Chapter Thirteen

Austin went outside to warm up the truck and brush off the dusting of snow that had fallen in the night. Yesterday’s clouds were lifting, exposing stretches of blue trying to make their way through. It was going to be a beautiful day.

If he didn’t blow it first.

What was his deal, getting so defensive about Amelia? He’d thought he was finally figuring out this whole intimacy thing, like taking Sam to the shelter, even inviting her to wake up in his bed. And then the next thing he knew he was closing conversations, turning his back on Sam when he went to get the ski pants, barely giving her a glance or a word as she put everything on.

“Don’t do this,” he muttered to himself as he went in to tell her the truck was ready. “Don’t ruin something that might actually work.”

Not that he knew where anything with Sam was going. Didn’t she have a busy job? A life in Seattle? Whatever it was, it kept her flush with cash, judging by the gloves she’d bought him. The thought made him burn up inside. He couldn’t say yes to them. But how had he actually brought himself to say no?

He didn’t even know why he’d gotten so touchy about Amelia. I’m not pushing her away, he told himself sternly. I’m protecting my life. So what if he didn’t want to tell her everything that had happened with his knee, or listen to her criticize his coaching? If she stuck around, he’d open up more.

If that wasn’t going to happen, so be it. He hoped this wouldn’t be their last day together. But he didn’t want to be crushed if she was going to announce that it had been fun, but it was time for her to go home.

Sam seemed to have come to a similar conclusion, because when she hopped in the truck she was cheerful as usual, as though he hadn’t been terse. Because she didn’t care? Because she was already planning her escape? He didn’t even know how to ask, because they weren’t enough of a thing for him to find out what they were or were not.

But she was wonderful right now. And right now, that was enough.

“Where are we going?” Sam asked. “Or is this another one of your Austin surprises?”

“It’s not far,” he said cryptically.

“It’s not skiing, because we don’t have any gear. But it can’t be driving or you wouldn’t have me wearing this sexy getup.” She gestured to his ski pants, which managed to fit her after she rolled the bottoms.

“Does that narrow it down?” Austin asked.

“Nope.”

Sam pulled out her phone and checked something, then put it away. Austin was about to comment—did she ever go without that thing?—but he bit it back. That was what Austin usually did. Once he saw the crack, he picked at it and picked at it until it widened and the whole foundation fell down. He didn’t want to do that this time, not when he didn’t even know how long he’d have Sam anyway.

“I told work I’m unavailable for a few hours,” Sam offered without his prompting.

“It’s okay.” He looked at the road.

“It’s not, I know. But this is how it is with me, and I’m lucky I can be here instead of in the office.”

The subtext being Drop me off at the corner if you have a problem with it.

Austin reached over and squeezed her knee as he drove. “Really,” he said, and this time he meant it. “I don’t know why I’m so testy this morning.”

“Too much to have someone spend the night?” Sam asked, and Austin wondered what it was about her, how she could push through every angle and sink her teeth right into the sore spot inside.

He withdrew his hand and kept his eyes on the road. “It’s not a thing that happens very often,” he finally said.

This time she was the one who reached over and touched his leg. “I can go.”

“No.” He looked at her. “Seriously. No.”

“Good.” Sam sat back, satisfied. By the time Austin parked the truck, they were holding hands across the front seat. It shouldn’t have put Austin at ease. But it did.

“Where are we?” Sam asked.

“Sue and Jesse own Mack Daddy’s—you know, the Dipper.”

Sam looked out the window. “Uh-huh.”

“Jesse’s got something I want to borrow.”

Sam pointed to the snowmobile sitting out in the driveway, by Jesse’s truck. “You don’t mean—”

Austin grinned. “What do you say?”

Sam opened the door and hopped out. “Coming?” she called to him. He turned off the ignition and pocketed the key, laughing at her. He should have known better than to think she wouldn’t want to go.

They walked up the front steps of the house and knocked on the door. Jesse and Sue were in their sixties and had been living in Gold Mountain for the last thirty years. They’d been among the first to welcome Austin when he moved in, and he borrowed Jesse’s snowmobile more than a few times every year.

“Of course,” Jesse said when Austin introduced Sam and asked if he could take it for a spin. “You going to Pine Points?”

