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In a really great way
The lift hit a snag and jerked Bailey gasped and grabbed the steel bar in front of her for all she orth With nothing below her but thick pines and an endless blanket of snow, she could do nothing else There wasn’t a building in sight, not even the coain, her hand ached fro down, she was going down holding the sissy bar all the way And wouldn’t that be pretty effing ironic if after all she’d been through, she was about to expire right here, now, alone on a mountain?
And if by some miracle she didn’t die from the fall, her mother would kill her
But miraculously the lift held firm and she lived to breathe another day Ten lided off without so ht proudly and looked around, really wishing Mountain Hottie could see her now, that anyone she knew could see her
But nope, just her
She’d grown up in a tiny mountain town just south of Denver, about two hours fro skier, she was not She’d been concentrating on other things Today, the wind hitting her face, the sun war in control--for once--had all given her a small taste of what she’d wanted for herself And after her business htened on her skis and glanced over at the base lodge She could see the entire north-facing wall Unlike the rest of the building, which was sided ood and glass, gorgeous and rustic looking, the north as s and, frankly, boring
She’d been hired by the resort’s publicist to paint awas iraphic designer, but painting rerandma, whom she still missed so veryon a stool in her grandiven her to paint Sort of a paint-by-nu inside the lines, Bailey darling… Just go for it
That’s what Bailey intended to do
Excited, she skied--okay, plowed--her way to the lodge Luckily it was only a hundred yards or so and relatively flat, but that meant she had to use her poles By the ti and shaky When she finally ed to release her boots froasp in air Probably she should add an exercise regi heart, she panted for air and changed her ht now That’s when she lifted her head and… came face-to-face with Mountain Hottie Of course, because heaven forbid she run into hiood
How he’d beaten her down the iest "Hey," she said, trying to act like she wasn’t breathing like a loco to her feet, she casually leaned over her poles, surreptitiously trying to catch her breath
"Hey," he said Not breathing like a loco In fact, not out of breath or exerted at all, the bastard "The binding held"
"You wouldn’t have let ed
"True" He paused "You going to yell at ed a snort "I didn’t yell at you"
His mouth quirked a little as he stood there all wind-tousled perfection, clearly yanking her chain in his own oddly stoic way