Page 41 of The Ice Queen in the Corner Office

Her expression hardened. “If I ever pretended to like the great outdoors, it was because I knew she did and I didn’t want her wandering around in the woods alone.” She pulled in a deep breath. The hardness left her expression as she calmed, but there was still a fire in her eyes. She was angry, and I had no idea why.

“She must not have known that.”

She sighed and stared out at the forest. “How long is this hike?”

“We don’t have to hike. What do you want to do?”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t know. We could go back to the inn and get some brochures, find out what there is to do around here.”

“May said there’s a really cool salt spa, but she didn’t think you’d like it.”

She dropped her back onto the seat and stared at the ceiling of the car. “It’s like she doesn’t know me at all.”

“And who’s fault is that?”

“What?”

The hurt on her face made it clear I should shut the hell up, turn the car around, and head back to town, but I’d never been good at following the rules. I probably should have backed down, but getting through to her seemed more important. “You don’t make it easy to get to know you, Jill. You close yourself off to—”

She jerked the door open, hopped out, and slammed it shut.

I got out of the car and hurried after her as she started up the trail. “Not to mention that you run away every time the conversation gets the least bit difficult.”

She kept walking, head down. “You want to hike? Let’s hike.”

“I don’t want to hike,” I said, keeping pace with her. “I want to do what you want to do. I want to spend time with you.”

“If you wanted to do what I wanted to do, you would have asked me, not the sister who is eight years younger than me.”

“I—”

“Maybe I didn’t stay up all night chatting with my sister about my favorite Jonas brother, but I was always there for her. I was the person she came to when she was hurt. She cried on my shoulder every time her heart was broken, which was pretty much daily because she has always had a tender heart and she’s always cared too much about everything and everyone. Not that she ever cared enough to ask me what I wanted or noticed when I was…” She stopped talking and picked up her pace until her breathing was ragged.

I followed and waited for her to go on, waited to hear more, but she was done.

“I’m asking you,” I said. “I want to know what makes you happy, and sad, and angry. I want to know what hurts you, so I can cover it in toilet paper and glitter.”

Her pace slowed a bit and her shoulders lost some of their tension.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” I said. “It’s clear that your family cares about you and if you talked to—”

“Not to mention that you’re just as closed off as me.” Her pace quickened again, her words bursting from her between pants. “You pretend to be this easy-going, confident, open-book of a guy, but you don’t show anyone the real you, not even me.”

Her words hit me like a fist to the chest, because she was right. “I hate hiking,” I said, my own breathing labored. “I don’t see the point of it. If I want to see a pretty view, I can look at a picture on my computer.”

Her pace slowed. “Exactly. Without the dirt, the bugs, or the…” She looked up and held out her hand, white flakes speckled her green mitt in a few seconds. “Snow.”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “I’m out. Let’s head back down and you can tell me what you want to do today, tell me what you love, and I’ll make it happen.”

She finally, finally, turned to face me, her blue eyes wide, her usual mask gone. She looked confused and a bit lost. “Okay,” she said.

I grabbed her hand, laced her fingers through mine, and turned with her back to the…”Wait. Where’s the trail?”

“I guess I wasn’t really paying attention to the trail.”

I’d been watching the tension in her shoulders for any sign of her giving in, and hadn’t looked for the narrow dirt footpath. “We didn’t walk that far. Let’s just head straight down and I’m sure we’ll run into the trail eventually.”

“Right,” she said. “Sure.”

I pulled in a deep breath and hoped I was right. The trail head I’d taken us to was small and half-way up the mountain. If we missed it, we could be walking all the way back to the valley before we found signs of civilization. And we’d left my bag, with food and water and the survival supplies May had given me, in the car.

It would be fine. Neither of us had any experience in the great outdoors, but we weren’t stupid people.

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