
He was mad to even consider it.
Not like father, like son.
He at least knew what his actions would cost the people around him. How much it would hurt his mother and Hannah to take up with Jolie Tanner just when they thought they’d finally buried the unwelcome association between Tanners and Reeses. Time now for Cole to forget all about grey-eyed waifs with alabaster skin, and a tongue that could strip the defences from a man’s soul.
‘You’re right, we can’t,’ he said to the room at large and no one at all. ‘Glad we sorted that out.’
Dropping the sleeping bag to his feet and stepping out of it, Cole collected up his clothes and started pulling them on, erection and all.
The helicopter arrived soon after, bringing with it four orange-overall-clad rescue workers and a pilot. Two rescuers headed for the control tower. The other two headed towards Jolie and Cole.
Cole didn’t see much point in lingering and Jolie certainly seemed amenable to moving on, so they started out and met them halfway. Knee-deep in drift, amidst smiles and introductions, and then all four of them headed for the chopper.
The rotor blades had stilled, but the pilot still sat at the controls, flicking switches, speaking into his headset. ‘How bad is the avalanche site?’ Cole asked the older of the two men, the one who’d said his name was Abe.
‘The slab missed base station and the ski field car park by half a kilometre. That’s your good news,’ offered Abe. ‘The bad news is that you’ve lost two gondola towers, three gondola units, chairlifts two and eight are gone, and there’s an almighty mess of snow in the valley below yours that’s causing some concern on account of it triggering another bigger slide. Snowfall’s been heavy enough to cause concern in lots of places but so far, you’ve been hardest hit.’
‘So much for breaking it to him gently,’
murmured Jolie and earned herself sharp glances from Abe and co, and a tiny smile from Cole.
‘How’d you get the knock on the head?’ Abe asked him.
‘We were in one of the gondolas when it went down.’
‘You were what?’ Abe looked incredulously at Cole. ‘You said you were in the kiosk. The assumption being that you’d waited out the entire blizzard in the kiosk.’
‘No.’
‘Now you tell us.’
‘Didn’t seem much point telling you earlier. We’re fine. Is there anyone else unaccounted for on the mountain?’
‘Only Hare,’ said Abe.
‘He was in the control room when we left,’ said Jolie, casting a worried glance in its direction. The two-man rescue team were nowhere to be seen, though it was obvious from their tracks that they’d made it to the tower.
By the time they reached the helicopter and Abe had sat Cole down and shone a torch in his eyes, and put it down only to start poking away at Cole’s skull, the other rescue team was heading back to the helicopter. They didn’t dawdle. Nor did they check the gondola station.
‘They’re not looking,’ said Jolie in a small voice that was at odds with her bulky, double-coat clad frame, and beanie and ski goggles that perched atop her head. Maybe she thought the ragged attire detracted from her beauty. Someone ought to tell her it didn’t, thought Cole grimly. ‘They’re not even turning their heads.’
Abe said nothing. Jolie looked to Cole next but Cole had no answers for her, either.
The two men reached the helicopter and for a moment said nothing. Cole looked to Jolie, with her arms wrapped tightly around her waist and her face set, her eyes fixed unwaveringly on the first of the would-be rescuers who’d returned empty-handed.
‘He’s there,’ said the first man quietly, glancing at Jolie but returning his attention to Abe. ‘He’s dead.’
Abe took it hard. The hands examining the gash in Cole’s head trembled until finally the older man withdrew them altogether.
Jolie took it hard too. Cole didn’t know what Hare had been to her but she closed her eyes and stood utterly still. She said nothing, nothing at all.
‘How?’ he asked rustily, for some part of his brain still functioned as a ski-field owner’s brain should function—seeking the reason for the loss of life of someone in his employ.
‘There are no marks on him,’ said the first man. ‘His clothes are dry and the room is not cold. Hypothermia didn’t get him. Best guess is he suffered a heart attack. But it’s only a guess.’
Cole nodded. ‘Thanks.’ The police would need to be informed, and Hare’s next of kin. Hare had a daughter somewhere on the north island. Hare’s wife had died years ago.
‘We’d best get you to the hospital,’ said Abe, first to break the heavy silence.
‘No hospital,’ said Cole.
