Shame the Devil (Portland Devils #3) - Rosalind James Page 0,40
Blake going to say?” Dyma asked. “You’re not exactly fulfilling your employee responsibilities, which is more or less your life’s purpose. So what’s the deal?”
She needed to tell Dyma about the layoff. But not when she had about five minutes to do it.
Which was weaseling out. It seemed she was a weasel, though, because she pulled on another possibly-too-tight-for-public-consumption base layer, this one black and printed with snowflakes—which was long underwear, and in no way sexy, so never mind—and said, “It’s one day. And don’t say anything about my job, or Blake.”
“Why not? Because you want to impress Kris with your supposed wealth, that you can afford to stay here while they redecorate the beach house? He’s probably so confused by now.”
“Excuse me?” They needed to get to breakfast, but Jennifer was still stopping in the midst of wriggling into her ski pants. “I don’t seem like I could possibly be anyone who can afford to stay here? What, am I wearing the Stamp of Poverty on my forehead?”
“Mom. Your clothes? You’ve been wearing Levi’s and shirts from Boot Barn. Also, you can’t ski. Middle-class people can ski, and rich people are practically born with a lift ticket clipped to their jacket zippers.”
“Maybe I’m a middle-class person from Texas. Maybe I raise prize Arabians on my horse farm. Anyway, Levi’s are classic. They’re curvy fit! They cost forty dollars!”
“Except I already told Owen we’re from Idaho and that I’d never been on a ranch, remember? I’m just ignoring the part about the forty dollars. That’s not exactly designer fashion, Mom.”
“Well,” Jennifer said, “I’m not going to worry about it.”
“You worry about everything,” Dyma said.
“Except this.” She slipped into her moccasins, reflected on the fact that her makeup was confined to lip gloss, and abandoned the thought. She was going to be so covered up out there, she might as well be wearing a burka, and Dyma was right. She didn’t have glamorous regular clothes, and she didn’t have glamorous ski clothes, either. She wasn’t going to be fooling anybody, so she might as well be herself. “But don’t mention Blake,” she reminded Dyma again. “VIPs value their privacy, and he pays me to preserve it. Everybody wants to feel like they know him, and he’s just trying to live his life.”
Dyma, naturally, rolled her eyes. “Let’s see, how many times have you told me that? I believe this is number eighteen. Since the whole point of his being in Wild Horse was to build a resort that’s only making money because he’s a big star, that makes zero sense. He’s not exactly incognito. I tell you what. I’ll tell Owen you work for a Mafia boss, and that I can’t say any more or they’ll kill me. How’s that?”
“Unbelievable,” Jennifer answered. “I don’t think there’s a whole lot of Mafia activity in North Idaho.”
Six or seven or forty-five hours later, because she’d lost track of the endless slog of time, she had no idea what Dyma was telling Owen, and she didn’t care. Her daughter was getting an advanced ski lesson, presumably somewhere far, far ahead. She might have worried about that, but since the temperature had never topped about ten degrees, she didn’t imagine anybody was taking off any clothes.
As for her? She was (A) frozen, (B) bruised, and (C) frustrated. Oh, and probably (D) humiliated, too. Kris had asked, “Want to try a slightly hillier trail today, up in the trees? I hear we could see some elk up there.” The problem was that she’d imagined herself, for one reckless instant, as some other person, the kind of woman who did Zumba at the gym instead of the elliptical machine due to her immense coordination, natural athletic ability, and sorority-girl personality, and said, “Sure.”
Now, she was in one of those spots where you couldn’t go back, because it was too far, and you couldn’t go home, because that was what you were trying to do anyway, and also because they probably didn’t do helicopter rescues just because you’d had enough and were about to cry. She’d fallen on her butt at least six more times, some of them hard enough to rattle her teeth and do her bruises no good at all, she had a headache from all the teeth-rattling, Kris had had to help her get upright at least half of those times, after she’d flailed around like a walrus on an ice floe, or slid sideways down the hill with her skis in the air like