“About how you became a werewolf?” he prompted. “You didn’t think I’d forget you promised to tell me your story, did you?”
Her heart suddenly beat faster. “I thought the deal was that I’d tell you the next time I found a place to repay you with dinner.”
Sawyer held up his bag of cheese puffs with a grin. “We have dinner, and since I saw you give Caleb a handful of euros before he headed out for food, you therefore paid for dinner. So, start talking.”
Harley opened her mouth to argue but then gave up. What else would they do for the rest of their shift if they didn’t talk? And she had promised him her story.
She only wished it weren’t so hard to talk about it.
Sawyer rolled his chair closer, tossing his bag of cheese puffs on the table with the monitors and taking her hand. “Hey, calm down. Your heart is thumping out of control. You don’t need to tell me anything if you don’t want to, okay?”
While she appreciated the offer, she still shook her head. “I want to tell you my story.” She took a deep breath, trying to get her heart rate back under control. “I just need a second.”
“Take all the time you need.” Relieving her of the canister of cookies, he set it on the table so he could take both of her hands in his and give them a squeeze. “We have all night if you need it.”
That wasn’t quite true. Their shift here at the villa finished in a few hours. But she knew what he was trying to say. They had time. She could do this.
“I was home on winter break from the University of Colorado Boulder,” she said slowly, figuring she’d start with the easy stuff and work her way into the more difficult part later. “I wanted to make some extra money, so I joined the ski patrol at Silverton Mountain. It was close to my home in Montrose, so it was a perfect setup for me.”
“What did you study in uni?”
She smiled at the question, knowing he was asking simply to help her relax. “I was working on my education degree. I was going to be a middle school teacher like my mom.”
“Nice.” His mouth curved. “Mum always wanted me to go to uni. She tried to talk me into it even after I got out of the army. She’s pretty much given it up as a lost cause these days.”
She tried to picture him in a classroom environment, a big alpha werewolf surrounded by hipsters and the party crowd. “What kind of classes did she want you to take?”
He gave her an embarrassed look. “She always wanted me to be a dentist like my dad. And before you ask, no, I’m not kidding.”
Harley tried not to laugh, but the thought of him sitting on a stool, fingers shoved in someone’s mouth while he talked about the importance of proper flossing was an image she simply couldn’t resist. It didn’t help when he pretended to be offended, telling her he’d looked good in a white coat and rubber gloves.
“Okay, I know absolutely nothing about Colorado,” he said when she finally stopped giggling. “I know it’s somewhere in the middle of the United States and it has mountains, but that’s about all. What’s it like?”
Harley smiled. In actuality, she didn’t know much more about the UK. Yeah, she knew about London and all its major iconic buildings, even some of its history—mostly the stuff on wars, since that was all her history classes ever seemed to care about—but that was it. She definitely couldn’t hold his lack of knowledge of Colorado against him.
“It’s beautiful,” she told him, glancing down at their clasped hands as she thought about the last time she’d been there. “Montrose is in the western part of the state, close to the border with Utah. It’s surrounded by mountains and national forests, which makes it a wonderful place to live, especially if you love skiing. Heck, I learned to ski before I even learned to ride a bike.”
“That explains the job on the ski patrol.” Sawyer absently rubbed his thumb back and forth over the back of her hand. “Were you skiing when you became a werewolf?”
She nodded, a little distracted by the memory. “Silverton Mountain has a few traditional runs, but mostly specializes in backcountry excursions that take skiers in by helicopter and drops them at the top of some of the toughest slopes in the country. The chance to shred fresh snow in places few people have even seen, much less skied, is a lure that draws a certain kind of person.”
“Sounds dangerous,” Sawyer murmured.
“It can be,” she admitted. “The slopes are steep and rugged, and with no marked trails, there’s always the chance of skiers getting lost or going over a cliff. Avalanches are always a concern, too. They try to make sure the people they take there know what they’re doing and that they stay to routes they suggest, but sometimes…well, a few bad decisions and it’s easy for people to quickly get in over their heads.”
“Is that what happened in your case?” he asked, prompting her when she fell silent.
She nodded, remembering how that day at the mountain had started, how bitterly cold it had been when the call came in.
“They dropped off a group of four college kids on one of the tamer backcountry slopes at sunrise. It should have taken them about four hours to get down the slope to the pickup location, but they didn’t make it back. Before we lost radio contact, dispatch was able to confirm they’d left the planned route looking for adventure and gotten lost. By the time we pinned down the general area they ended up in, the sun was going down, temperature was
