“Hi, Alison.” Tyler gave her a smile that could have melted snow, and Alison smiled back.
“Hi. I think you’re amazing, by the way.” Her face was scarlet. “That downhill run in Beaver Creek was off the scale. You skied like you’d broken out of jail or something.”
Brenna gritted her teeth but Tyler didn’t seem to notice, and if the reference to his past successes bothered him, he didn’t show it. He was charming, charismatic and even gave Alison a couple of tips. By the time she skied away, she was wearing the biggest smile Brenna had ever seen.
“Aren’t you going to follow her?” She told herself that the snap in her voice was the result of her headache, not jealousy. “I think you could get lucky. She’s your type.”
He shifted his weight on his skis and gave her a long look. “I’m going to help you rescue these kids. How many?”
“Four. Two boys, two girls.” She felt small for having thought for a moment that he’d abandon them. Warmth spread through her. “Thanks.”
“Are you feeling well enough to help?”
“Why wouldn’t I be feeling well enough?”
“You don’t have a headache?”
“Not a trace of one.”
He gave a faint smile. “Right. So let’s do this.” He slid forward a short distance and without his body shadowing her, the sun blazed into her face. She didn’t think she’d made a sound, but she must have because he turned his head. “Keep your goggles on,” he advised, “that will help filter the sunlight.”
“I don’t have a problem with sunlight.”
“Honey, that was a grown-up girl’s drinking session, and you have a grown-up girl’s hangover.”
All warmth and good feeling faded. “I’d punch you, but I have children to rescue.”
She skied past him, but not before she’d seen that he was laughing.
He caught up with her easily. “Do you remember anything about last night?”
“All of it.”
“You were—”
“Shut up, Tyler.”
He gave her a look that set her nerve endings tingling. “So here’s the plan. You take one, Patrick can take one and I’ll take two.”
“What?”
“Kids. I’ll take one under each arm.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Why not? I thought you said they were babies?”
“Not literally babies.”
“Let’s take a look and see what we’ve got.” Tyler glided past her and out of sight, leaving her with no choice but to follow.
Patrick, who was in his first season as an instructor, had the four kids huddled at the side of the run. Two of them were crying, one was building a snowman and the other was clearly desperate to ski Black Bear because Patrick had his hand locked in the back of the boy’s jacket and was delivering a lecture on how important it was to listen, follow instructions and not ski off.
Brenna took one look at the determined expression on the boy’s face and glanced at Tyler. “He reminds me of you,” she muttered under her breath as she skied past him to join Patrick.
“I would have been at the bottom by now.” Tyler sat down in the snow next to the boy who was crying. “Hey, there. What’s up?”
The boy stared miserably at the vertical drop stretching below him. “T-too steep.”