A Matter of Trust(54)

He came around the counter. “C’mon over to the sofa. We’ll see if we can find a Western instead of the weather channel, huh?”

She slid off the stool, walked over, and curled up on the sofa.

But when he handed her a blanket, she turned to him and said softly, “But as for you not being the hero of the team, I completely disagree.”

Oh. He had no words as he picked up the remote, letting her smile warm him through as the blizzard turned the world to ice.



Please, God, don’t let us die. The thought, maybe a prayer, thrummed through the back of Gage’s brain as the tent convulsed around them at the mercy of the blizzard winds.

He lay awake thinking through today’s route, watching the light change from pitch to shades of faint amber, the wan light of dawn pressing through the orange fabric of the tent.

He hoped, desperately, that he hadn’t led Ella to her death.

The temperature had dropped, but inside his glacier bag, and with Ella huddled against him in hers, they were in no danger of freezing.

Still, they might be encased under three feet of snow by morning. And if the snow didn’t abate, he’d be trapped with her on the mountain.

Which would be lethal to his resolve of keeping her from wheedling her way back inside to those places that hadn’t forgotten. He still remembered, too well, what it felt like to hold her in his arms, to feel like, with her, he could be himself.

Although, frankly, that would mean letting her see the wounds she’d left.

Maybe even letting her inflict more.

“I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe until they found you.”

He didn’t quite know what to believe, but her soft words had nearly undone him. Tempered the residual anger, made him revisit that night.

“We were friends.”

Yes, maybe they were. Which meant that really, probably, they were just two old acquaintances catching up.

And weathering a storm. Still, it wouldn’t do Gage, or his heart, any good to spend another night huddled next to her. Not if he hoped to keep from repeating his mistakes.

No doubt she only clung to him because of her sheer terror at sliding down the mountain.

“Gage, are you awake?”

He looked over, and her eyes were open. She wore a stocking cap, her curly penny red hair spilling out of it, and had her sleeping bag up to her chin.

“Mmmhmm,” he said.

“What are you thinking about?”

He rolled over onto his side. “Just trying to figure out the right line down the rest of the mountain. And hoping your brother is at the snow cave, and . . .” And how devastatingly pretty she looked in the press of dawn, her eyes more gray than blue in this light. “Wishing life had turned out differently.”

She blinked at that. “Like . . . us?”

He didn’t allow his face to betray anything.

She caught her lower lip in her teeth. Sighed.

“What?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it fast. Sighed again. Then, “I know you’re probably wondering why I . . . well, why I didn’t recuse myself.”

He couldn’t help it—he nodded. “I figured I’d hurt you, and it was payback.”

His blunt words reflected in her eyes; she flinched. He hadn’t said it with malice, just a fact, softly.

Because, really, they were just acquaintances catching up, clearing the air.

She drew in a breath then, as if fortifying herself. “I was hurt, yeah. But, the truth is, it was ambition. When the senior lawyer decided to take the case, I was assigned it. Since it was so high profile, he suggested that I would be offered a junior partnership if we won.” She closed her eyes, as if in pain. “I thought maybe I could do the legwork and that you’d settle out of court. Then I wouldn’t have to actually see you . . . but . . . why did you wait so long to settle? I never dreamed you’d let it go to a hearing.”

His jaw tightened; this was why he shouldn’t spend another day with her, because Ella seemed to find new and more lethal ways to hurt him. “I wanted to settle. But then I was angry too. And hurt. I dislocated my shoulder and even cracked a couple ribs—I nearly died in the avalanche that Dylan started. I wanted to talk to his parents, help them understand that he was . . . he was reckless and belligerent and—”

She drew in a breath, as if she was going to add something, but when he looked at her, she shook her head.

So he continued. “I wrote to them, but they responded with a lawsuit, and I was angry. My entire career hinged on defeating them . . . but then I got to the hearing and I took one look at them and I told my lawyer to just let them have what they wanted. But by then it was too late.”

She stared at him. “Oh. Now I know why your lawyer barely defended you.”