Julia laughed at his term for a female snowboarder. She hadn’t even realized she’d said those things, but after weeks with the powder maniac, she was talking his language. “No. I tried his practice board once. I’ll stick with swimming, thanks.”
Drake dropped onto the sofa sideways so he could see out the windows and talk with Julia. “So, overall, how’s it going?”
Drake checked in with her every couple of days, but he’d been out of town on business for the last week, so this was his face-to-face update. “Aside from a few Pop-Tart smuggling incidents—all of which I thwarted, I’ll have you know—Noah’s been abiding by our original agreements, though he conveniently forgets what we agreed to and has to be reminded.”
Reminded not to touch her. Reminded not to kiss her. Reminded not to make sexual overtures she barely resisted.
“I’ve got four of his snowboarding buddies coming to the house for workouts every day—and usually end up feeding them all every night,” she continued. “Last week, he started back with Rafe, so he boards in the morning and works out in the early evening. We’ve got two therapy sessions, one before he sees Rafe and one after his workout. If he’s hurting or backsliding, I add one in the middle of the day. If not, I add another workout. Rafe’s pleased with his progress, and Noah’s happy, so I must be doing something right.”
“Then what’s bothering you?”
She shook her head, shrugged. “Just the time constraints and how hard he’s pushing. I’d rather he miss these Games if it meant healing properly and extending his career five years.”
“Julia.” The serious note in Drake’s voice drew her gaze. “If Noah doesn’t make these Games, he’ll lose his sponsors. Even if he could bear that loss financially, those sponsors won’t be there to pick him back up when he’s fully recovered and ready to go again. He’s thirty. They’ll be invested in younger talent. You know how this works. If Noah doesn’t get to Snowmass, his career is over.”
Frustration burned through Julia. “And if he goes to Snowmass too soon, he could end his career and screw up the rest of his life.”
&nb
sp; They held each other’s gazes for a long second in silence. Julia realized she was projecting many of her own fears from the past onto Noah’s current situation. And she knew Drake was thinking the same thing.
“Forget I said anything.” She turned back to the window and searched for Noah’s red beanie. “He’s doing great. We’re on schedule. I’ll get him to Snowmass.” She pointed toward the lift. “Do you see him? He’s on the chair lift closest to us. Third to the top. Sitting with a kid.”
“Should have known,” Drake said, squinting that direction. “I see him.”
“That’s Jake and Finn two chairs back.”
“You mean Trouble One and Trouble Two.”
She chuckled. “Yes and yes. Jake is Noah’s Pop-Tart dealer.”
Noah and the kid he’d befriended—Julia couldn’t tell if it was a boy or girl in all that skiwear—hopped off the lift and slid out of the way.
“Finn told me Noah teaches some camps around here,” she said.
“Until the accident, yeah. There are several really good schools for advanced snowboarders in the area. He loves it. Talks about having a school of his own someday. If anyone could do it, Noah could. He was pretty much raised by instructors and camp counselors.”
She knew all about leaving family behind to train. In her case, she’d looked forward to getting away from her overbearing, judgmental parents. But other athletes hadn’t been as thrilled or done as well away from home.
“I think he found one of his students.” They watched Noah surf the snow as effortlessly as if he’d been born on the slopes, pausing every now and then to wait for the kid, talk to him, then continue on. Trouble One and Trouble Two had skied down the other side of the slope and now sat on a lift floating toward the mountaintop.
“Is that my boy on the bunny slopes?” A second male voice came into the conversation, and Julia looked back to find Rafe O’Neil shaking Drake’s hand. “Tell me it’s not true.”
Rafe was somewhere in his late forties, and handsome in that rugged, year-round-Tahoe-resident sort of way.
“Oh, relax,” Julia said. “He’s just warming up.”
“Honey, that’s not how a gold medalist warms up. Putting Noah Hunt on the bunny slopes is like caging a wild animal, like cuffing a prizefighter, like—”
Like putting Julia Quinn Kingsley in the kiddie pool, she wanted to scream. Instead, she sighed. “Save the drama, Rafe.”
In moments like this, Julia regretted changing her name after leaving the Olympic life. There had been so many moments she could have pulled it out and used her legacy to ease her career path, like now. Sure would have been satisfying to say, “I know exactly how a gold medalist warms up, you arrogant ass.”
Instead, she said, “And remember, he’s still got a lot of scar tissue—”
“In the lateral malleolus,” he finished for her. “And too much force on the outside of his left foot will cause the cuboid joint to evert.”
“And,” she added deliberately, “that would cause stabbing pain in his ankle, heel, and calf, which would—horror upon horrors—stall continued training. So if you want to keep your boy on the pow pow” —God, she hated that stupid term for powder; who made this shit up?—“don’t push it.”