Chapter 1

1

KACIE

D on’t chicken out now, Kacie.

Those were the words I said out loud as I stood, buck naked, in the middle of a poorly insulated gondola at least thirty feet above a very snowy ski slope. I’d removed my clothes quickly, like doing so would suddenly make me warmer. It was the exact opposite.

But once I was naked, I’d taken a good three minutes to figure out which of the pockets of my ski suit held my phone. I needed that to snap the selfie I’d send my friends.

Former friends. At this point, I was seriously reconsidering everything in my life that had led up to this point.

I finally tracked down my phone and snapped a shoulders-up selfie. Then I stopped to send the snap to my friends.

That was my first mistake. My second mistake, actually. My first mistake was taking my “friends” up on this dare in the first place. They were college friends, and now that we’d graduated and spread out all over the country, there was no reason to stay friends with them.

Right?

But it was those friendships that had led me here, standing naked inside a ski gondola on New Year’s Eve morning. I was leaning over to pick up my clothes when my phone buzzed in my left hand. I looked down and groaned.

Not a chance, Madison, the unofficial leader of our little clique, had typed. I want to see your whole body.

Three dots below that indicated my closest friend, Samantha, was typing something. Finally, it came through.

Seriously, Maddie, she can’t share naked pictures. What if her phone gets hacked?

Cover up the naughty bits , Madison fired back.

“Shit,” I said, then covered my mouth. I never cursed.

I looked around. Off in the distance, I saw a chair coming from the other direction. The chair was the older method of transport. This enclosed car had been added when the Seduction Summit Lodge expanded over the fall.

My friends and I, who’d met in a sorority, had come skiing here in Seduction Summit every year, but this year I was here alone. I’d come for the day just to carry out this dare they’d issued last year, when “naked on a ski lift” meant sitting on that darn chair out in the open wearing nothing. This was far more doable.

The chair was edging closer by the second. And someone was seated on it. I had to shoot the video and get my clothes on before it got to me.

Sighing, I opened my camera app and toggled over to video, then I covered my chest and scanned it, pausing on my stomach before moving my hand to my lower region to cover that too. Then I checked to make sure the video recorded before sending it to my friends. Once that was done, I set my phone on the chair behind me and checked on the status of the chair.

Yeah, it was getting dangerously close now. In a panic, I leaned over to snatch up my clothes, but as I rose to a standing position, I saw something on my phone and had to look closer. No bars. I was completely out of range. What if the video never went through? What if it somehow got deleted?

I picked up my phone and frowned at it before checking to make sure the video was still on my phone. I’d worry about sending it when I got back to the lodge. There, I could sit in front of the fire, warm and cozy in my ski suit, and message my friends. Maybe I’d even ski a little before making the hour-long drive home. I’d suited up for it so no one would ask questions when I climbed on the lift, so why not?

I set the phone down and prepared to get dressed. But as I turned, thermal top in hand, I spotted the lift chair…and the man seated on it. It was close enough now that I could make out a bulky build and a beard, along with the same sort of beanie everyone wore on the slopes. Sunglasses covered his eyes, and he wore a coat and jeans with hiking boots.

It was clear from the way he dressed that the guy wasn’t a skier. But it was also clear from here that he was hot as hell. Even though I couldn’t see his eyes, I was fairly sure he was looking directly at me, which meant he could see me naked.

With a gasp, I lifted the shirt to cover my chest. No man had ever seen me naked. I was a virgin. That was part of the reason for the dare. I was the only virgin in that group of friends. In fact, in our entire sorority, there had been only one other virgin, and she was the one who snuck into people’s rooms and borrowed stuff that she never returned.

Junior year, when we were required to move out of the sorority house, our smaller clique moved in together, having already formed deep friendships. And that was when it became clear that I was the most sheltered, and therefore least fearless, of the group.

Fearless was a word they used often. They were sure I lived in fear of what could happen if I made myself vulnerable to a guy. They weren’t entirely wrong about that.

I could hear them in my head now. “Of course you covered yourself with your shirt. A fearless person would have bared it all for the guy, then giggled about it the rest of the day.”

I could do this. I was daring. I was fearless. I was ready to make that step into adulthood.

Taking a deep breath, I lowered the T-shirt and straightened both arms out a couple of feet from my hips on either side. Then I stared the guy down as if daring him to gawk at me.

We were so close now, I could clearly make out the crease lines on his forehead. He was frowning, as though wondering if his eyes were deceiving him. Yes, he was definitely gawking.

Slowly, the corners of his mouth lifted on either side. It was barely perceptible, but I saw it. I had a feeling this was a guy who didn’t normally smile.

“Take a picture,” I shouted, repeating a line I’d heard many times in childhood. “It’ll last longer.”

I didn’t know if he could hear me through this plexiglass or not, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d pulled out his phone and done exactly what I commanded. He was getting so close now, though, he’d be past me by the time he could open his camera and hold the phone in front of him to snap the picture.

This was exciting, thrilling. I felt alive for the first time in my life. Who knew that getting naked in front of a gorgeous stranger was all I needed to pull myself out of the slump I’d been in lately?

In five seconds, he’d be passing me, and then I could get dressed and go back and tell my friends about what had happened. It would be an interesting text to add to the video I’d be sending.

But as I counted down—five, four, three—the gondola began making a strange sound. It trembled, then shuddered, and my arms reflexively covered my chest. This thing was going to fall off the cable. I would topple to my death wearing absolutely nothing. Could there be anything more humiliating?

As if in answer to that question, the gondola came to an abrupt stop catty-corner to the hot guy, whose chair had also stopped. He was staring directly at me—or at least I assumed he was. The sunglasses still concealed his eyes.

Yes, this was definitely more mortifying than if I’d fallen to my death naked. This was by far the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to me. And it was far from over.