by Jill Shalvis
I managed to survive it all, she reminded herself now. Staring into Aidan’s melted chocolate eyes, she repeated in her head, The past belongs in the past, the past belongs in the past … Still holding Aidan’s gaze, she revved the engine—her car engine, not her internal engine, because that part of her wasn’t going to rev for him ever again.
Nope, never. She simply couldn’t live with herself if she fell for him again.
With that same small smile still playing on his mouth, Aidan lifted his hands in a stance of mock surrender and took a step back.
Which meant she couldn’t very well run him over now. Instead she let her tires chirp as she accelerated out of the parking lot like the hounds of hell were on her heels.
Because in a way, they were.
Chapter 4
Aidan stood watching Lily spin out of the parking lot in a little Honda, as usual leaving chaos in her wake.
And in his gut.
And maybe also in his heart, something he’d admit never. There’d been a time when he would’ve smiled at just the sight of her, and as she was the daughter of the former manager at a neighboring resort, Aidan had seen her a lot.
She’d been quiet but not shy, smart but a lousy student. Her mountain skills rivaled his. She’d earned them working hard for her dad, very hard.
She’d never complained.
He’d loved that about her.
She’d been a bundle of contradictions, and he’d loved that too. He’d also loved how much she’d given to her family, not to mention how tough she was, both mentally and physically.
Her sister, Ashley, had been only a year younger, and they’d pushed each other hard, competing over everything. Ashley had been the outgoing, vocal one, but Lily’s charms had been more internal, an inner warmth behind her adventurous spirit that Aidan had been inexplicably drawn to.
He hadn’t seen a glimpse of that adventurous spirit or warmth just now.
Nope, the only emotion coming from those light green eyes of hers had been temper and lots of it—aimed at him. He had no idea what she had to be so pissy about. Ten years ago he’d been the one she’d left in her dust, his heart ripped to shreds.
He felt stupid remembering it now, but he felt like they had some kind of connection there on the mountain, in a way he’d never connected with any other girl before.
Or since.
They’d been two adventurous souls, kindred spirits. Or so he’d thought. He’d always been the glue that had kept his family together, and with her he didn’t have to work so hard. It had been easy, and he’d felt real contentment. Being with Lily, he could relax and just be. When she’d left, he’d lost all that, and nothing had come easy to him ever since.
Not that any of it mattered now. He’d gotten over her a damn long time ago, a fact he had to remind himself of several times as the worn tires on her car spun a little pulling out of the lot. A city car, not meant for the narrow, treacherous mountain roads and conditions in the Colorado Rockies.
Maybe she’d forgotten how they did things up here. Maybe she wasn’t staying long, though there’d been that cryptic “No” when he’d asked if she was visiting.
It didn’t matter. What she did was none of his business.
He pulled out his cell and checked to make sure he hadn’t missed any calls. His schedule for the fire season was three days on and one day off, which was today. But S&R had no such schedule. He was often on call for S&R and when notified, he’d go at a moment’s notice if he wasn’t already on a fire call.
Since he hadn’t missed anything, he called his older brother. Gray ran Cedar Ridge Resort and knew everything about everyone in town. He was an eighty-two-year-old lady hiding in a thirty-one-year-old man’s body. And he had some ’splaining to do, since he’d apparently known about Lily being back but hadn’t mentioned it.
“Mom okay?” Gray asked, in lieu of a greeting.
Their mom, Char, had taken a fall last week and reinjured her bad hip, not that she’d let either of them know how much pain she was in. The woman might look frail on the outside, but on the inside she was The Rock.
“This isn’t about Mom,” he started. “It’s—”
“If it’s not about Mom, you’ve got two seconds,” Gray interrupted. “Penny’s on a twenty-minute break, I haven’t seen her all week, and I have plans for every single one of those twenty minutes.”
Aidan could hear Penny’s soft laugh in the background and grimaced. Gray had been married to his high school sweetheart going on seven years now. Apparently afraid they were starting to act like old marrieds, they’d decided to spice up their marriage. Just last week Aidan had walked into Gray’s office without knocking and found them role-playing Fifty Shades of “Gray.”
There was some shit you just couldn’t unsee. The next day Aidan had installed a dead bolt on Gray’s office door and begged him to use it. He could only hope they would.
“Oh, and before I hang up on you,” Gray said, “Lenny’s an idiot. He got a DUI last night.”