‘You hit your head pretty hard, son,’ said Abe gruffly. ‘The pair of you crashed to the ground in a gondola, hiked to safety through a blizzard, and I can guarantee if that was what you were wearing you’ll have suffered some degree of hypothermia along the way. What gives you the impression you have a choice?’
‘No,’ said Jolie to the doctor for the umpteenth time. ‘There’s really no need for me to get undressed. Nothing’s broken, nothing’s frozen, nothing hurts, and I’m keeping my clothes on.’ Belligerence wasn’t a natural state for Jolie—it took effort and made her tremble, but better that than a full physical. ‘You’ve checked fingers and toes, taken my temperature, and I don’t have concussion. Just tell me where to sign so I can get out of here.’
‘You can go just as soon as you lie back on the table and let me check your abdomen and your spine. Through your clothes if you insist.’
‘I insist.’
‘You know, belligerence is an early sign of hypothermia,’ said the doctor sweetly as she gestured yet again for Jolie to lie down on the examination table.
‘Belligerence is something of a natural state for Jolie,’ said a deep voice from the doorway and there stood Cole Rees and beside him her mother.
Jolie took a step forward, and then she was in her mother’s arms and holding on tight. No words for the complex relationship between mother and daughter who’d only really ever had each other, for Jolie’s father had died when Jolie was still a baby. Rachel squeezed tighter, before pulling back to study Jolie worriedly. ‘You okay, baby?’
‘Fine,’ said Jolie, close to choking.
‘I’d like to believe her,’ said the doctor. ‘Stand there and let me prod your abdomen and your spine. If you can stay upright, I promise you I’m done.’
Rachel stepped back, and Jolie let the ER doctor do her job as Cole Rees looked on from the doorway. He sported a fresh bandage for the cut on his forehead, and a new overcoat. Maybe he’d borrowed it. Hopefully it was dry.
He looked tired. Battered. And far too appealing for his own good or Jolie’s. ‘Why are you here?’ she asked curtly, spearing him with an unfriendly gaze.
‘I tried to teach her some manners, I swear,’ said Rachel, frowning at her daughter. Jolie scowled back.
‘Guess they didn’t take,’ murmured Cole. ‘I’m checking out. I wanted to make sure you were okay before I left. No ulterior motive, Jolie. Just common courtesy.’
As requested.
She could not hold his gaze. The unspoken words hung in the air as the doctor finished her examination and told Jolie she could go.
Home, finally, to where a hot shower waited and getting undressed didn’t mean that a physician would know from the scent on her and the state of her underwear that Jolie Tanner had recently had sex. No one need know about that.
‘I’ll walk you and your mother to your car,’ Cole said next.
‘There’s really no need.’
Cole’s gaze clashed with hers, his will a living thing. ‘Humour me,’ he said.
Jolie humoured him, but Cole could tell she wanted him gone. Out of her sight, out of her life, and he would be. Soon. Just as soon as they made their way past the press mob waiting outside the hospital doors. He hadn’t mentioned them to Jolie yet.
Rachel didn’t mention them, either, although she must’ve seen them on her way in.
Jolie stopped when she saw them. Stopped and turned as if to flee, only there was no escaping the press when they wanted a piece of a person. Cole knew this for fact.
‘Better just to get it over with,’ he murmured, and for a fleeting moment he saw terror in her eyes; a fear wholly at odds with the bravery she’d shown on the mountain.
‘Isn’t there another way out?’ she said.
‘They’ll still find you.’ With his hand to the small of her back, he urged her forwards, nothing untoward, but she trembled anyway and he didn’t think it was with desire. ‘We practised this story, remember? I’m not going to deviate from it, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘I really don’t think I can do this.’ Terror in her gaze, along with a distrust that cut at him.
‘Sorry, Red. You don’t have a choice.’ He glanced at Rachel Tanner. Rachel stared steadily back, her gaze self-assured and slightly mocking. But she’d taken her daughter’s hand in her own and didn’t look as if she’d be letting it go any time soon. ‘Ready?’
And then all three of them stepped outside and it began.
‘Mr Rees, can you tell us about the damage sustained up on Silverlake Mountain.’
‘Mr Rees, has there been any word on the whereabouts of Hare Robo?’
‘Mr Rees, can you tell us why you left your father’s funeral to meet with Jolie Tanner?’
‘Ms Tanner, can you tell us about the nature of your relationship with Cole Rees?’
