Slow Heat

Chapter 1

The wind whistled through the high Colorado Rocky Mountain peaks, stirring up a dusting of snow as light as the powdered sugar on the donut that Hudson Kincaid was stuffing into his face as he rode the ski lift.

Breakfast of champions, and in three minutes when he hit the top of Cedar Ridge, he’d have the adrenaline rush to go with it. As head of ski patrol, he’d already had his daily before-the-asscrack-of-dawn debriefing with his crew. They’d set up the fencing and ropes to keep skiers in the proper runs and safe. They’d checked all the sleds to make sure their equipment was in working order.

Now he had time for one quick run before they ran rescue drills for a few hours, and then he was on to a board meeting—aka fight with his siblings. One run, ten glorious minutes to himself, and he was going to make it Devil’s Face, the most challenging on the mountain.

Go big or go home. That was the Kincaid way.

Just then the radio at his hip chirped news about a report of someone in trouble at the top of Devil’s Face, and Hud shook his head.

So much for a few minutes to himself.

Ah, well, it was the life, his life, and he’d chosen it. At the top of the lift, he hit the snow at a fast clip. He’d seen a lot here on their mountain and even more on his monthly shifts as a cop in town. It was safe to say that not much surprised him anymore.

So when three minutes later he found a girl sitting just off center at the top of Devil’s Face, her skis haphazardly stuck into the snow at her side, he didn’t even blink.

Her down jacket was sunshine yellow, her helmet cherry red. She sat with her legs pulled up to her chest, her chin on her knees, wearing ski boots as neon green as neon green could get and staring contemplatively at the heart-stopping view in front of her.

Hud stopped a few feet away so as to not startle her, but she didn’t budge. He looked around to make sure this was the person of interest. Sharp, majestic snow-covered peaks in a three-hundred-sixty-degree vista. Pine-scented air so pure that at this altitude it hurt to breathe. There was no one else up here. They were on top of the world.

Not smart on her part. The weather had been particularly volatile lately. Right now it was clear as a bell and a crisp thirty degrees, but that could change in a blink. High winds were forecasted, as was another foot of snow by midnight. But even if a storm wasn’t due to move in, no one should ski alone. And especially no one should ski alone on Devil’s Face, a thirty-five-hundred-foot vertical run that required a great deal of skill and in return promised dizzying speeds. There was a low margin for error up here where one little mistake could mean a trip to the ER.

Even Hud didn’t ski alone. He had staff all over this place—a few of them at the ski patrol outpost only a few hundred yards away, another group at the ski lift he’d just left, even more patrolling the resort boundaries—all of them connected to each other by constant radio contact.

“Hey,” he called out. “You okay?”

Nothing.

Hud glided on his skis the last few feet between them and touched her shoulder.

She jerked and craned her neck, at the same time pulling off her helmet and yanking out her earbuds. Tinny music burst out from them loud enough to make him wonder if she still had any hearing at all.

“Sorry,” she said. “Did you say something?”

Not a girl but a woman, and without her helmet, Hud realized he’d actually seen her before. Earlier that morning she’d been in the parking lot, sitting on the back bumper of her car and pulling on her ski boots, all while singing along with the radio to the new Ed Sheeran song. He couldn’t tell now behind her dark sunglasses, but he knew she had eyes the color of today’s azure sky and that she shouldn’t give up her day job to become a singer because she couldn’t hold a tune. “I asked if you’re okay,” he said.

She removed her sunglasses and gave him a sassy look that said the question was ridiculous.

She’d worn a tight ski cap beneath her helmet, also cherry red, with no hair visible and enough layers of clothing that she was utterly shapeless. But that didn’t matter. Her bright eyes sparkled with something that looked a whole lot like the best kind of trouble.

He’d been running ski patrol for years now and had been a cop for long enough that he was good at reading people, often before they said a word. It was all in the posture, in the little tells, he’d learned.

Such as all the layers she wore. Yes it was winter, and yes it was the Rocky Mountains, but thirty degrees was downright balmy compared with last week’s mid-teens. Most likely she wasn’t from around here.

And then there was the slightly unsure posture that said she was at least a little bit out of her element and knew it. Her utter lack of wariness told him something else, too, that probably wherever she’d come from, it hadn’t been a big city.

None of which explained why she was sitting alone on one of the toughest mountains in the country. Maybe… dumped by a boyfriend after a fight on the lift? Separated from a pack of girlfriends and just taking a quick break? Hell, despite appearances, maybe she was some kind of a daredevil out here on a bet or whim.

Or maybe she was simply a nut job. As he knew, nut jobs came in all shapes and sizes, even mysterious cuties with heart-stopping eyes. “So are you?” he asked. “Okay?”

Her smile faded some. “Do I not look okay?”

Hud had a sister and a mom, so he recognized a trick question when he heard one and knew better than to touch it with a ten-foot pole. Instead, he swept his gaze over her but saw no visible injuries. Then again, he couldn’t see much given all the layers. “You’re not hurt.”

“No, that’s not the problem.” She paused. “I guess you’re probably wondering what is the problem.”

“Little bit,” he admitted.

She rolled her eyes. “Did you know that people who don’t understand ski maps, or maps at all, shouldn’t ski alone?”

“No one should ski alone,” he said, but then her words sank in and he pulled off his sunglasses and stared at her in incredulous disbelief. “Are you saying you’re on Devil’s Face, the most challenging run on this mountain, because you misread the ski map?”

She bit her lip and tried to hide a rueful smile, which didn’t matter because her expressive eyes gave her away. “I realize this is going to make me look bad,” she said, “but yes. Yes, I’m here because I misread the map. If you must know the truth, I had it upside down.”

Upside down. Jesus. “We color-code the things, you know. Even upside down, green is still for beginners, blue for intermediate—”

“Well, I know that much!”

“This run is black—a double-diamond expert,” he said. “It’s marked all over the place.” He pointed to a sign three feet away.

CAUTION: DOUBLE DIAMOND. EXPERTS ONLY!

“I saw that,” she said. “Hence my thinking position because trust me, I wasn’t about to be stupid on top of stupid.”

He let out a low laugh. “Good to know.”

“And you should also know that I’m not a complete beginner. I’ve taken ski lessons before, at Breckenridge.” She grimaced. “Though it’s been a while.”

“How long is a while?”

She bit her lower lip. “Longer than I want to admit. I thought it’d be like getting on a bike. Turns out, not so much. But if it helps, I realized my mistake right away and I really was just taking in the view. I mean, look at it…” She gestured to the gorgeous scenery in front of her, the stuff of postcards and wishes and dreams. “It’s mind-boggling, don’t you think?”