Shit. This made strike two for Lenny—strike one had been getting caught having sex inside one of their machines on the night shift. Worse, a DUI meant that his driver’s license would be revoked for a minimum of ninety days. Aidan shook his head. Lenny was the best of the best when it came to taking care of their equipment, but that didn’t mean shit when it came up against an arrest history. “You want to suspend him until he gets his license back?”
“No, I want him to not be an idiot.” Gray sighed. “Yeah, he has to be suspended at the very least. He’s lucky you suggested that. I was thinking of firing him on his bad attitude alone.”
“I’ll deal with it.”
“Good. I’m going to go get laid now.”
“Wait,” Aidan said. “I think there’s something else you forgot to tell me.”
“Not into guessing games at the moment.”
“Here’s a hint. Lily Danville.”
Silence from Gray.
“Jesus.” Aidan rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You really did know. You knew she was coming here and you didn’t tell me.”
More silence from Gray.
“Answer the damn question,” Aidan said.
“You didn’t ask me one.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Been busy,” Gray said. “And that’s not the question you really want to ask.”
True, but he refused to voice it. Instead he looked up at the sky. No place had skies as big and all-encompassing as Colorado. Things could change in a blink at this altitude, but for the moment the sky was a stark, glorious blue without a single cloud marring it for as far as the eye could see. Which wasn’t all that far because the sharp, jagged outline of the Rockies blocked a long-distance view. “How long have you known about this?”
“A few weeks.”
This staggered Aidan. “Are you kidding me?”
“Look, not everything’s about you, okay? And I have it on good authority that this, her being here, has absolutely nothing to do with you.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?” Aidan asked.
“I—” Gray broke off, and Aidan could hear Penny murmur something in the background. Unfortunately for him he could make out the words along with Gray, which included a very explicit, very sexual request.
“Holy shit, Pen,” Gray said, his voice low and soft the way it only got with his wife. “Don’t take that off yet. Don’t move. Not an inch.” Then he was back with Aidan. “Gotta go.”
“Not until you tell me why she’s here.”
“Really don’t have time for this right now, man.”
“He really doesn’t,” Penny piped in. “What he does have time for, my dear brother-in-law, is a quickie. Since I know you don’t want details, we’re going to hang up now. Oh, and don’t forget the board meeting in twenty minutes, and the staff meeting after that for the upcoming Tough Mudder event.”
“I’m coming,” Aidan said.
“Me too,” Penny said cheerfully
, and disconnected the call.
Aidan shook his head and rubbed his eyes to dispel the images of Gray and Penny knocking it out, but he’d probably need an entire bucket of bleach for that.
And shit. He still had to call Lenny, who answered sounding hung over.
“What?” Lenny snapped, not friendly.
“We need to talk,” Aidan said.
“No can do, compadre. Got a date with my bed.”
“It’s important,” Aidan said. “It’s about work.”
“I called in sick today. I’m off the clock.”
“Sick or hung over?” Aidan asked.
There was a pause. “We used to agree those two were one and the same.”
“That was before we got responsibilities,” Aidan said.
“Aw, shit,” Lenny grumbled. “Don’t talk down to me, man. And I haven’t had any caffeine yet. This conversation is way too heavy without caffeine.”
Aidan scrubbed a hand down his face. Lenny wasn’t taking this seriously, but Aidan felt a huge responsibility. He’d been the one to vouch for Lenny when he’d needed a job. “I’m coming over after my meetings,” he said, reluctantly realizing that this was going to require a face-to-face.
There was another beat of silence and then all levity drained from Lenny’s voice. “Just say what you want to say.”
“Not what I want to say,” Aidan said. “But what needs to be said. This DUI is strike two—”
“You’re counting?” Lenny asked in disbelief. “You? The guy who once got arrested for possession of pot?”
Aidan had been sixteen and stupid. No doubt. But he’d grown up in the decade plus since then.
Way up.
“Lenny, you got a DUI when your job is to drive large pieces of equipment. Our insurance company—”
“Skip the legalese,” Lenny said. “I get it. You hired me when no one else would. You’re a saint, I’m a world-class fuckup.”
“You’re not—”
“Let’s not sugarcoat anything,” Lenny said. “I messed up last night and I know it, okay? It won’t happen again.”
“Lenny—”
“I promise you, A.”
