Maybe This Christmas
He took it for granted, the closeness of his family, the fact that they were always there in the background supporting each other.
He’d never known anything different.
“If we go to the bar, you’ll be accosted by guests.”
“Which is why we’re going to drink the beer from your fridge. I promise to replenish it tomorrow.”
“My fridge?” Her heart bumped a little harder. “You want to come back to my lodge?”
“Why not? You do have beer?” He slipped his arm around her shoulders, and she was conscious of the weight of his arm, of the power of his body as it brushed against hers.
His touch was casual.
The way she was feeling was anything but. It would have been safer for her pulse rate and her blood pressure if she pulled away, but that would have raised questions she didn’t want to answer, so she decided her cardiovascular system was going to have to take the hit.
“Jess has talent,” she croaked. “You’re too busy to ski with her all the time, so I was thinking that maybe she should join the under-14 class. I’m focusing on mountain free-skiing, bumps, gate training, gate drills and freeski skills. We’ll mix up the fun with the work. She might enjoy it, and it would be good for building confidence. What do you think?”
“I think she’ll be bored out of her mind. That’s fine for most of the kids, but not Jess. She needs to be stretched.”
“Are you saying my lessons are boring?”
“No. You’re a gifted teacher, but Jess is different. She has something.”
“She’s her father’s daughter.”
Tyler gave a grim smile. “Which is probably why Janet kicked her out.”
They’d reached the steps to her lodge. A single light glowed in the window. “I agree she needs to be stretched, but if you’re going to make the most of that something, it’s important to get the basics right. To focus on style.”
“Style is irrelevant. Speed is what’s important.”
Brenna rolled her eyes and delved for her keys. It was an argument they’d had more times than she could count. “Good style comes before speed.”
“Nothing comes before speed. You want to be the fastest, not the prettiest.” He tugged her hat down over her eyes. Then he stooped and scooped up a handful of snow from the steps and she backed away, her keys still in her hand.
“Don’t you dare! Tyler O’Neil if you so much as—crap.” She ducked too late as snow hit her on the chest and exploded into her face. “I am soaking!”
“You shouldn’t have unzipped your jacket.”
“I hate you, you know that, don’t you?”
“No, you don’t. You love me, really.” He was smiling as he scooped up more snow, but this time she was quicker, and the snow in her hand hit him full in the face.
She did love him. That was the problem.
She really loved him, but there was no way she was going to let him know that.
She made the most of her temporary advantage and let herself into the lodge, reasoning that even Tyler wouldn’t dare throw snow indoors.
The lodges were the pride of Snow Crystal. Set in the forest and overlooking the lake, each one felt private and intimate, but Forest was her favorite. “I’d forgotten what good aim you have. I have snow blindness.” Still laughing, Tyler wiped snow out of his eyes, tugged off his boots and coat and left them by the door.
“You’re neat and tidy all of a sudden.”
“I’m trying to set a good example. I’m working on being a responsible parent. It’s exhausting.” He sprawled on one of the sofas, his powerful frame dominating even this large, spacious room. The fabric of his jeans clung to hard, muscular thighs, a legacy of years of downhill skiing.
Brenna pulled off her hat and hung up her coat. It was only when she noticed Tyler taking a leisurely look at her body that she realized her soaked, roll-neck sweater was clinging to her breasts.
Alternatively freezing and then burning, she turned away, but it was impossible to ignore his presence or the fact they were alone.
It felt strangely intimate. The lodge was at the far end of the lake, wrapped by the forest that showed itself as dark shapes through acres of glass.
The only other property partially visible through the trees was his.
If she knelt on her bed high on the sleeping shelf, she could just glimpse his bedroom.
Trying not to think about his bedroom, she pulled open the fridge and took out two beers. She opened them both and handed him one.
“I’ll be back in a second. Thanks to you, I need to change my sweater.”
His gaze collided with hers briefly, and then she backed away and took refuge in the bedroom.
When had he ever looked at her before?
She pulled on a dry sweater, took a deep breath and rejoined him in the living room.
“About that thing you were asking me—”
“What thing?”
