Page 31 of Shame the Devil
“Mom. Your clothes? You’ve been wearing Levi’s and shirts from Boot Barn. Also, you can’t ski.Middle-class people can ski, and rich people are practically born with a lift ticket clipped to their jacket zippers.”
“Maybe I’m a middle-class person from Texas. Maybe I raise prize Arabians on my horse farm. Anyway, Levi’s are classic. They’re curvy fit! They cost forty dollars!”
“Except I already told Owen we’re from Idaho and that I’d never been on a ranch, remember? I’m just ignoring the part about the forty dollars. That’s not exactly designer fashion, Mom.”
“Well,” Jennifer said, “I’m not going to worry about it.”
“You worry abouteverything,”Dyma said.
“Except this.” She slipped into her moccasins, reflected on the fact that her makeup was confined to lip gloss, and abandoned the thought. She was going to be so covered up out there, she might as well be wearing a burka, and Dyma was right. She didn’t have glamorous regular clothes, and she didn’t have glamorous ski clothes, either. She wasn’t going to be fooling anybody, so she might as well be herself. “But don’t mention Blake,” she reminded Dyma again. “VIPs value their privacy, and he pays me to preserve it. Everybody wants to feel like theyknow him, and he’s just trying to live his life.”
Dyma, naturally, rolled her eyes. “Let’s see, how many times have you told me that? I believe this is number eighteen. Since the whole point of his being in Wild Horse was to build a resort that’s only making money because he’s a big star, that makes zero sense. He’s not exactly incognito. I tell you what. I’ll tell Owen you work for a Mafia boss, and that I can’t say any more or they’ll kill me. How’s that?”
“Unbelievable,” Jennifer answered. “I don’t think there’s a whole lot of Mafia activity in North Idaho.”
Six or seven or forty-five hours later, because she’d lost track of the endless slog of time, she had no idea what Dyma was telling Owen, and she didn’t care. Her daughter was getting an advanced ski lesson, presumably somewhere far, far ahead. She might have worried about that, but since the temperature had never topped about ten degrees, she didn’t imagine anybody was taking off any clothes.
As for her? She was (A) frozen, (B) bruised, and (C) frustrated. Oh, and probably (D) humiliated, too. Kris had asked, “Want to try a slightly hillier trail today, up in the trees? I hear we could see some elk up there.” The problem was that she’d imagined herself, for one reckless instant, as some other person, the kind of woman who did Zumba at the gym instead of the elliptical machine due to her immense coordination, natural athletic ability, and sorority-girl personality, and said, “Sure.”
Now, she was in one of those spots where you couldn’t go back, because it was too far, and you couldn’t go home, because that was what you weretryingto do anyway, and also because they probably didn’t do helicopter rescues just because you’d had enough and were about to cry. She’d fallen on her butt at least six more times, some of them hard enough to rattle her teeth and do her bruises no good at all, she had a headache from all the teeth-rattling, Kris had had to help her get upright at least half of those times, after she’d flailed around like a walrus on an ice floe, or slid sideways down the hill with her skis in the air like some kind of dead bug, and she was long past the point of laughing gaily at her misadventures. Also, right now, she was looking at the steepest downhill yet, or rather, observing Kris doing a slalom thing down it, even though he’d said he was a beginner, too.
He did a sort of turn-in-place to stop, shoved his goggles up to look back up at her, and beckoned her down, and she thought,No. I can’t. I refuse.
Which was when he skied back to up to her, using some more skills, and said, “You can snowplow all the way down. Look. Bend your knees as far as you can, and turn your toes all the way in.” And demonstrated. Gracefully.
Her thighs ached. Her butt hurt. Her triceps and shoulders and forearms burned from her efforts with the ski poles. She’d spent too many hours tense and scared. At least, she assumed that was why her throat was closing up and she was saying, “I’m not sure I …” Her voice wobbled, and she steadied it with a major effort, felt the tears pricking behind her eyes, and said, “You’re right. I’m going to do that.”
