The Man She Loves To Hate

These days it was all about comfort.

He looked up at the gondola control-tower windows and sent his father’s ski-field manager a wave. Why Hare hadn’t been at the funeral was anyone’s guess, but the big Maori always had been a law unto himself.

Loyal to James Rees though. Utterly.

A bundled-up youth stepped out of the tower and headed towards the waiting gondola, slipping into step some distance behind Cole and locking down doors and gates behind them. Cole shrugged the snow off his coat and swiped a hand through his hair once he got beneath the boarding station roof. The gondola door stood open and a duct-taped box sat just inside the door. Cole crossed to the opposite wall of the gondola and leaned back against it, hands in his coat pockets for warmth as he waited for the boy to finish closing up.

Cole wasn’t dressed for the ski fields. Beneath his heavyweight woollen overcoat he was dressed for a funeral. The only concession he’d made towards the mountain had been to exchange dress shoes for snow boots.

It hadn’t been enough. Not for this weather.

The youth finally reached the gondola and slipped inside, shedding snow as he shut the door behind him. Small for one of Hare’s chairlift workers, thought Cole absently. Hare usually employed them bigger. Brains aside, brute force was always an asset on the mountain and everyone who’d ever worked a mountain knew it.

Hare’s sidekick—hell, he was just a kid—settled in beside the box. Feet body width apart, knees slightly bent, he leaned against the wall and window in much the same way as Cole had done. Snowboarder, if the stance was anything to go by. Hardcore, given the mismatched clothes. No fancy be-labelled outfit, no swagger at all, just a quiet competence that drew the eye and held it. This one would be all about the thrill that came of mastering a peak, and the next one and the one after that. Nothing to prove to anyone but himself.

Cole envied him.

His next few months would be all about proving to bankers and shareholders that he was every bit as good as the old man when it came to managing the family holdings. As if he hadn’t been raised from the cradle to just this position—learning the Rees businesses from the ground up at his father’s command. No quarter asked for and none at all given.

James Rees had been told he was dying two years ago. He’d been handing Rees management over to Cole ever since. Teaching by example. What to do. What not to do. And how to recover. Making Cole admire him in so many ways. Making Cole care about the businesses under his control and the people employed within them.

Always two steps ahead of any game, James Rees. Except when it came to thinking that his high-born wife and his stunningly sensual mistress could coexist peacefully in this town.

When it came to that, James Rees had been a fool.

Cole knew what his father had seen in Rachel Tanner—he hadn’t been blind as a boy and he wasn’t blind now. A simmering sensuality that hit a man hard. Unapologetic awareness of a man’s deepest desires. Full knowledge of how to satisfy those desires—a knowledge that Cole’s puritan, well-mannered mother had wholly lacked.

James Rees had wanted. James Rees had taken. He might have even got away with it if he’d left it at that. If he’d only done it once. Or twice.

Instead he’d had to have it all and to hell with the pain it had caused those around him.

The gondola moved off smoothly while still within the protection of the station walls and roof. And then the wind hit, and snow peppered the windows, and the ride got considerably rougher. It was an automatic response for both Cole and the kid to look up at the cable join, just checking, as the wind lashed against fibreglass walls.

The kid glanced at the intercom on the wall of the cable car next, as if assessing the need to contact Hare. Cole glanced at it too.

‘The front’s still a way off, according to the forecast,’ said the boy finally, his voice cracked and barely audible beneath his scarf.

Cole nodded. He’d seen the storm rolling in from the lookout. The kid would have been monitoring radar loops on Hare’s computer deck. Cole adjusted the boy’s probable age upwards a couple of years on account of his composure and conversation. No point trying to judge the boy’s age from his face—about the only thing visible was his mouth.

Lord, what a mouth.

Cole looked away. Fast.

What the hell was wrong with him?

Another gust of wind shook the gondola, slinging it sideways, causing both him and the youth to look up again, always up, to what held them.

Again, the boy glanced at the intercom.

Again Cole studied what he could see of the boy’s face beneath the hat and the goggles and the scarf. And looked away, disquieted.

The wind settled, the gondola steadied, nothing to worry about there. Nothing to worry about when it came to his reaction to Hare’s chairlift operator, either. Today he was just … off. For too many reasons to count.

Only eleven more minutes of this ride to go.

No point staring out of the window at the view; visibility was down to zero.

Nor did it seem advisable to stare at Hare’s lift operator.

That left the box.

Grey-brown in colour, with a removalist’s name stamped on the side. Wet at the bottom with one corner slightly concertinaed in. The top of the box patchy damp too, and hastily taped shut. All function over form, just like the youth standing next to it.