She curled up in the chair opposite him. “Sex. Jess.”
“Are you blushing?” His eyes narrowed on her face. “You’re cute when you’re embarrassed, do you know that?”
“You’re never cute. You’re a pain in the ass the whole time.”
“I love it when you talk dirty to me.” He winked at her. “Go on. How do I deal with it?”
“Honestly? I think you should wait for her to bring it up. I would have died of embarrassment if my parents had tried to talk to me about sex.”
“What if she doesn’t like to ask? What if she turns around in a few years and tells me she’s pregnant?”
“I think you need to chill.” Brenna sipped her beer. “Make sure she knows she can talk to you about anything. Create an atmosphere where she is comfortable to say whatever she wants.”
“Judging from the conversation earlier, I think we’ve already got that atmosphere. Can you believe she was actually trying to fix me up?”
Brenna almost choked on her beer. “Who with?”
Christy. It had to be Christy with the smooth blond hair. Or maybe pretty, bubbly Poppy, who worked closely with Élise in the restaurant.
There was a brief pause. His eyes met hers and then slid away again. “No one in particular, but she thinks I should have a sex life.”
Definitely Christy.
She was always flirting with Tyler.
Brenna wasn’t good at flirting. And anyway, how did you flirt with someone you’d known all your life? Tyler had seen her soaked to the skin and exhausted after a day in the mountains. He’d dragged her out of ditches and picked her up when she’d wiped out on her skis. He knew everything about her. They had no secrets. She could imagine his reaction if she’d fluttered her eyelashes or made a sexual comment. He’d either laugh or run for the hills.
The reason they were able to be friends was because he didn’t think of her like that.
Women came and went from his life, but their friendship was constant.
And Brenna realized the reason the past year had been so blissful, the reason she’d been able to enjoy his company and his friendship, was because he’d been focusing on Jess. For once in his life he’d mastered his short attention span and put aside his urge to sample the charms of every female who crossed his path. The only woman who’d had his attention was his daughter. He’d put his own needs on hold.
Knowing what he was like, how physical and sexual he was, Brenna had often wondered if he was seeing someone discreetly, but she’d never asked. Instead she’d made the most of her time with him and occasionally, when they’d been out on the mountain guiding or teaching, it had almost felt like being kids again.
Their friendship was stronger than ever.
Was that about to change?
If Jess was actively encouraging him to date then no doubt it would.
And Brenna knew it would take Tyler O’Neil less than thirty seconds in the company of a woman to resurrect his sex life.
How was she going to feel about that?
CHAPTER THREE
TRYING TO DELETE the image of Brenna with her snow-soaked sweater plastered to her breasts from his memory, Tyler strolled up the snowy path to the main house.
In no hurry to face the overwhelming reality of family night, he paused and breathed in the freezing air, watching the forest transform before his eyes. Snow layered on snow until all traces of green vanished and the trees were draped in a mantle of white. As a child it had been his favorite sight. He’d kneel in his bedroom window and watch the first of the flakes fall, hoping it would continue until the snow was up to his waist. The first winter snowfall had been the cause of great excitement in the O’Neil household.
The mountains had been his playground; the adrenaline rush of downhill skiing his drug of choice.
Now he greeted snow with mixed feelings.
It was good for business, and he knew how badly Snow Crystal needed that.
He was enjoying the silence when his phone rang.
Irritated by the disturbance, he dragged it out of his pocket intending to switch the ringer off and then saw the name.
Burying his emotions deep, he lifted the phone to his ear. “Chas? How’s it going?”
He didn’t ask where his friend was. He didn’t have to. Chas was one of the finest ski techs in the racing world. The fact that Tyler was no longer racing meant that Chas was available for another member of the U.S. Ski Team, which meant right now he had to be in Val Gardena, Italy, on the World Cup circuit.
If it hadn’t been for the accident, Tyler would have been there, too.
They would have been discussing strategy, the course, the snow conditions, in an effort to come up with the perfect plan. Chas’s job had been to use his skill and experience to make Tyler the fastest skier down the mountain. Over the years they’d shared beers, hotel rooms, victory and defeat. Chas had been more than just another member of the machine behind the ski team. He’d been Tyler’s wingman and close friend.
