2. Hans

2

HANS

M y boots sink into the snow and numbness tingles around my toes, which tells me the sooner I get to my cabin and a warm fire the better.

Christmas carols waft on the wind from the Lodge. It’s still over a week until Christmas, and I’m sick of hearing them. I don’t give a goddamn shit what Mariah Carey wants for Christmas. I just want to get the season over with so all the tourists can go home, and I can have my mountain back.

To make matters worse, there’s a wedding this weekend, which means the Lodge is extra full of privileged assholes and all my staff have been called up for extra shifts.

Ski instructors by day and wait staff or dishwashers by night. It’s not a bad gig if you’re young and want the money for a few seasons. But at twenty-eight, I’m getting too old for this shit.

My bones are weary as I trudge through the snow. Wind whips my face, shaking the trees and sending flurries of powder off their branches and into the air.

I squint at the sky and the thick clouds that will shortly unleash their snowstorm onto the mountain.

I’ve spent the morning securing the chair lifts and equipment and explaining to angry assholes why they can’t go skiing today. The wind was blowing the ski lifts sideways, and I still had college boys clasping their snowboards angrily and insisting they should be allowed on the lifts.

They didn’t bother to check the snow report that would have told them the hills were closed today, or they did and didn’t think the rules applied to their entitled asses.

One of them threatened to call the manager on me until l told him I was the manager. I’ve been managing the fields for the last two years. I lost my enthusiasm for teaching rich kids how to ski when I made the stupid mistake of thinking I had a connection with a beautiful woman two years ago.

“He’ll never be good enough for someone like you.”

The words still haunt me, and I push them to the back of my mind. Allie’s probably hooked up with some preppy hotshot by now. The thought makes my fists clench with rage, and I stomp quicker through the snow.

If she thinks of me at all, it will be only as a distant memory: that time she kissed a lowly ski instructor, the help .

A gust of wind has snow shaking off a pine tree. It’s gotten dark even though it’s not even midday. This will be one hell of a storm, and I’m glad I got everyone off the mountain. While my colleagues are working the wedding tonight, sneaking sips of overpriced wine and dining on leftover lobster, I’ll be tucked up in my cabin with a fire and a book.

I don’t like company these days, unless it’s my sister and my cute baby nephew. I can take or leave her broody husband, but at least he takes care of her. Greta seems happy every time I see her, and that’s about the one good thing I’ve got left in this world.

Greta worries about me. She thinks it was her leaving that turned me into a grump. She doesn’t know about Allie.

Allie with the soft lips and shy smile…

Damn. I turn around quickly, trying to shake her out of my mind. It’s been two years, and I still can’t let her go. My lips sting when I think about her as if that kiss was moments ago rather than years.

As I turn, a movement catches my eye.

It’s the Hunter’s Cabin, the premier cabin that sits on the perimeter of The Lodge. They’re all interconnected, and it’s been rented out for the wedding party. I curse under my breath, because the last thing I want to think about is a happy couple.

But the sight in front of me makes me pause.

Dangling from a window with one foot on a drainage pipe and the other scrabbling for purchase on the edge of the slotted wooden cabin is a woman in a wedding dress.

The dress is caught up around her waist. I presume that happened as she backed out of the window, and her long, thick legs are on display. She’s wearing sheer white stockings that end at her thighs with a lacy garter belt to hold them up.

Heat floods my veins at the sight of her creamy thighs wrapped in delicate fabric. There’s a stirring in my snow suit, and my dick springs to attention for the first time in two years. Which is entirely inappropriate because this woman looks like she’s about to fall.

I snap out of my reverie just as her hand slips off the window frame and she falls the one level to the ground, landing in the heavy snow with a poof.

She lets out a squeak, then clamps her hand over her mouth. The woman sits in the snow for a moment, looking up at the cabin with her head cocked. I guess she’s trying to figure out if anyone heard her.

Her silky chocolate and caramel colored hair is in an elaborate style on top of her head apart from ringlets that cascade over her shoulders and down her bare back.

She shouldn’t be out in the snow so exposed, but by the looks of it she didn’t think of the cold when she climbed out the window. I fold my arms and watch the woman, amusement battling with arousal. There’s only one reason why a bride climbs out of a window into the freezing snow. She’s running away. Some poor rovhatt is waiting for her in the chapel, and she doesn’t want to marry him.

A pang of sympathy for the guy battles with a stronger feeling of attraction for his runaway bride.

I’ve only seen her back and side profile, but I’m liking the solid and curvy figure under her dress. I’m a big man and I like big women, and this caramel-haired bride ticks all my boxes.

The bride scrambles to her feet and backs away from the cabin. She doesn’t even have shoes on, and ten minutes in this cold could bring on frost bite.

The damn fool hasn’t thought this through very well, and with the storm coming I don’t like her chances.

I should step forward and show myself. I should escort her back to the wedding party and let her family deal with whatever fallout there’ll be from this.

But as I watch her hike up the ridiculously large skirts of her wedding dress, exposing again the white stockings and bare feet underneath, I don’t make a move. I don’t want her to go back to the wedding party and marry the rovhatt. I want to warm her feet up in my cabin and slide my coat over her shoulders. I want to massage the heat back into her toes and explore what’s at the top of her garter belt.

Don’t fool around with the help.

The memory of Allie’s mom’s words send my fantasies tumbling down. This woman, whoever she is, isn’t for the likes of me.

Wealthy families come to the Emerald Heart Resort to ski in the winter and go speed boating on the lake in the summer. It’s a playground for the rich and sometimes famous. I’m just the help.

I used to get a kick out of fooling around with the rich women who wanted to slum it with the Scandinavian ski instructor for a holiday fling. But Allie changed all that. I haven’t been with a woman since I met Allie, and no woman has made me feel any hint of desire until now.

And that is too intriguing to pass up.

The woman is still moving backwards, her head scanning the Hunter’s Cabin. I guess she’s looking to see if she’s being discovered.

Slowly, I creep forward. The snow muffles my footsteps so she doesn’t hear me. I’m not sure what my game plan is. I just know she needs to get out of the snow before she freezes to death. I also know I don’t want to return her, not yet. If she wants out of the wedding, I’ll help her. But I don’t want to startle her and alert her family.

I wait until I’m right up behind the woman. Then I lunge forward and clamp a hand over her mouth.