“You guessed it.” Austin grinned then turned to Sam. “You need a snowmobile to get to a lot of the mountain passes when everything’s snowed in. I only go out when the snow’s deep enough to protect the topsoil, though, and Jesse’s got a good silencer so the engine won’t disturb the wildlife.”

“Not many roads around here,” Jesse added. “But that’s all about to change.” He sighed.

They were sitting in the kitchen, drinking a fresh pot of coffee Jesse had put on. Austin wasn’t sure he needed any more caffeine, but he wouldn’t say no to Jesse’s offer. Sue was down in Bellingham grocery shopping, and Austin knew the man was lonely, semiretired and not sure what to do when it was too snowy to tinker in the yard.

“What’s about to change?” Sam asked, stirring her coffee with a spoon.

“You must have heard how Kane Enterprises is coming in here.”

“Sure,” Sam said. She blew on the coffee and glanced at Austin as she took a sip.

“Sam’s probably heard more about the Kanes than she ever wanted to.”

Jesse chuckled. “They still after you?”

“I know you had reasons to sell, and I’m okay with that,” Austin said. “But you know me.” He shrugged. “I just can’t.”

“I hear you. It’s such a shame when you think of how much this whole place is going to be paved.”

“Surely it’s not going to be the whole place,” Sam said.

“A damn lot of it. They’re buying the plot from here up to the mountain, then down to the Points”—he gestured vaguely south—“and over to the Cascade Loop.” He took a noisy sip. “And that’s only part of it.”

Once Jesse got going, he could talk forever. Austin hoped Sam wouldn’t mind, but she was leaning forward, rapt, asking him more questions about what was going to happen to the land.

“Now me and Sue, we got the promise of a fat check from the Kanes if this deal goes through. We’re supposed to hear as soon as something’s signed with the management up at Gold, and the Hendersons—” He leaned over toward Sam to explain, “That’s one of the families who own a lot of the land up here. There are a few who are in on the sale.” Sam nodded, following along. “Well, once that goes through we’ll sell the Dipper. Everything’s going to go.”

“But why are you selling if you don’t want to?” Sam asked.

“What am I going to do? The Kanes can outlast me. They can build around me. They can do anything to push me out. And the size of that check.” He whistled. “I know it’s nothing to them, but how can I say no to that? Austin here can tell them where to put their millions, but I’ve got a boy just out of college, a daughter at UW studying to be a nurse. They’ve got bills, loans. How am I supposed to say no when this can help my kids?”

“Then maybe it’s not such a bad thing that the Kanes are coming in,” Sam suggested.

But Jesse shook his head, as Austin knew he would. “Just because I’m taking their money doesn’t mean I support what they do. Just because I know it’ll help my kids doesn’t mean I don’t wish there were some other way.” He raised his chin toward Austin. “I admire this guy. He’s got principles, and he sticks with them. I only wish it made a difference in the long run.”

He sighed into his empty mug. Austin could feel the weight that lay over Jesse, the same weight that had settled over all of them since they learned the talk they’d heard about for years was actually going through.

“Sam’s just up for a few days, and I wanted to show her some of the land. Take her out before so much of it changes,” Austin said.

Jesse brightened. “It looks like the clouds are lifting and it’ll be nothing but blue by the time you get out. You got everything you need? You have warm gloves, honey? It gets cold in the wind.”

Sam assured him she was fully outfitted. They thanked him for the coffee and set out.

Austin had always thought he had everything he needed—a team to coach, tracks to ski, good friends, and a loyal dog for company. He didn’t need his life to change. And yet something felt different when he was with Sam. As they settled onto Jesse’s snowmobile, her arms around his chest felt so right, he wondered how he’d managed to take this ride so many times without realizing how alone he had been.

“You ever ridden one of these?” he asked.

Sam shook her head against his back. “It feels like being on a Jet Ski, though.”

“You’ve been jet skiing?”

“In the San Juans.”

Of course. Her family probably took all sorts of summer vacations together, too.

“A little warmer than this,” he said.

Sam laughed. “Anything is warmer than this.” She burrowed closer to his back.

“Don’t forget to hold on,” Austin said, even though it wasn’t like she needed the reminder. He felt her thighs clench around him.