Along with his brother Sean, Chas had been the first person he’d seen after his accident.
Tyler tightened his hand on the phone and stared blindly at the trees and mountains.
“How was today?”
“Didn’t you watch?”
“Things are busy around here.” He didn’t say that he hadn’t watched skiing since his accident. Instead he listened while Chas outlined the U.S. triumph in the giant slalom.
“He clinched his fourth World Cup GS title.”
“That’s great. Buy him a beer from me.”
“Why don’t you come out? The team would love to see you.”
And sit in the bar or the stands watching others do what he used to do himself?
It would be like twisting a knife in a raw wound.
The season stretched ahead. There would be a short break over Christmas before it all started again in Bormio, Italy, and then on to Wengen, Switzerland, and Kitzbuhel and the notorious Lauberhorn. Beaver Creek, Lake Louise, another day, another country, another mountain, another race. That had been his life.
Until the race that had ended it all.
“I’m not going to be able to make it. We’re busy here.”
“Great! From what you told me, this time last year busy didn’t exist so I’m pleased to hear things are going well. Has Jackson tied you to the resort? What are you doing?”
Coaching the high school ski team.
Trying not to think about my old life.
Tyler looked up at the sky. Snow was still falling steadily, big fat flakes that rested on his shoulders and dampened his hair.
“I’m helping Brenna run the outdoor program.”
“Right. Well, that sounds—” there was a pause “—that sounds great.”
They both knew that what he really meant was that sounds like a pile of crap.
Tyler agreed.
Not that he didn’t love Snow Crystal, but they both knew he’d rather be racing.
He realized now how much he’d taken it for granted. He’d treated it as a right rather than a gift.
He half listened while Chas updated him on the individuals and their performances on the slopes, made the right noises and a vague commitment to watch the next race if he had the opportunity, then hung up feeling worse than he had before.
The conversation had left him keenly aware of what he’d lost.
It didn’t help that the one person who would have understood, his father, had been dead for almost two and a half years.
Shaking off his black mood, he paced to the door of the main house where he and his brothers had grown up and where his mother still lived.
It still gave him a pang to know that when he walked into the kitchen that had been the hub of the household growing up, his father wouldn’t be there.
His mother loved to decorate for Christmas, and the evidence of that love was everywhere. Tiny lights were strung across the windows, and decorations sparkled through the glass. A festive wreath hung on the door, as it had every year for as long as he could remember. As a child he’d sat on the kitchen floor waxing his skis while his mother had worked magic from the tangle of forest greenery spread over the kitchen table. She’d snipped, weaved and pulled it all together into a wreath.
Tyler pushed open the door. Sleigh bells jangled, announcing his arrival, and he blinked as he saw the number of people already seated around the table. Those numbers had increased over the past year. First Jess had joined them, then Kayla and finally Élise. She was often too busy running the successful restaurants at the resort to join them for family nights but tonight, perhaps because it was close to Christmas, she’d found the time.
There were at least three different conversations going on around the table and Maple, Jackson and Kayla’s miniature poodle, greeted Tyler ecstatically, leaping up and down on the spot as if she had springs in her paws.
Tyler stooped to make a fuss of her and then hung up his coat.
His mother was busy at the stove while Jess was seated at the large scrubbed table, listening, rapt, while his grandfather, Walter, told a story about how he’d once met a moose when he was skiing. It was a story Tyler had heard a hundred times but it was new to Jess.
“And did it move, Gramps, or did you have to ski around it?”
“It stood there and glared at me, and I glared right back. I’m telling you, that animal was as big as a house.”
Jess laughed, and Tyler noticed how her eyes sparkled as she listened to her great-grandfather. She soaked up every story about Snow Crystal, every morsel of information, as if trying to fill in the gaps and make up for the parts she’d missed by living so far away.
His mood lifted slightly.
If he’d still been skiing the World Cup circuit, he wouldn’t have been here when Jess had needed him.
