She still had to draw Jacob and Kenna, but she knew she’d done a good job and had never felt so excited about her work before.
“Bailey?”
At the voice she hadn’t expected to hear, she whirled around and yep, there was Aaron. He stood at the base of her scaffolding, although she hardly recognized him without his usual suit. He was in jeans and a down jacket, and she was so surprised to see him that she nearly slipped off the scaffolding as she climbed down.
His arms came out to steady her but she stepped back as soon as she could. This wasn’t one of those happy surprises. More like the opposite. Cedar Ridge was hers. This was her little secret, her happy spot.
Wrong as it might be, she didn’t want to share it. “Aaron, what are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see what you were up to.”
Still staring at him, she lifted a hand and pointed upward to the mural.
Instead of even looking at it, he gripped her arms and pulled her in and kissed her with a desperation she could taste. For a beat she allowed it, holding still, trying to feel it.
But she didn’t. She didn’t feel anything except his admittedly very nice mouth pressing against hers and his equally nice body doing the same. It was… nice.
No fireworks. No shortness of breath. No quivery belly, and the bones in her knees didn’t dissolve. Shaking her head, she pulled free.
“You didn’t feel anything,” he said, sounding unhappy. “Not even a little bit.”
She grimaced. “Aaron—”
“No, I get it. I didn’t either. Christ.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “I’m sorry. I knew it. I knew things changed for you after I screwed up and hooked up with Donna, but I had to give it one last try.” He cupped her face, and with eyes soft gave her one last kiss. Light this time. Friendly. Warm. “I’ll always be here for you,” he said.
“I know.” She ran her hands up his arms and hugged him. “And thank you.”
“For?”
She smiled. “For hooking up with Donna.”
He smiled back. “One day you’re going to miss me.”
“I know.”
He winked at her and slipped his arm in hers. “Breakfast? Come on, I’ll buy while you wait for the temps to come up a little.”
Why not. “Okay,” she said, but then—drawn by a force she didn’t understand—Bailey turned her head. And found Hudson standing about twenty-five feet away. He wore his dark sunglasses, but she didn’t need to see his eyes to know he’d witnessed the kiss. Nope, that was in every tense line of his tall, leanly muscled bod.
Chapter 16
Hud’s morning had started at oh-dark-thirty with a ski patrol training session and then an incident report meeting, which had been interrupted just now by a call. A bunch of teenagers had gone up to Devil’s Face and dared each other to race down. Problem was, Devil’s Face was a double diamond and these teens were at best intermediate skiers. The math didn’t add up.
Not that this had stopped them.
One of the teens had apparently crashed and burned on the moguls, but no one had actually seen him go down. His buddies had all skied by, leaving him up there knocked out by his own snowboard.
The teen’s dad blamed one of the other dads, and then the moms had gotten into it, too, and also a grandma. The ensuing fight belonged on a trashy TV show and not on Hud’s mountain.
It was nine in the morning and he was already burned out for the day.
So things weren’t overly improved when he’d caught sight of some guy sucking on Bailey’s face.
It turned out that his day could get more shitty. Good to know.
“Hudson,” Bailey said when she stopped kissing the guy and the two of them walked his way. “Hey.”
“Hey.” He looked at the man at her side.
“Oh,” she said, putting a hand on the guy’s arm—her free hand because the other arm was already linked in his. “This is Aaron,” she said. “Aaron, this is Hudson Kincaid, one of the brothers who owns this place.”
So now Aaron knew who Hud was. But Hud still had no idea who Aaron was.
The guy offered a hand, and Hud spent a nanosecond trying to decide between shaking it and shoving his fist in the guy’s face.
Except that made no sense. None at all. Bailey wasn’t his, and even if she hadn’t made it crystal clear the week before that she wasn’t in the market for a relationship with him, he didn’t want one.
So he had no idea what his problem was.
None. Zero. Except… he did. He knew exactly what his problem was and his name was Aaron.
“I just needed to see that she’s in good hands when she’s up here,” Aaron said. “She’s important to me.”
Yeah, Hud was getting that loud and clear.
“As her fiancé,” Aaron went on, “I worry.”
Hud stopped breathing. His lungs just refused to accept air.
“Ex,” he heard Bailey say firmly. “Ex -fiancé.” She smacked Aaron in the chest. “You always forget that part.”
“Whoops,” Aaron said. “Sorry.” Except he didn’t look all that sorry.
And he didn’t look like an ex either.
Hud pulled his radio off his belt and stared at it wondering why it went off twenty-four-seven except for when he needed it to. “I’ve got to go,” he said, still staring at the radio.
“But it didn’t make any noise for once,” Bailey said.
“Got a meeting,” Hud managed, and spun on a heel and took off toward the offices.
Marcus, their equipment manager, intercepted him halfway. “Hey, there’s a problem with the quad chair on the backside. My guys’ll have it under control in a few minutes but I just wanted you to know—”
“I’ll check it out,” Hud said.
“I got it, I didn’t mean for you to—”
“I’ve got it,” Hud repeated.
Ten minutes later he was at the quad chair, which indeed had jammed. But Marcus had been right, because maintenance had the problem solved before he even got there. Which left him at the top of the mountain and, for the first time in too long, with nowhere else to be.
Which meant his mind was free to go ninety miles an hour and it did so, flashing images across the back of his eyelids at warp speed.
Bailey sitting at the top tier of the scaffolding with brush in hand, holding a look of fierce concentration on her face as she painted the Kincaid family tree in super-size.
Bailey sitting with his mom, listening to her babble on with sweet patience and not an ounce of condescension.
Bailey laying on his bed, flushed, eyes hot, body soft as she showed him her port scar, a visceral reminder of her fucking bravery.
Bailey meeting his gaze head-on and saying she didn’t want a relationship…
Bailey kissing her ex-fiancé…
His radio went off. Thank God. An emergency, which would take his head out of his own ass and put him back in the game.
A kid and an adult had reportedly collided on the bunny hill down at the bottom, near the parking lot. From where he stood it was a seven-minute hard ski. There were at least five team members who were closer than Hud, and who could and would get there first.
But he still headed that way. Three minutes into the trip, he was able to take in the lodge as it came into view and he nearly wobbled off his skis. He’d been skiing since he could walk and it’d been a damn long time since anything had shaken him into a near tumble, but this did it.