“I’m not letting go,” she whispered in his ear, and Austin was right back in the kitchen that morning, his fingers sliding up her thighs. Why had he wanted to do something that involved bundling up in so many layers when they could have been back home taking all those layers off?

But as soon as he pulled the throttle and eased them toward the trail, he knew. If Sam wanted to get a sense of why he loved this land, why everyone who lived here did, this was what she had to see. He didn’t know what her life was like in Seattle, what meetings and appointments and corporate whatever took up her time. But she was here now, and this was what home meant to him.

The trail headed back toward the woods then climbed steadily to one of the ridges that linked up to the peak of Gold Mountain and extended to the spine of mountains beyond. He shifted his weight forward as the slope pitched, and she responded with him, so that even out here, fully clothed, separated by all the layers between them, it still felt like they moved as one, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, her legs firm around his. As the slope evened out, he reached a hand behind and rubbed along the inside of her thigh, feeling her breath quicken in his ear.

And then they were climbing again, up steady switchbacks along the eastern face of the mountain that rose as though a mirror to Gold Mountain, the two peaks facing each other across the valley between.

Austin pulled back on the throttle and asked Sam, “How high do you want to go?”

Her response didn’t surprise him. “How high can we go?”

“We can go all the way,” he said, and she squeezed his waist. He revved the engine and plowed up, so fast she had to cling tight to him.

He brought the snowmobile to a stop above the tree line but below the final crest of the peak, where it grew too steep to safely take it the rest of the way. This was why he’d outfitted them with chains on the bottom of their boots, metal loops that made an X over the sole and kept them from sliding back.

Sam climbed off the snowmobile, her scarf wrapped tight around her neck, Austin’s spare pair of goggles oversize on her face. She stood uncertainly, as though she didn’t trust the chains to hold her.

“Let’s go,” he said, before she had time to get too cold standing around and psych herself out.

“Where?”

He pointed up. Sam looked at him as though he were crazy. “You want to climb the rest of the way?”

“It’s not far,” he promised.

Sam squinted up, evaluating. “I’m not sure what that means in Austin skispeak,” she said.

“It means you climb until you think you can’t make it, and right when your legs are about to give out—ta-da! You’re there.”

“Great,” she said. “It’s not like I spent yesterday on a mogul run, so my legs aren’t sore at all.”

“You’re sore?” he asked.

“I haven’t skied in years, and in case you forgot, I was the one doing the work last night.” She reached for his hips, and he had a flash of her body arched over him, her thighs wrapped around his face. His cock stirred at the hope it wasn’t only a memory of the past but a promise of more to come. He wanted her right there, buried in the snow. But as incredible as the view was from here, it was only going to get better. And that was what he wanted Sam to see.

Austin pulled on the low braid hanging out from under Sam’s hat and brought his lips close to her ear. “I haven’t forgotten a thing.” He swung the braid over her shoulder. “You might want to unzip your jacket a little. Things are about to heat up.”

Austin had a route he liked, a short but sweet ascent to a 360-degree view untouched by crowds or ski lifts.

He heard Sam breathing steadily beside him, but she didn’t once flag. He had a feeling she wouldn’t slow down no matter what. When they stopped to rest, Austin promised Sam he knew a great massage therapist in town.

“Her name’s Claire, she works on my leg once a week. I’ll call when we get back. You definitely shouldn’t leave before making an appointment.”

Sam seemed excited by the prospect, but immediately Austin wished he could take it back. He didn’t want to talk about Sam leaving, not while the snow sparkled in the sun and the diamond white of the valley spread farther below them with each step they climbed.

Not that the first part of what he’d said was any better, letting her know his weaknesses, drawing attention back to his leg. He was getting sloppy, careless. Letting her in just so he’d feel justified later in pushing her out. He hated it when she asked, “You get a massage every week?”

But when he told her it helped loosen him up after all the skiing he did, she seemed to accept the answer without question, and he didn’t know whether that was better or worse than someone who demanded to know every little detail about why, how, how long. It had taken him forever to tell Claire how he was really injured, even when, every week, she reminded him she couldn’t properly treat him if she didn’t know the problem. He’d sort of hated her for asking even though she was just doing her job.

