“You’re really going to turn down my offer of a paid vacation?” He shook his head. “To quote something I heard earlier today—un-freaking-believable.”
She angled toward him, leaning against the door. “Why is that so hard to believe?”
“No one turns down free money,” he insisted. “No one I’ve ever known has ever passed up an opportunity to get money or gifts out of me. No one has ever turned away from an opportunity to claim an association with me that would somehow bring them money or notoriety—not my family, not my friends, not my flings, and certainly not my business partners.”
And women never ran away from him either. They ran toward him.
He turned onto his street, pressed the remote to open the main gate, and drove past his house and on to the guesthouse.
“Yet here you have a contract to fall back on, plus my offer of letting you do your own thing while getting paid, and the opportunity to be able to say you rehabbed a gold medalist to compete in the X Games, yet you’re turning me down because we got off on the wrong foot? Un. Freaking. Believable.”
“Not everyone is a mooch,” she said, matching his frustration. “Not everyone wants something for nothing. Some of us have pride and work ethic and morals. I value talent and guts and strength. I admire people who give life their all, especially in the face of adversity. I worship the miracle of the human body. And people who carelessly—recklessly, in your case—toss the importance of physical vitality aside infuriate me. And I don’t give a rip who you are or how much money you have. I won’t take something for nothing, and I won’t accept less than one hundred and fifty percent commitment.”
With that, she slipped out of the car, slammed the door, and disappeared around the front of the house where it faced the lake.
“Jesus Christ. She’s…she’s…she’s…Gah!” He hammered the steering wheel with a fist, then climbed from the car, hoping the single-digit weather would cool him off. He opened the back door, dragged out her bags, and paused to take in the sight of Lake Tahoe stretched out before him, an expanse of navy blue surrounded by crisply blanketed white mountains.
Christ, she hadn’t even stopped bitching at him to appreciate the view or his massive, multimillion dollar home, or…anything. She was absolutely foreign to him.
He took an extra moment to appreciate the natural beauty twice as much to make up for her lack of interest. The sight calmed his buzzing nerves. And the break in his anger gave him perspective. She might be foreign in some ways, but a kindred spirit of sorts in others. He’d worked for everything he’d gotten out of life. He never accepted something for nothing. Always returned a favor. Believed in charity, paying it forward, and loyalty to good friends and good people. He just wasn’t all that used to meeting someone with the same convictions.
Maybe his expectations had dipped below an acceptable level.
And maybe he was acting like the spoiled celebrities he hated. She had every right to be pissed off after what he’d pulled this morning.
Of course there was also the reality that he was so pathetically hard up for a woman, he was making excuses so he could live with the idea of letting her hot quotient override her personality issues.
“Fucking women,” he muttered, starting toward the house, his boots squeaking as he compacted the fresh powder—which was when he realized his ankle wasn’t hurting anymore.
When he stepped onto the covered porch, he looked down at his foot and gingerly rolled his ankle to test out his pain level.
“Does it feel better?” Her voice drew his gaze up, where he found her standing at the railing, staring at the view instead of going inside the house to get warm.
“Yeah, actually. Better than I thought it would after only two Tylenol.”
He braced for her I-told-you-so, but she just nodded and offered a soft “Good. You can take them every four hours. My suggestion—though I don’t expect you to take it—would be to keep a steady dose in you for the next forty-eight hours, then try spacing them out to six hours and continue to cut back until you only need them once or twice a day. You don’t want to damage your liver. Well,” she added, “any more than you already have.”
Noah wasn’t touching that bait. “Door’s unlocked.”
“I know. I’m just…” She inhaled deeply, then let it out, her moist breath creating clouds around her head. “It’s so quiet. So incredibly…peaceful and perfect. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a quiet so…” She paused, as if letting the silence slide in. “Complete.”
“God, you’re a complicated woman.” He shook his head and returned his gaze to the lake. “Be careful, it’s addictive.”
“I could see that. I think my blood pressure dropped ten points in two minutes.”
He let the moment of comfort between them linger. Relief slid into his muscles and flushed all the anger and frustration that had built up—over the hours, the days, the weeks, the months. It felt like forever since he’d been pain-free, since he’d glided down fresh powder…since he’d had a woman in his bed.
He turned his head to look at her. She looked absolutely serene, collected, and relaxed, mirroring his own comfort. Snowflakes had caught in her hair, and ice clung to her long dark lashes. The tip of her nose and her cheeks were rosy against her pale face. Absolutely…angelic. Charming. Downright beautiful.
Damn shame she had to be so prickly.
“You’re going to be a Popsicle if you don’t get warm and dry soon.” He started past her and entered the guesthouse.
Inside, Julia wandered around the space slowly, looking at everything as if appreciating an art piece. She ran her hand slowly over the granite breakfast bar and paused at the arched window overlooking the view she’d just seen from the porch.
“Breathtaking,” she murmured, then, “Hey, I’m sorry I’ve been so…”—she glanced toward him, but her eyes fall away quickly—“bitchy. It’s been a rough few months for me. This situation just pushed me over the edge. I’ll try to rein it in.”
Noah’s lips curved with hope. Maybe he’d get her to stay after all. “This place is all yours until the Games if you want it. Consider it a sabbatical. We all need a break from life once in a while. We can negotiate some type of payment if you want to stay but don’t want to feel like you’re freeloading.”