was a knotted-up feeling in her stomach that was all too real. And all too familiar. It was the same feeling she got whenever she thought of the way her relationship with him-the way her life-was changing.
“Oh, all right,” she said in a grumpy tone she hoped would hide the fact that her heart was pounding and her breathing had become quick and shallow. “But just so you know, if we run into a tree and kill ourselves, it’s on your head.”
“No trees,” he said cheerfully, pointing toward the place he’d chosen for their descent. “See?”
“Oh, my God,” said Lucia. Straight down was what it looked like to her. All the way to the first loop of the road. Then another straight drop to the lane that ran past Josef and Kati’s cottage. She turned a horrified look on Corbett. “You must be kidding.”
“Not at all. It’s not as steep as it looks, you know. It’s all a matter of perspective.”
“Insane, then,” she muttered. “Completely mad.”
“Oh, come now. This from the woman who attacked an armed man with nothing but her bare hands and feet. Here-you don’t need to do a thing except hold on. Sit right here.” He guided her gently but firmly until she was perched on the sled, arms and legs pointing in all directions, like a newborn calf’s. “Okay, relax. Now, put your feet here, in the middle of the bar. I’ll do the steering.”
She caught and held a breath as the sled began to move, then stopped, teetering now on the very edge of what seemed to her like a precipice. A cliff. She caught another breath when she felt him settle himself behind her and align his legs alongside hers, fold one arm around her and bring her close against his chest. With the other he took a firm hold on the tow rope. She felt his body rock back…then sharply forward.
“O-o-oh…my…Go-o-d…”
The earth dropped out from under her and all the breath in her body emerged in one long wail of sheer terror.
Tears were snatched from her eyes by the wind. Her ears filled with the sounds of the wind rushing by at mach speed and the screech of sled runners slicing through snow and ice. In what seemed like no more than a few heartbeats she felt a bump and a slight slowing, and then another sharp drop as the sled swooped onto and then over the wide path and on down the hill.
She was just starting to get over the terror and beginning to enjoy herself when she heard Corbett yell in her ear, “We’re coming to the road! Lean when I tell you!”
She nodded. A moment later she felt the sled begin to tip to one side. “Lean!”
This she was only too happy to do. Every instinct in her brain was telling her body to throw itself in the direction opposite the way the sled was tipping in order to keep it upright. So that’s what she did.
The next thing she knew, the sled was slipping sideways down the hill, then skewing around and around, and she and the sled and Corbett were all cartwheeling, rolling, tumbling down the mountainside in a wild melee of flailing limbs and clouds of snow.
And then…all was still.
A few seconds passed before Lucia decided she was indeed alive. Shortly after that she decided she must be lying on her back, and since nothing seemed to hurt too terribly, all of her body parts must be intact and in working order. To test this theory, she spat out a mouthful of snow and attempted to sit up. And discovered she couldn’t move.
Panic seized her-for the few seconds it took her to figure out that she was not paralyzed, but that something heavy was lying on top of her, and that the something, or someone, was Corbett.
“Kindly…don’t do that…” His strangled whisper came from somewhere near her ear.
“Do what?”
“Move.”
“Oh.” There was a pause, and then: “Oh! Oh, my God! Corbett-your ribs-are you all right?”
“Not really, no. Though it wouldn’t be quite so bad if you’d only stop wiggling.”
“Oh. Sorry.” She let her head drop back into the snow. Then popped it up again. “It’s your own fault, you know. You told me to lean.”
“Of course I did.” Corbett’s face loomed above hers, eyebrows and lashes woolly with snow, cheeks chafed and wet with it. He’d lost the fur hat, and his hair hung damply onto his forehead. “Dammit, I wanted to turn.”
“Well, I leaned, and look what happened!”
“You leaned the wrong way, you…you-You shot the bloody sled right out from under us.”
“How was I supposed to know?” She propped herself on her elbows, bringing her face almost nose to nose with his. “It felt like the sled was going to tip over. Call me crazy, but that seemed like a bad thing to me. So I leaned the other way to keep it from doing that!”
“What? Didn’t you take physics in high school? Don’t you ever watch the Olympics? There’s this thing called centrifugal force-”
“It would have been nice if you’d explained that to me before you put me on that…that death sled! I told you I was no good at sports, but did you listen to me? Hell, n-mmf…”
He’d stood it as long as he could, he really had. Lying there with her body pinned beneath him, even with his wretched ribs on fire, had been enough of a torment. Then, to have that mouth of hers, the mouth he’d tried hard not to watch or think about for so many years only to have it invade his dreams and slip into his waking mind when he least expected it…to have that mouth right there, so close to his, red and swollen, wet and cold…Well.
And there was the added plus that it was a great way to get her to be still.
He kissed her.
Forcefully, at first, just to cut off the tirade. Forcefully enough so that he felt those lips stop moving and go still with shock, then quiver and begin to warm and soften against his. He drew back, then-not far, just to see her reaction. Her eyes gazed up at him, glistening like liquid silver.
“Well, it’s about time,” she said huskily. “I was beginning to think-”
Before she could finish, Corbett lowered his mouth to take hers again, this time with all the tenderness and care he had in him, and all the longing he’d kept hidden and the joy he’d denied himself for so long.
He pulled his hand from where it had been entombed in the snow, leaving his glove behind, and laid his cold fingers against her cheek. He wiped the snow-melt moisture away and felt the velvety softness of her skin and put his mouth there, too. Then to the cold, pink tip of her nose, one quivering eyelid, and back to her mouth again. He both felt and heard her faint little sigh, and now when he drew back to look at her, he found her eyes closed, and teardrops shivering on the tips of her lashes.
“You don’t know…” Her lips looked blurred and barely seemed to move.
“Yes,” he said softly, “I do.”
“No, you don’t. I tried to tell you-”
So he kissed her again. And this time he felt her arms come around his neck and her body lift under him, and he heard a whimper of passion. He turned slightly to give her room, scarcely aware of discomforts in any part of his body, save one. And that was one discomfort he was willing to live with-for a while. He didn’t even mind making it worse, temporarily, as when he let his hand wander along the side of her body, then around to the small of her back and over the taut rounds of her bottom, then pressed her, with her full cooperation, against the part of himself that was suffering the most.
Though he couldn’t help but groan.
She heard him, of course, and, drawing the wrong conclusion, stiffened. But before she could pull away, he tightened his arm around her and pressed her even closer, and with her lips curving under his in a smile of understanding, felt her legs shift to make a nest for him.
And as he was rocking against the cradle she’d made for him, his body tensing and tightening in familiar ways, seeking a union impossible under those circumstances, it struck him. First, as frustrating and infuriating, then as ridiculous, and finally, as hilariously funny. He withdrew gently from her mouth and rested his forehead against hers, his body shaking with laughter.
“Ow,” he moaned, and went on laughing.
“What?” she whispered, still holding him, but tensely now. “Did you hurt your ribs? What’s funny?”
It was a moment before he could answer, in a voice choked with pain and a kind of mirth he hadn’t known in a very long time. “This is-We are. Us.”