Aidan closed his eyes. Lenny’d had it rough. He’d grown up with a distant great-uncle who’d preferred the assholery technique of parenting. He’d recently been dumped by his girlfriend. Lenny needed this resort job, and he needed Aidan’s friendship. Which wasn’t so hard to give when Aidan could still remember all the times Lenny had stood at his back. When they’d been accused of cheating on a math test in seventh grade. When he’d gotten in a fender bender with a local cop. When he’d found out he had two younger brothers and a sister, and that his dad was a spineless bag of dicks. “A DUI for you has consequences,” he said reluctantly. “Your job requires you to have a license.”
“Shit.” Lenny blew out a breath. “I was barely over the legal limit—”
“This isn’t up to me,” Aidan said. “It’s a done deal.”
There was a long silence. “You firing me?”
“No,” Aidan said. “But you have to be suspended until you get your license back, and it can’t happen again.”
“I know. I’ll get this straightened out and be done with it.”
Aidan only hoped that was true. They disconnected, and he eyed the time. He’d hoped for something big to stall him so he couldn’t hit the board meeting, but since that hadn’t happened, he got into his truck to make the drive up Pine Pass Road to the lodge at Cedar Ridge Resort. In winter this could take twenty minutes or more, but today, in early summer with no weather to slow him down, it took five.
Gray handled the day-to-day running of the resort, one of the last family-owned mountain resorts in Colorado. Though “owned” wasn’t exactly accurate. Thanks to their dear old dad, they had a very large balloon payment due next year and it was breathing down their necks.
If they went under, they’d lose the only place they’d ever called home, not to mention the fact that they seasonally employed half the town of Cedar Ridge. A mass unemployment would hurt more than just the Kincaids.
Not that they’d get any help from town. Cedar Ridge wasn’t that big, but the people in it had long memories, and over the years Aidan had heard it all.
Those Kincaids will never amount to anything.
Those Kincaids, they’d hustle their own mama.
Those Kincaids run with the devil.
Hard to argue the truth. If it’d been just Aidan, he wouldn’t give a shit if the resort crashed and burned. To him, the legacy and his father’s memory were tainted by the vastness of the man’s betrayal. Aidan had absolutely zero loyalty to his dad. But for his siblings and his mom, who’d been hurt way too much, he’d do anything and everything, even though the Kincaids could’ve been pictured in the dictionary under dysfunction. But one thing they did and did well was stick together.
Always.
To get themselves out of the financial mess they could have gone the corporate route and sold out, getting stockholders—but none of them were all that fond of institutions or rules. So, by unanimous decision, they’d gone the hard route.
Status quo for a Kincaid.
Probably today’s so-called board meeting would also be status quo—which meant it’d be Gray and Aidan and their half brother Hudson yelling at each other while their half sister, Kenna, watched YouTube on her phone. But just as Aidan pulled into the lodge’s parking lot, his cell buzzed.
An S&R call, which had him pumping his fist, because only one thing could get him out of the meeting and he now had it.
A lost mountain climber on Palisade Peak.
Aidan responded to the text with his ETA and put the truck into gear again. Halfway back to town was the local fire station, which they shared with the county’s S&R team.
Aidan’s home away from home.
Within five minutes he was geared up and heading out with his unit. He’d cleared his mind of everything, the board meeting, his ongoing concern about his mom and her physical health, and especially the sexy blast from his past in a deceptively soft, beautiful package named Lily Danville, and got down to the only constant in his life—work.
Chapter 5
Lily drove up Pine Pass Road, her heart thumping harder and heavier with each beat. For the hundredth time she glanced down at the address on her GPS, saw she was still going the right way, and kept at it, jaw tight.
The thing about GPS, it didn’t really reveal hills and valleys. Everything looked deceptively flat on the screen. She’d seen the name of the street and assumed the salon was the one she remembered being downtown.
She’d been wrong.
So wrong, she thought, gut quivering as the elevation climbed and she began to suspect her final destination.
She hadn’t been on this mountain in a long time, or any mountain as a matter of fact. Not a single one since that terrible day when Ashley had died.
And then her dad.
Which had been reason number one and reason number two for leaving Colorado.
But her problems went far deeper than regrets or avoiding her old stomping grounds. What she hadn’t realized, what Jonathan had failed to mention, was that it appeared the Mane Attraction hair salon wasn’t in town at all but part of the Cedar Ridge Resort.
As in on the mountain.
But that wasn’t even the real problem. Nope, that honor went to