Not because of impressing him. After tomorrow, when she’d help him through his event, she’d fly home and never see him again, and anyway, she was pretty sure that any shot she’d had of “impressing” had died somewhere around the dead-bug stage. This wasn’t going to be about impressing him. This was her proving to herself that she could try something new, and that fear didn’t have to stop her. If her legs were trembling with tension and exhaustion? They were nearly back to the lodge, she’d skied nine miles, they hadn’t all been flat, and that was a victory. She was going tomakeit a victory.
Sounded good, anyway. That was before she snowplowed down the hill, got going too fast anyway, had her skis tangle, and fell over on her side, giving her a good whack exactly on her most-bruised spot.After that, she slid down the rest of the hill on her butt like a toddler. When she’d struggled upright again at the bottom, climbing out of a pit of extremely deep snow, since she’d gone right off the track, she told Kris fiercely, “Do not say something encouraging. Just don’t. I am not going to cry. I am going to ski back to the lodge, take about four Advil, sit in the bathtub until my fingers wrinkle, and then possibly talk to you again, unless I’m too humiliated.”
“Does this mean our trip tomorrow is off?” He was trying not to laugh, she could tell. “And hey. I’ve been put on my butt plenty of times. I bet there are highlight reels of that.”
“You’re encouraging me,” she informed him. “What did I say about encouraging me?”
“Whoops. Sorry.”
He was grinning again, and she brushed the snow off her back and her butt as best she could, pulled her scarf up around her chin, wondered if your face fell off from frostbite or if that was just the tip of your nose, shuffled her feet forward, aiming for a gliding motion that she still didn’t have the hang of, tried to ignore the blister forming at the back of her heel, and said, “I’m holding the thought of tomorrow, when I’m the one supportingyou.You’dbetterbe suffering tomorrow, though. You’d bettertellme you’re suffering. Because we’re going to get back to the lodge with me feeling like I need an hour in a hot tub, except that thereisno hot tub, because it’s the friggingwilderness, and for some reason, lodges in the wilderness don’t have hot tubs, because we’re all too tough and Nordic for that. Dyma and Owen are going to be sitting in those big chairs having hot cider, because they got back an hour ago, and Dyma’s going to tell me how awesome skiing is, and how it’s too bad we can’t afford for her to do it some more, but she doesn’t blame me, of course, because I’m doing my best, and I’m going to want to smack her and not going to be allowed to. So somebody needs to suffer.”
He was laughing by this point, and trying to pretend he wasn’t. “I promise to suffer. You have my word. And you can comfort me. I’ll even see if I can provide a hot tub. If you need one today, you’re going to need it even worse tomorrow. Hate to tell you, but tomorrow’s going to be worse. Meanwhile, think about those Irish Coffees I’m going to buy you. Imagine the first one sitting there on the bar, steam coming out of it. It’s got whipped cream on it. It’s sooo hot, and sooo delicious. Just across this meadow and down the path a ways. Another mile, max.”
“Caffeine,” she said. “Afternoon.”
“Whiskey,” he answered. “Evening. Somehow, I doubt anything’s going to be keeping you awake tonight. Not even me.”
Which could have been flirting, but wasn’t, because he was right. They ate dinner at six, and as soon as she was done, she dragged herself to her feet, flapped a hand at Dyma, and said, “If it’s after ten and you’re not back, I’m hunting you down. I’m making a scene. In my flannel PJ bottoms with deer on them and my comfy slippers. It’ll be embarrassing.”
“Mom.” Dyma sighed. “Owen’s right here. Don’t you thinkhe’sthe one who needs this talk?”
“Nope,” Owen said. “I’m all clear on the score. You, though … you could be a handful.”
“Mm,” she answered. “I could be.” And looked at him under her lashes with her dimples showing in a way she sure hadn’t picked up from Jennifer.
Jennifer said, “I’m ignoring that, because I’m seriously almost too tired to care. I’m going to bed.”
“I’ll walk you,” Kris said, and he did. All the way to her door, where she held up her key card and said, “Well. This is me.”
“Yeah.” He scratched his jaw and said, “About tomorrow …”