“You’re exaggerating, Walter.” Alice, his grandmother, slipped her glasses into her purse. “He always exaggerates. Ignore him, Jess.”
“I am not exaggerating! Were you there?” Walter grunted. “This was in the days before ski runs and grooming machines. There were no chair lifts.”
Jess leaned closer, her long hair sliding forward over her shoulder. “How did you get to the top of the slopes, Gramps?”
“We walked! We attached skins to our skis, and we walked. We didn’t need machines to haul us to the top like you wimps do today. We used muscle.”
Tyler saw his mother lift a large blue casserole out of the oven. “Let me get that for you. Apparently, I need to build muscle.” He crossed the room in a couple of strides, but she shook her head and placed the casserole in the center of the large table.
“I lift heavier things than that in the restaurant every day, and if you build any more muscle, I’ll be sewing up your jeans even more frequently than I do already.”
Kayla reached for her wine. “What happens to your jeans?”
“Occupational hazard of being a downhill skier. I have muscles like Thor.” Tyler pulled out a chair and winked at her. “Starting to think you’ve picked the wrong brother?”
“No.” Kayla looked him in the eye. “Muscles or not, I’d kill you.”
“Only if I hadn’t killed you first.” The normality of the exchange lifted his dark mood, and Tyler took a beer from his brother. “Thanks.”
“What took you so long?” His mother removed the lid, and delicious smells of cooking mingled with the scent of cinnamon and pine. “I was about to send out a search party! The others said you’d gone on ahead and then you never appeared.” She handed him a stack of plates, and soon the food and the conversation were flowing and the question of where he’d been vanished in the chaos.
“I just spoke to Chas.” He didn’t mention the twenty minutes he’d stood in the forest, watching the snow fall and trying to pull himself together. He didn’t mention the sick feeling that came from knowing that the Ski World Cup was underway. He should have been traveling the world, skiing in a different country every week in his pursuit of the coveted crystal ball that came with winning what many believed to be the most prestigious title of all.
He felt as if he’d been forced off a moving train and was watching while it carried on without him, leaving him stranded on a deserted platform.
Except it wasn’t deserted.
He had the business to think of. Responsibility. His family. Jess.
His grandfather’s eyes brightened. “Chas is still the best tech on the circuit.”
“Yeah.” Tyler sat down and moved a bowl of pinecones out of the way so he could reach the food.
The house was always the same at Christmas. Vases were filled with branches of forest greenery, candles flickered on shelves next to handmade decorations. It was a home. Lived in and loved.
Boots lay abandoned near the doorway, magazines stacked in an untidy heap on the table under the window. Since his mother had started working in the restaurant with Élise, she’d been spending less and less time in the house, something that Tyler and both his brothers had greeted with relief.
Over the past year, she’d regained some of her old energy and enthusiasm for life.
It also hadn’t escaped his notice that Tom Anderson, who owned a farm a couple of miles away, was a more frequent visitor than his role as a local supplier to the restaurant warranted.
Tyler wondered if he was the only one who had noticed Tom’s visits were becoming increasingly regular.
Jackson was seated across from him, his arm across the back of Kayla’s chair. “So where’s Chas right now?”
“Italy. Val Gardena.”
“Molto bene.” His older brother grinned. “You must be missing all the—er—pizza.”
Tyler ignored the innuendo and pushed the bowl of fluffy mashed potatoes toward his grandfather. “The food is pretty good here.”
“So what were you talking about for over an hour?”
“I wasn’t talking to Chas the whole time. I encountered a moose the size of a house.”
“Seriously?” Kayla put her glass down. “Because if that’s the truth, I want to know exactly where so I don’t walk that way.”
“The moose would be more scared of you than you would be of him.” Jackson reached across the table for the salt. “You’ve lived here a year. You know that.”
“I do not know that. The only moose I feel safe with is the chocolate variety Élise serves in the restaurant.”
Jess giggled. “That’s a different spelling. Was there really a moose?”
“Sure.” Tyler never missed an opportunity to tease Kayla. “It was hoping for an encounter with a city-loving Brit so I gave it directions to Kayla’s barn. It should be snuggled up waiting for her when she gets home. I might have mentioned that Jackson wants antlers for the wall. He looked pretty annoyed.”