The kid shifted restlessly. Cole beat back the urge to look at him and kept his gaze pinned to the box. Just a wet and battered box. Nothing noble about it at all.

Ten minutes to go.

The gondola began to rise as it neared the first of seven cable tower connections. The hair at the nape of Cole’s neck started rising too. Hare’s youth was studying him now; he could damn well feel it.

And his reaction was pure heat.

The lift shuddered, jerked and stopped.

Cole’s heart thumped hard and settled to an uneasy rhythm. Probably Hare just slowing them down on account of the wind and the approaching tower. But the gondola did not start inching slowly forwards. It stayed right where it was, swinging hard.

Keeping his hand lightly on the handrail, Cole made his way to the two-way and pulled it from its bracing. Just like the kid, he’d worked the lifts on this mountain and plenty else besides. He knew the drills. ‘Hare, you there?’

But Hare did not reply, and neither did the operator supposedly manning the base station. Not good. The kid said nothing, just watched him through those blasted ski goggles and chewed on his full lower lip. Cole’s own lips tightened in reply.

‘Hare,’ he barked. ‘Can you hear me?’ And when there was still no reply he shoved the two-way back on the wall and fished his mobile phone from his coat pocket. No signal. Not that he’d held out much hope for one. White-out did that.

Damn.

The kid dug a mobile phone from amongst his layers too, and started pressing buttons with a gloved hand. ‘No signal here, either,’ he murmured.

‘I’ll call Hare again in a minute,’ muttered Cole.

They gave him ten. Ten minutes of uneasy silence, punctuated by a fascination with this boy that Cole didn’t even want to try to define.

‘Someone should have contacted us by now,’ said the youth finally.

What the kid didn’t say was that not following procedure meant that in all likelihood Hare had problems of his own up there, and heaven only knew what was happening down below. Base station should have been manned or the gondola should not have been running. Standard Operating Procedure.

‘The two-way’s not dead,’ he said. ‘I’ll try some other channels. Might raise someone.’ Anyone would do.

But there was nothing on the other channels except for static.

Another five minutes passed. Another gust of wind slammed into the gondola, stronger now than it had been. The kid’s hands went to the handrail and stayed there as he looked up, always up, to the cable that held them up, his scarf falling away from his face to reveal flawless ivory skin and a jaw that had sure as hell never seen a razor.

Ivory skin? On a ski-lift operator?

‘How old are you?’ The words were out of Cole’s mouth before he could call them back. ‘Fourteen?’ The kid hadn’t even reached puberty. ‘Fifteen?’

‘Older,’ said the boy.

‘How much older?’

‘Considerably.’

Considerably? What the hell kind of answer was that?

‘Nineteen,’ said the kid quickly, as if he had a mainline through to Cole’s brain.

‘Really,’ countered Cole, and the coat shrugged. Cole was beginning to think there was far more coat and hat and scarf than there was kid. Nineteen, my arse.

He ran his gaze over the youth again as if looking for … what exactly? Answers? A reason for his fascination? Because he didn’t swing that way. Never had before. Didn’t think much of starting now.

More minutes passed in uneasy fashion. Not silence—the battering of the wind and the straining of cable fixtures saw to that. But there was no more conversation. And the radio to the outside world stayed ominously silent.

Finally Cole glanced at his watch. Then he glanced at the youth. The boy was still all bundled up, which Cole could fully understand given the plummeting temperature, but what was with the ski goggles staying on? It wasn’t as if the kid was going to be getting out of the gondola any time soon.

‘You live in town?’ asked Cole.

The youth nodded.

‘You live alone?’ Not a pick-up line, may the devil come for his soul if he lied. He needed to clarify his question, clarify it now. ‘Anyone likely to notice you’re missing and raise the alarm?’

‘I wouldn’t count on it. My—’ The boy hesitated. ‘My roommate’s out of town this afternoon and she’ll be working tonight. I come and go as I please.’

Cole sighed and jammed his hands in his coat pockets. So much for the boy’s mommy waiting dinner on him and getting anxious when he didn’t show. Maybe the kid was nineteen. Nineteen, small grown, shacked up with a pint-sized waitress, and perfectly happy with his lot.

Good for him.

‘What about you?’ asked the youth. ‘Is there anywhere you have to be?’

‘Yes.’

‘So … you’ll be missed?’

‘I doubt it,’ he muttered. And if his mother and sister did miss him, the next thought that ran through their minds would probably be relief. ‘I wouldn’t count on anyone being alarmed by my absence, put it that way.’

