Mountain Delights (Wild Mountain Men 2)

“That’s a big scar,” Cy commented.

I glanced down at my left knee to the straight pink line that ran down the center.

“I tore my ACL in a race last winter.”

“Lucas mentioned you’re a pro skier.”

Lucas huffed out a laugh, squeezed my foot. “You’ve never heard of her?”

“Other than what you’ve told me?” Cy asked. “Nope.”

The way I was sitting, I couldn’t see Cy’s face, but I couldn’t miss the surprise on Lucas’. He grabbed his cell, swiped the screen a few times. “Here.” He handed it to Cy.

The game went to commercial and Lucas reached for his beer on the coffee table. I followed Cy’s online research of me, his finger swiping from article to article, playing a few videos. The last one—I’d seen a million times—was of my accident at the championship in Norway and thankfully the sound was off. I had the commentator’s words of my accident memorized. Not only could I see the wipeout in my head from when it happened, but also from every angle captured by the TV cameras.

“How fast were you going?” he asked, his voice dropping an octave.

“Seventy-two just before the turn.”

I felt his chest rumble, and he tossed the cell to Lucas when the video got to the part where they lifted me, unconscious, onto a stretcher.

Before I realized what he was doing, he tugged me up so I was sitting on his lap and he was tipping my chin up to look at him. Then his eyes flared wide in panic. “Sorry, does this hurt your knee?”

He was about to lift me off him, but I stopped him by placing my hand on his chest. “It’s fine. It doesn’t hurt now, nor much in general, I just can’t get full range of motion in the knee yet. It’s almost there with continued PT.”

In his dark gaze, gone was the anger from earlier. The heat was gone, too.

He settled, sighed. “Fuck, woman. You’re insane. You’re lucky you’re not dead.”

“It wasn’t my first fall,” I replied. I’d been wiping out since I was four. It was the worst though and he was right, I could have died. The knee was the worst of the damage I’d received. A broken rib, tons of bruising. Mild concussion.

“That makes it even worse,” he grumbled. “How do your parents handle it?”

I looked at him, saw the soft smile, felt the way his hand caressed my repaired knee.

I shrugged. “My mom skied in the Olympics. She knows what it’s like, although we go faster these days. Fall harder. My dad’s pretty chill since he’s got two women in his life who are risk takers.”

“I think he and I are going to get along pretty well,” Cy commented.

I thought of him with my dad, fishing, something quiet and calm made me smile. Yeah, they’d definitely get along.

Lucas shifted, slid a hand down my back, cupped my butt. “He wants to meet the parents. That’s a good sign.”

It was. It seemed to be as instantaneous with Cy as it had been with Lucas. Lucas had been right about the three of us. I could feel it, and that was scary. This was all fun. Nothing more. They’d never meet my parents. This… thing wasn’t like that. It couldn’t be.

My cell went off again. “Shit,” I whispered, sighing. The little bubble burst.

“What?”

I pursed my lips. “It’s my coach, Mark. He has his own ring tone.” A snippet of We Are The Champions by Queen.

Lucas leaned forward to grab it for me off the coffee table.

I held up my hand to stop him. “Don’t. I know what he wants.”

Cy turned my face back to his with a finger beneath my chin.

“You don’t seem happy to talk to him. Did he do something? Do we need to beat him up for you? Kill him? I have a lot of land to hide a body.”