They climbed until there was nothing but snow-covered rock, just them and the snow and the sky. Austin’s legs burned, but it was the kind of pain that didn’t actually hurt. He grabbed her hand for the last few steps. “Look up,” he said.

She gasped.

With no trees to get in the way, the wind was strong, sending plumes of snow into the air. But they were so warm from the climb it felt good, the cold on their faces balancing the heat radiating from their pumping hearts. Austin pointed over the vast expanse of the Cascades, white peaks pointing up to the sky.

“Some days you can see to Canada, to the mountains farther north.” He shifted his finger west. “And the Olympics, on the other side of Seattle. Mount Rainier is down that way. And then all of this.” He stretched in a wide 360, taking in the expansive view. “All of this is why I’m here.” He looked down at her. “This is why, no matter what the Kanes do, I want to keep my part of the woods untouched. I can’t control the entire Cascades.” He laughed. “But I can control that.”

“It’s beautiful,” Sam said. “It’s breathtaking. I can’t even say what it is. There aren’t any words.”

“They say what’s his name, the guy who started the whole thing, the one who used to own the company—”

“Bill Kane,” Sam said.

“They say he traveled all over these parts and drafted the blueprints himself, deciding where to build. He didn’t want to just hire out some contractors. He had this whole vision, or whatever you want to call it, of what he was going to do.”

Sam didn’t answer. He went on.

“But I don’t understand how that’s possible. I don’t understand how anyone could come here and look at this view and think, Hey, here’s a great place to build.”

“You really love it here,” Sam said quietly.

A soft noise escaped from the back of Austin’s throat. “Maybe the problem is me.”

“Maybe it’s not a problem,” Sam said. “Maybe it won’t turn out like you think.”

“I know Gold Mountain needs help. I know it needs money, and new equipment, and that if it wants to compete with the other resorts and keep its doors open, it has to expand. But everything I’ve read about the proposal is focused on new roads, new hotels, amenities for people who don’t even live here.”

He looked over at Sam. “I’m sorry, I’m yammering.”

She shook her head. “No. It’s enough up here to make you think.”

“I’m glad you like it.”

She lifted the goggles, so he could see the dark flash of her eyes, the way she seemed to look not just at him but through him, into some deep place he thought he’d long ago closed the door on.

“I get that you don’t share these things with just anyone. I want you to know that I know that, and it means something to me.”

He didn’t have a response, so he pulled her close to him, his arms tight around her, both of them looking over the great, open world splayed down below. He could look at this view for hours, forever, and never get tired of it. The mountains changed in every season, with every snowfall. He liked the shelter on Gold Mountain, where he felt safe, on solid ground. But he craved the expanse of the peaks, feeling the pull in his chest as though he were about to dive into nothing. The trees and sky and rock called to him the way the racecourse once called to him, taunting him with possibility. Teasing him with promises of flight.

“I can see how important this place is to you,” Sam went on, linking her arm through his. He watched the breath come from her mouth, the beauty of her warmth in the middle of the cold. “But things change. Everything changes. The things we love—they never stay the same. And even if we think we know what happens next, we think we’ve got it all figured out, it never works out like we’d planned.”

“It’s not that I don’t want this place to change,” he argued. “It’s how it changes. It’s what it changes for. There’s so much need here. Kane Enterprises is right—there aren’t enough jobs. You heard Jesse—his kids are in Seattle, Bellingham. We lose talent to Portland, Vancouver, all over the place. The whole point is that Amelia has the talent to leave. That’s what people aspire to. Going away.

“We need jobs, and opportunities, and things to keep people here. But I don’t think that has to take the form of a giant resort that caters to rich outsiders. The whole point is that this place is stunning, accessible, has tons to do year-round, yet it isn’t super built-up or a giant traffic jam. I’m sure Kane Enterprises has done its research, and the proposal’s been approved or however that works. Obviously the other parties have been willing to sell, and the community is going along with it. But that doesn’t make it right, Sam. That doesn’t mean the people here have really had a choice.”

“But don’t you think Kane Enterprises is thinking about sustainability and has plans for roads that won’t lock everything up?”

