The Risk (Xtreme Heroes 1)

“Why do you change the subject every time the topic of you comes up?”

She gave a dramatic bat of her eyelashes. “Because you’re so much more interesting, oh master of the snowboard. Tell me about the school you want.”

“I don’t know if a school is exactly what I had in mind. More of a camp situation, where kids of all ages would come to learn. But I’d focus on the experienced, competitive boarders I could push to the next level. And Finn’s been talking about this thing called extreme tourism—”

“Where people pay to take vacations and do wild stuff—skydive in Machu Picchu, hang glide in Brazil, climb the Alps,” she said. “I’ve heard of it.”

“Right. I haven’t looked into it much, but I was thinking it would be really cool to—in addition to clinics for kids—also put together adventures like boardercross races and backcountry excursions for advanced boarders.”

As soon as the idea hit his own ears, it sounded flimsy, and he regretted letting these intimate ideas spill from his mouth. Julia had a way of putting him so at ease, talking to her sometimes almost felt like talking out loud to himself. But right now, having all that out there, ideas he hadn’t even gotten his own mind around, made him feel exposed.

“What’s backcountry?” she asked.

He grinned just thinking about it. “Only the most adrenaline-pumping snowboarding venture ever.” When he looked over and found her waiting for more, he said, “It’s the pursuit of fresh, virgin powder—ungroomed, unmarked, untouched by humans—in the highest, steepest, most remote locations available. It’s being airlifted to the starting point and boarding down completely freestyle and virtually blind. It’s pure, raw, rabid juice for any extreme snowboarder.”

He hadn’t realized he’d closed his eyes until he opened them and all the memories of his own days in the backcountry faded away. Julia had propped her elbow on the armrest between them and simply stared at him, one hand under her chin, a wistful smile on her face.

“What?” he asked, suddenly exposed again.

She shook her head, barely a movement. “I’ve just never heard you so totally…passionate about what you do until just then. It’s…” She searched for a word. “Inspiring. Powerful.”

God, she just got him. He’d never known a woman who he believed really understood what drove him. Her eyes never glazed over when he talked about his sport. She never lost interest in his childish stories from his past. She was so open and accepting and encouraging. Yes, she was a hard-ass too, but one who understood him.

“I want you to watch something.” He pulled the computer from her lap and connected to the Internet, then pulled up one of the backcountry snowboarding videos he’d made with Red Bull.

“How long were you going to let me believe we didn’t have Internet?” she asked, her voice wry.

“The entire flight.” He pulled up the video full-screen and turned it so they could both watch. Then he tapped the arrow to play and said, “This is backcountry.”

The video had been shot without audio. Only background music played while the beginning of the video introduced each member of the snowboarder group pretending to play some part in the manufacturing process at the Ride snowboard factory, his sponsor before he switched to Epic.

“These are the other guys on the video,” he explained as she watched intently. “There’s Finn.”

She smiled, nodded.

“I’m in the—”

“Orange jacket,” she finished, even though he had his back to the camera. “I know your body.” Her eyes snapped to his, then away. “I mean…your build.”

She didn’t know his body nearly as well as he’d like her to.

As soon as the video cut to riding footage, Julia was rapt. Every flip, every turn, every crazy-ass trick he’d pulled on the video held her attention. She oohed and aahed and laughed and gasped in all the right places. For twenty minutes, she watched, her gaze never flickering away from the screen even when she laughed or asked Noah a question.

“Where was this shot?” she asked.

“They mixed the segments—you can usually tell by what we’re wearing—but for this video, we went to British Columbia, France, Switzerland, Montana… Yeah, I think that was all.”

“How many of these have you done?”

“About a dozen. Had another one scheduled when I broke my ankle.”

She watched as Noah caught air for a hundred-foot vertical drop from the makeshift slope off snow-covered boulders, his landing ending in a sli

ding stop beside his pack of buddies for high fives.

“God, that looks so crazy,” she said. “So adrenaline inducing. So wildly time-of-your-life fun.”

“Oh, it is. All that and more.”