‘Keep your questions relevant or don’t ask them at all,’ said Cole, pinning the burly reporter blocking Jolie’s way with a flat stare. ‘If I may. The avalanche damage to Silverlake is extensive. Ms Tanner and I were both caught in it but sustained only minor injuries.
Thank you for your concern. My manager, Hare Robo, was operating the gondola ski-lift service from the control tower at the time the blizzard struck. His whereabouts is currently unknown.’
‘Mr Rees, can you give us an estimate of how much it will cost to repair the damages to Silverlake ski field?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Mr Rees, your sister is quoted as saying that you’ve been heading up Rees Enterprises for some time now and that your father’s death will have little effect on the day-to-day running of Rees Holdings.’
‘That’s correct.’
‘She’s also quoted as saying she sees no reason why you and Miss Tanner would have arranged to meet on the mountain on the day of your father’s funeral.’
‘Also correct. ’
‘But you do have a cabin up there.’ The swarthy reporter shot Rachel an oily smile and she lifted a bored and quizzical brow in reply. Jolie shrank back against his arm, her trembling twofold. ‘A cabin your father used to use regularly to conduct … business.’
‘Of course.’
‘So what were you and Ms Tanner doing up there?’
‘Speaking for myself, I was saying goodbye to my father,’ said Cole grimly. ‘I took the last gondola ride back down the mountain. So did Ms Tanner. Then the avalanche struck and knocked me unconscious. When I came to I couldn’t tell sky from snow. Ms Tanner got me back up the mountain to safety. She did it in sub-zero temperatures in the middle of a blizzard by hauling herself and occasionally me through a nightmare landscape. I owe her my life. I owe her my thanks. And I extend to her my wholehearted admiration for her determination, quick thinking and mountain craft. Have I made myself clear?’
No juicy scandal in any of that, and the burly reporter knew it.
‘Ms Tanner, do you have any comment?’ he said with an insincere smile.
‘No,’ said Jolie, and if the word came out thready it was only because she had no defences left. Not against the press of people staring at her so avidly. Not against Cole.
He’d heard her. All those awful things she’d said to him about the way his father’s actions had coloured her life. Cole had listened.
He’d said he admired her—out loud and in public, a Rees had praised a Tanner. It didn’t compute, the same way his arm at her back making her feel safe didn’t compute.
‘You must have some comment,’ said the persistent reporter, as if to have none was unthinkable.
‘I’m glad I’m alive,’ she said raggedly. ‘I’m glad Cole is. And I’m absolutely beat and just want to go home. Those are my comments.’
Cole looked at the reporter. The reporter looked at Cole. ‘Move,’ said Cole softly. And then they were through the throng and Cole dropped his arm and walked them to Rachel’s car.
‘You did fine back there,’ he said with a searching green-eyed gaze as Rachel headed for the driver’s side door.
Jolie nodded and looked away.
‘I wouldn’t have fed you to them, Jolie,’ he said next. ‘That’s not my way.’
She ended up shrugging, because she had no answer to give him. ‘Now I know that.’
‘Not exactly trusting, are you?’
‘No.’ She’d never had cause to be. ‘I don’t know what I expected back there,’ she said quietly. ‘Not that. Not your support. Not your thanks. I—thank you.’
‘I’ll try not to make a habit of it if it rattles you so much.’
‘You do that.’
He shook his head, his smile a curious mixture of appreciation and regret. And then he turned and strode away.
‘Nice of him,’ offered Rachel mildly as they got into the car, and Jolie tried not to stare at Cole as he made his way towards the waiting taxi. Where was his family? Were they so adamant about not wanting to be seen anywhere near a Tanner that they hadn’t even come to collect him from the hospital? What kind of a family was that?
‘What did you make of him?’ asked Rachel, into Jolie’s continued silence.
‘I thought …’ she said and lapsed into contemplation as Rachel reversed the car out of the car park and pulled away. ‘I thought he was amazing. He never gave up. Not once. He always got back up.’
Not everyone had, up there on the mountain. Not everyone had survived. Jolie took a shuddering breath.
‘Hare’s dead. They think he had a heart attack. He said—’ Jolie tried to blink away the rapidly forming tears but this time they wouldn’t stay back. ‘He said to tell you he was sorry for your loss. He wanted me to make sure I said it right.’
This time, when the tears came, Jolie made no move to stop them.