Austin shook his head. “They’re not thinking about this from the perspective of people who live and travel here. They’re seeing the map from the top down instead of from the inside.”

Sam squirmed around in his arms. He wondered if he’d said something wrong. “How do you know that? Why would you think the worst-case scenario is the one that’s gong to come true?”

Austin couldn’t help laughing a little at that. “Experience. But I’ve followed what Kane has done elsewhere—in downtown Seattle, in that development along Puget Sound, in the San Juans. Did you hear about that uproar on Bainbridge, when they knocked down the ferry building and built that whole monstrosity?”

“That makes it so much easier to get to and from the island,” Sam pointed out.

“That puts twice as many people on the ferry so the company makes twice as much, as do the Kane-owned parking garages, and the vendors who now have to buy permits from Kane. And then when they get to the island, there’s no place to put all those people. It’s like an amusement park ride.” He turned toward her, agitation making his heart beat like a drum. “There’s the land that’s going to be destroyed so some people can have a second or third luxury home or whatever, but there are additional costs, too. My friend Abbi is a naturalist, she has tons of information about wildlife disruption. And I spent my undergrad studying this area, environmental management, that sort of thing. I know I sound dopey, but it’s just—does Kane have anything in its plans to reduce waste, make the lodges low impact, cover additional snowmaking needs? Anything? Because nothing we’ve seen of the proposal deals with any of that and I’m…”

He looked down at his hands, embarrassed by his outburst. The duct tape around his fingers was peeling. He’d have to apply another layer—preferably not when Sam was around.

Sam cocked her head and looked at him intently. “Say you had unlimited funds. Money is no object. You can do whatever you damn well please. Say you’re head of Kane Enterprises and have all their resources at your disposal. What would you do here?”

“Oh, man.” He laughed. “I think we’d freeze to death before I got through that whole list.”

“You actually have ideas?”

He was hurt that she sounded surprised.

“I just told you I studied this.”

“I thought you, uh, skied.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I can do other things, too, you know. After my ski career tanked, I was still young. Clearly I had to do something. I came to Washington for school and got my degree in environmental management. I only lasted a year in an office, but hey. At least I tried.” He turned to look at her. “It’s not like I haven’t thought about this. I live here. My whole livelihood depends on the mountain. So I definitely have ideas about where to put the new runs, set up facilities on the mountains, what the condos can be like. I just think it can be done without, you know, completely destroying so many people’s property.”

Sam nodded, but something about how closely she was paying attention, as though his thoughts actually mattered, made him feel ridiculous for talking like this at all.

“But it’s not like anyone would listen to me,” he said with a sigh. “What with the whole fact that I don’t have unlimited funds and am very much not a Kane. The only reason they want to talk to me is to strong-arm me into selling. Or something—I don’t know. It’s weird they still haven’t called.”

He picked up a clump of fluffy snow and fashioned it into a ball, but when he threw it, the whole thing fell away like a dandelion puff, the snow drifting before the ball hit the ground.

Sam kissed his cheek. “I’m listening.”

Then she took a ball of snow and shoved it in his face.

The surprise of cold and wet made him shout and he was on her in an instant, pinning her down, the two of them throwing snow at each other like they were kids having a brawl on a snow day. They laughed until they were shrieking from the snow dripping under their jackets and scarves. But as they raced back down the trail they grew warm again, panting, flushed, and breathless as they climbed back on the snowmobile.

“I bet the Cascade has a nice hot tub,” Austin mused, starting the engine.

Sam sat behind him and traced a lazy finger over his back. “I was just thinking about that fireplace of yours. A little more private?” She reached around with her other hand and squeezed the inside of his thigh. When he groaned, she went farther. All that fabric between her hand and his cock and still she was making him hard. It was the way she touched him, panting in his ear, grinding her body against his back.

“You can’t do this to me,” he groaned.

“Can’t?” Sam flicked the flesh of his earlobe that stuck out under his hat. “That sounds like a challenge.”

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Austin turned the engine off. Fast. Even Sam paused in her ministrations, not sure what he was about to do.

Good. She couldn’t always be in charge all the time. Not that he minded the way she’d thrown him on the sofa and done exactly what she wanted with him. Nope, he hadn’t minded that at all, and the thought of her breasts in the firelight was almost enough to make him pause, wait, take her back to his place before fucking her fast and hard with every ounce of pent-up need.