“You’re not funny. Carry on like that and I’ll move back to New York.” Kayla glowered at him, and Jackson curved his arm round her shoulders in a protective gesture.
“I’ve got your back, sweetheart.”
“What about the rest of me?”
Jackson dropped his eyes, and a smile flickered in the corner of his mouth. “I’ve got that, too. I promise to come between you and the moose from this day forward, for better for worse…”
“Stop it! You’re freaking me out.” But Kayla leaned across to kiss him, and Tyler shuddered.
“You’re freaking me out, too. I can only take so much romance on an empty stomach and anyway, we have children present. Keep it clean, people.”
Jess straightened defensively. “I’m not a child.”
“I know, but I’m using you as an excuse to stop this disgusting public display of affection, so if you could look shocked, that would be great.”
Jess helped herself to potatoes. “I’m not shocked. They’re always kissing. You should be used to it by now.”
“I’ll never get used to it. I’d rather watch ice dancing on TV.”
“You hate watching ice dancing. Dad, can I have new skis?”
He opened his mouth, caught his mother’s eye and remembered that he had to suppress the overwhelming urge to overcompensate for a less than perfect childhood and give Jess everything she wanted. “You already have skis.”
“One pair.”
“So? You have one pair of legs.”
“How many pairs of skis did you have when you were racing?”
“Sixty.”
“Sixty?” Jess’s eyes were round. “No wonder you needed Chas.”
His mother shook her head. “I remember days when I couldn’t move around this place for skis. Between your father and you three boys, we could have supplied the whole village.”
The conversation turned to skiing as it so often did, and from skiing it moved on to the business.
“Brenna should have joined us tonight. That girl is working too hard.” Elizabeth O’Neil checked that everyone’s plates were full. “I hate to think of her all alone in that cabin. You should have invited her.”
“I saw you talking to her.” Across the table, Kayla sent him a look. “Did she mention my idea for offering a master class?”
“She might have done.”
“Great. So will you do it?”
“Go easy on him.” Jackson picked up his fork. “He’s agreed to coach the high school ski team. There’s only so much bad news he can take in one day.”
“I invited Brenna,” Tyler said, deliberately switching the subject as he heaped vegetables onto his plate. “She said she had things to do.”
“You should have insisted.” His grandmother passed him a napkin. “She probably wanted to join us but was worried she might be intruding.”
“That’s nonsense.” Walter gave a grunt. “That girl virtually grew up here. Why would she think she’s intruding? You can’t intrude when you’ve known someone for a lifetime.”
“Then why isn’t she here?” Alice picked at the food on her plate. “Are you going to let her use Forest Lodge for the whole season, Jackson?”
“Providing we don’t suddenly have a flood of bookings. And I invited her to join us, too, by the way. She said she was busy.”
Distracted by images of Brenna in a wet, clinging sweater, Tyler turned his attention to his plate. “And if we do have a flood of bookings? You can’t kick her out.”
“No. But we’d have to find somewhere else for her to sleep. Don’t worry. I doubt it will happen.”
Kayla looked at him thoughtfully and then exchanged glances with Élise. “Don’t her parents live in the village? Couldn’t Brenna stay with them in an emergency?”
“No way! She’d hate that,” Jess blurted out. “Her mom is a total neat freak. She wouldn’t let her have a dog or anything, because of the mess.”
Tyler looked up from his food. “She told you that?”
“We talk.” Jess fiddled with the food on her plate. “What? So she doesn’t treat me as if I’m six. Why is this news to everyone?”
“I don’t treat you as if you’re six. And you’re right that Brenna wouldn’t want to live at home.” Brenna’s mother liked everything pristine. Maura Daniels would be out polishing windows while there was a foot of ice on the ground and most other folk were sheltering indoors.
He used to joke with his brothers that she didn’t need a home-security system because her house was surrounded by an impenetrable wall of disapproval.
“She’s not close to her parents.” Tyler wondered if he was the only one who really knew her. “Staying with them would drive her nuts.”