“She probably already knows everything. They teach them pretty young at school.”
“Yeah, but how much do they teach them? I want her to be fully informed, that’s all. I don’t want some guy with a libido on overdrive taking advantage of her.”
“She’s not even fourteen, and all she thinks about is skiing. I don’t think you need to worry about that quite yet.”
“I want to be ahead of the game.” He glanced up at the sky. “It’s snowing again. You’ll freeze standing here. Have a drink with me, and you can tell me what sounds right and what doesn’t.”
She wasn’t freezing. She was boiling hot. She was pretty sure her face was scarlet. “You want to talk about sex?”
“You were a teenage girl once. Help me out here, Bren.”
Should she confess that sex wasn’t exactly her specialist subject? “You’re supposed to be at family night.”
“All the more reason to have a drink. A meeting followed by an evening of O’Neil family togetherness is too much for any man.”
He took it for granted, the closeness of his family, the fact that they were always there in the background supporting each other.
He’d never known anything different.
“If we go to the bar, you’ll be accosted by guests.”
“Which is why we’re going to drink the beer from your fridge. I promise to replenish it tomorrow.”
“My fridge?” Her heart bumped a little harder. “You want to come back to my lodge?”
“Why not? You do have beer?” He slipped his arm around her shoulders, and she was conscious of the weight of his arm, of the power of his body as it brushed against hers.
His touch was casual.
The way she was feeling was anything but. It would have been safer for her pulse rate and her blood pressure if she pulled away, but that would have raised questions she didn’t want to answer, so she decided her cardiovascular system was going to have to take the hit.
“Jess has talent,” she croaked. “You’re too busy to ski with her all the time, so I was thinking that maybe she should join the under-14 class. I’m focusing on mountain free-skiing, bumps, gate training, gate drills and free-ski skills. We’ll mix up the fun with the work. She might enjoy it, and it would be good for building confidence. What do you think?”
“I think she’ll be bored out of her mind. That’s fine for most of the kids, but not Jess. She needs to be stretched.”
“Are you saying my lessons are boring?”
“No. You’re a gifted teacher, but Jess is different. She has something.”
“She’s her father’s daughter.”
Tyler gave a grim smile. “Which is probably why Janet kicked her out.”
They’d reached the steps to her l
odge. A single light glowed in the window. “I agree she needs to be stretched, but if you’re going to make the most of that something, it’s important to get the basics right. To focus on style.”
“Style is irrelevant. Speed is what’s important.”
Brenna rolled her eyes and delved for her keys. It was an argument they’d had more times than she could count. “Good style comes before speed.”
“Nothing comes before speed. You want to be the fastest, not the prettiest.” He tugged her hat down over her eyes. Then he stooped and scooped up a handful of snow from the steps and she backed away, her keys still in her hand.
“Don’t you dare! Tyler O’Neil if you so much as—crap.” She ducked too late as snow hit her on the chest and exploded into her face. “I am soaking!”
“You shouldn’t have unzipped your jacket.”
“I hate you, you know that, don’t you?”