Shame the Devil (Portland Devils #3) - Rosalind James Page 0,41

some kind of dead bug, and she was long past the point of laughing gaily at her misadventures. Also, right now, she was looking at the steepest downhill yet, or rather, observing Kris doing a slalom thing down it, even though he’d said he was a beginner, too.

He did a sort of turn-in-place to stop, shoved his goggles up to look back up at her, and beckoned her down, and she thought, No. I can’t. I refuse.

Which was when he skied back to up to her, using some more skills, and said, “You can snowplow all the way down. Look. Bend your knees as far as you can, and turn your toes all the way in.” And demonstrated. Gracefully.

Her thighs ached. Her butt hurt. Her triceps and shoulders and forearms burned from her efforts with the ski poles. She’d spent too many hours tense and scared. At least, she assumed that was why her throat was closing up and she was saying, “I’m not sure I …” Her voice wobbled, and she steadied it with a major effort, felt the tears pricking behind her eyes, and said, “You’re right. I’m going to do that.”

Not because of impressing him. After tomorrow, when she’d help him through his event, she’d fly home and never see him again, and anyway, she was pretty sure that any shot she’d had of “impressing” had died somewhere around the dead-bug stage. This wasn’t going to be about impressing him. This was her proving to herself that she could try something new, and that fear didn’t have to stop her. If her legs were trembling with tension and exhaustion? They were nearly back to the lodge, she’d skied nine miles, they hadn’t all been flat, and that was a victory. She was going to make it a victory.

Sounded good, anyway. That was before she snowplowed down the hill, got going too fast anyway, had her skis tangle, and fell over on her side, giving her a good whack exactly on her most-bruised spot. After that, she slid down the rest of the hill on her butt like a toddler. When she’d struggled upright again at the bottom, climbing out of a pit of extremely deep snow, since she’d gone right off the track, she told Kris fiercely, “Do not say something encouraging. Just don’t. I am not going to cry. I am going to ski back to the lodge, take about four Advil, sit in the bathtub until my fingers wrinkle, and then possibly talk to you again, unless I’m too humiliated.”

“Does this mean our trip tomorrow is off?” He was trying not to laugh, she could tell. “And hey. I’ve been put on my butt plenty of times. I bet there are highlight reels of that.”

“You’re encouraging me,” she informed him. “What did I say about encouraging me?”

“Whoops. Sorry.”

He was grinning again, and she brushed the snow off her back and her butt as best she could, pulled her scarf up around her chin, wondered if your face fell off from frostbite or if that was just the tip of your nose, shuffled her feet forward, aiming for a gliding motion that she still didn’t have the hang of, tried to ignore the blister forming at the back of her heel, and said, “I’m holding the thought of tomorrow, when I’m the one supporting you. You’d better be suffering tomorrow, though. You’d better tell me you’re suffering. Because we’re going to get back to the lodge with me feeling like I need an hour in a hot tub, except that there is no hot tub, because it’s the frigging wilderness, and for some reason, lodges in the wilderness don’t have hot tubs, because we’re all too tough and Nordic for that. Dyma and Owen are going to be sitting in those big chairs having hot cider, because they got back an hour ago, and Dyma’s going to tell me how awesome skiing is, and how it’s too bad we can’t afford for her to do it some more, but she doesn’t blame me, of course, because I’m doing my best, and I’m going to want to smack her and not going to be allowed to. So somebody needs to suffer.”

He was laughing by this point, and trying to pretend he wasn’t. “I promise to suffer. You have my word. And you can comfort me. I’ll even see if I can provide a hot tub. If you need one today, you’re going to need it even worse