More silence, broken only by the patter of wind driven snowflakes against the shell of the gondola. ‘At least we have shelter,’ he said. Pity it was fifty metres up and hanging from a cable, a very strong cable, mind. In a blizzard. ‘What’s in the box?’ he said finally.

‘What?’ said the kid, looking startled and scared along with it. So much for idle conversation.

‘The box,’ he repeated gruffly. ‘What’s in it? Anything we can use?’

‘Like what?’ said the boy, and his voice was back to being muffled and scratchy and his face was back to being hidden almost entirely by goggles, hat and scarf.

‘Like food and blankets,’ said Cole. ‘If God was good there would also be Scotch.’ Although given how muddled Cole’s thinking had grown since he’d stepped into this gondola, the lack of fortified beverage probably wasn’t such a bad thing.

‘There’s no Scotch,’ muttered the youth. ‘It’s just some stuff of mine. Mostly junk. I’m finishing up on the mountain today.’

‘Mid-season?’

The kid nodded.

‘Were you fired?’

‘No.’

‘Got a better offer?’

‘Yes.’

‘Somewhere around here?’ It was part of Cole’s job now, to oversee the running of the ski field. It was the only part of the business empire that James had kept tight control over, the only business operation Cole wasn’t wholly up to speed on. If there were staffing problems on the mountain, or if they were losing experienced workers to neighbouring ski fields, Cole wanted to know about it.

‘Christchurch,’ said the kid.

No ski fields in Christchurch. ‘What doing?’

‘Not this,’ said the kid.

So much for the boy being a dedicated snowboarder, following the snow from season to season in search of the perfect run.

Conversation stopped again. The kid eventually sat on the box and pulled his phone from his pocket. Judging by the tightening of the boy’s lips there was still no signal to be had and nothing to do but sit and wait. Or stand and sigh.

‘Are you sure there’s nothing in the box we could use?’ asked Cole eventually. He wasn’t usually one to harp but they’d been stuck here for over an hour now, he wasn’t getting any warmer, and he was definitely looking for a distraction. ‘Even junk has its uses.’

‘Not this junk,’ said the kid. ‘Trust me, there’s nothing in this box you want to see.’

‘Is that statement supposed to make me want to know what’s in the box less?’ asked Cole. ‘Because—trust me—it doesn’t.’

The kid shrugged and declined to answer. Cole studied the boy anew and wondered about the box and what might be in it that would make the kid reluctant to open it in Cole’s presence.

‘Look, kid. Suppose something has found its way into that box that shouldn’t be there. A chocolate bar or fifty. A computer no one’s using. Ski gear that doesn’t belong to you. Do you really think I’m going to give a damn, under the circumstances?’

‘Do you really think you won’t?’ countered the boy. ‘Given that it’d be your family I was stealing from? Anyway—’ the boy’s phone went back in his pocket ‘—there’s nothing stolen in the box. It’s just junk.’

‘If it’s just junk,’ murmured Cole silkily, ‘why are you protecting it?’ And when the kid seemed disinclined to reply, ‘So … you know who I am.’

The kid, teenager, young man, philosopher thief, whatever the hell he was, nodded.

‘Should I know who you are?’

‘No.’

‘Because you seem familiar.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Grew up in Queenstown, though, didn’t you?’ The kid wouldn’t even look him in the eye and for some reason that bit. Was it asking too much to want to get a good look at another person’s eyes?

‘You don’t know me,’ the kid said doggedly. ‘You don’t need to know me.’

‘Seeing as we’re stuck here, I disagree.’ Not a pick-up line, emphatically not. He just wanted to get a handle on what the kid was trying to hide. ‘Didn’t anyone teach you to observe the niceties? Show you how to introduce yourself?’

‘No.’

‘Time you learned.’ It wasn’t as if a handshake would be required. No touching at all. ‘I’m Cole Rees. Cole to most. Rees, if you prefer. I’ll answer to either. Now it’s your turn.’

‘Josh,’ offered the youth with extreme reluctance.

‘It’s customary to provide a surname.’

‘Not where I come from.’

‘Fair enough.’ He’d won one concession from young Josh. Time to make the boy relax before hitting him up for more. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t pull the youth’s employment record easily enough once they got out of the gondola. Right now, though, he wanted something other than information. He wanted to see the kid’s eyes. ‘You ever going to take those goggles off, Josh?’

‘Wasn’t planning to,’ said the youth with a curve to his lips that made Cole suck in a hard breath. The kid’s chin came up. The goggles stayed on. The boy’s stance changed subtly, drawing the eye and confusing Cole’s senses.

‘Rees, if you want me to undress, just say so,’ murmured the boy. ‘Although if we’re observing the niceties, you might want to buy me a drink first.’

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