But he didn’t want her to spend the ride down planning what she was going to do to him. He wanted her unscripted, unplanned. He wanted her now.

They were warm enough from the hike that they didn’t have to get inside right away. And anyway, what he had in mind wouldn’t take long. Austin slid off the front of the snowmobile, pulling Sam down with him.

“What are you—” she started, but when he turned her so she was facing the snowmobile, her back to him, it was clear. He pushed her shoulders down to bend her over the seat.

“Doesn’t get more private than this,” he grunted as he reached around and unzipped her ski pants, shimmying them over her ass. Sure, they were out in the open, exposed to the world. But there was no one around. No one to hear her moan his name.

She had on a sweet pair of wine-colored panties, and he almost hated to slide them over her curves. But the sight of them pulled down around her thighs with the ski pants was even better. He unzipped his pants and pulled out his cock, throbbing already from the sight of her bare ass bent over the snowmobile, her clothes partway down. Her body was warm, heat radiating from exertion and desire. He slid a hand between her thighs and yes, she was wet, quivering, squirming to press her clit into his palm.

But he pulled away. He wanted her desperate, panting. He wanted her to need this fuck.

“I’ll get cold,” she moaned, holding fast to the seat of the snowmobile as she bent over. But she didn’t make a move to stand. She didn’t give any indication that she didn’t like knowing he was getting off just watching her bend over for him.

Austin stepped closer. “I’ll keep you warm,” he whispered as he used his body to cover her, her ass pressed up against his cock.

“That’s it, baby,” he urged her, sliding his cock along the beautiful cleft.

“Please,” she whimpered.

“Please what?”

“Please fuck me.”

He pulled a condom out of his pocket. It had seemed silly at the time to bring one, but damn, was he glad for it now. He put it on and used his boot to kick out her legs wider. That alone made a groan escape from her lips, and he knew then that she wanted it like this, hard and fast, him taking her just how she’d taken him last night, without holding anything back.

He pressed the tip of his cock to her and she inched back, coaxing him in. He waited, filling her with anticipation, and then he plunged into her.

Sam gasped. Quickly the cry turned into a moan, low and throaty, the sound of desire itself. Austin steadied himself with his hands on either side of her, gripping the seat of the snowmobile, and started to fuck her. The snowmobile rocked, but it was sturdy and stayed upright, no matter how hard Sam shook.

“Come,” she commanded. “Come inside me. Please.”

His only response was to hold on to her shoulders, pressing her down while giving him the leverage he needed to drive even deeper. Her cries carried across the open expanse, but he didn’t care. There was no one around. And even if there were? He still wouldn’t have cared. There was no longer anything in his world besides her body and the tension building inside him.

She could feel it, too. “Please,” she said again, a gasp, her breath coming in short bursts as she held on. “I need you.”

The three little words were like a jolt through his system, and he came as if on command, as if her words had unlocked something he couldn’t contain. A force ripped through him and he let go with such completeness that he was shuddering afterward, slumped over her body, pressing her tight to him. He slid out of her and wrapped the condom in a tissue to throw away later. But when he pulled up his pants, he wished for a second that they’d actually waited and were inside so he could stay like that, holding her, feeling her heartbeat and the steady rise and fall of her breathing.

But they weren’t inside, they were out in the snow and he’d just fucked her over the back of a snowmobile, and even though it had just happened it was hard to believe it was real and not some fantasy. Sam pulled up her pants and turned around, her cheeks flushed, lips raised in a coy half smile.

He reached for her, pulling her to him and kissing her because that was all he had when there weren’t any words left to say.

“Damn,” she finally whispered, eyes sparkling.

“We aren’t done yet,” he said, sliding his hands between her thighs.

She groaned, but in the end she shook her head. “How about that fireplace? Something warm for me to look forward to.”

Austin drove the snowmobile back as fast as he dared. He could feel her clinging to him, rubbing against him, building the anticipation so that as soon as he flicked her clit with his fingers, his tongue, the tip of his cock, she would come.

His frustrations from that morning seemed like a lifetime away.