Under His Spell. Kristin Hardy

      Lainie stared at him.

      It wasn’t fair that he’d been genetically gifted with the blond-haired, blue-eyed looks of a careless beach boy, the crooked grin of a man who didn’t sweat the small stuff. He’d also wound up with the preternatural athletic talent to be one of the top skiers in the world, a millionaire, a media darling.

      And with, of course, the preternatural ego to go with it.

      “What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere in New Zealand, embarrassing yourself on camera?” She could cheerfully have bitten her tongue the minute the words were out.

      As for JJ, he just grinned. “And here I didn’t think you cared. You keep track of me. I’m flattered.”

      “I keep track of hurricanes, too. Mostly because I’m hoping they’ll go somewhere else…”

      Under His Spell

      KRISTIN HARDY

      

www.millsandboon.co.uk

      To Stephen,

      River deep, mountain high

       KRISTIN HARDY

      has always wanted to write, starting her first novel while still at school. Although she became a laser engineer by training, she never gave up her dream of being an author.

      Kristin lives in New Hampshire with her husband and collaborator. Check out her website at www.kristinhardy.com. Under the Mistletoe, the second book in Kristin’s HOLIDAY HEARTS mini-series, was nominated for a RITA® Award for Best Long Contemporary.

      Dear Reader,

      Sometimes books go together as you expect, and sometimes you wind up with characters that are so feisty, they do what they like, whether you want them to or not. So it was with Lainie Trask and downhill ski racer JJ Cooper. I had plans for Lainie when I first tucked her into Where There’s Smoke, the first book of the HOLIDAY HEARTS books. She was supposed to meet the South Shore lawyer of a series that I’m cooking up that takes place in Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. I figured Lainie would be the tie from HOLIDAY HEARTS to the new books so that we could keep visiting with the Trask family for another year.

      Then JJ walked on stage in Under the Mistletoe and that was that. The chemistry between Lainie and him formed spontaneously in the air, like steam – all I did was write it down. Of course, they pretty much demanded that I give them their own book, and they weren’t about to take no for an answer. I guess the Cape Cod lawyer will have to find a woman of his own, because Lainie is…well, read on and find out.

      And when you get done, drop me a line at kristinhardy.com. I’d love to hear what you think.

      Happy reading.

       Kristin Hardy

      Prologue

       July, Crawford Notch, NH

      There was nothing, J. J. Cooper thought as he pushed off, quite like the feeling of being at the top of a mountain. Granted, he was on a mountain bike instead of skis, and hurtling down a steep slope of grass, not ice and snow, but the adrenaline fizzed in his veins just the same. It was the speed, the motion, the challenge.

      The risk.

      Going fast in a car had never done much for him; he wanted—no, needed—to be out there making it happen himself, just his body, the environment and as little equipment as possible.

      The wind of his passage ruffled his dark-blond hair, sun-streaked by weeks of activity in the northern New Hampshire summer. He swerved off onto a newly built ski run that he’d watched the graders build to his specifications earlier in the summer. Director of ski at the Hotel Mount Jefferson Ski Resort—not a bad off-season gig for a World Cup ski racer. Now he just needed to test his work.

      Going off the knoll he’d had built into one side of the run, he caught a few feet of air and came down with a bone-rattling thud that the bike’s graphite composite forks couldn’t entirely absorb. For a moment he swerved dangerously on the steep slope but he wrestled the bike back into control. This was what it was about, the buzz of letting it all hang out there and dragging it back in.

      This was when he felt most alive.

      And for once he wasn’t orchestrating every moment of his day around winning races. For once he was doing something for the sheer kick of it. Early summer, his time to play. Not that he didn’t also spend time training—he always spent time training—but in this summer idyll it was less about the focused repetitions of the weight room than about moving outdoors, about running and hiking the hillsides, mountain biking, doing his jumps.

      No, there was never really time to slack off entirely, not if he wanted to keep the steel hawsers of muscles and tendons in his quads strong enough to hold his line while he was flying through a turn at ninety miles an hour, pulling three Gs of force. But it didn’t all have to be boring reps. He could work himself to exhaustion and still have fun doing it, because ultimately, fun was really what it was all about, right? A challenge? Sure. An adrenaline rush? No doubt. But the day his life as an athlete stopped being about the pure joy of the moment and the competition would be the day he’d retire.

      Good thing it hadn’t happened yet, because the idea of life without racing was nearly unfathomable. Sure, he’d hit thirty a couple of years back, but he was still going strong. All those people who talked about him retiring were nuts. He’d come in second in the World Cup overall the previous season, won it all the year before that. Oh, and a gold medal in Torino. That wasn’t the performance of a tired old guy who needed to go out to pasture, was it?

      To wipe away the question, he attacked the slope headlong, wrenching the bike into a turn, feeling the pull in his shoulders and arms. The speed, the motion, the risk. Today he was in New Hampshire in the late-July sun. In a couple of weeks he’d be blasting through training runs on an icy slope in New Zealand, then heading to speed camp in Chile, all while people back home were still grilling on the back deck. A World Cup ski racer lived for winter, and if the winter wasn’t where he was, then he’d go find it.

      Ahead, a water bar designed to provide drainage during rainy months and snow melt cut across the trail. A grin spread across J.J.’s face and a moment later he’d turned straight toward it.

      And a minute after that, he’d parted ways with the bike and gone flying. At least, he thought, he’d been going less than ninety….

      Gabe Trask stared down at the clipboard in his hand, ignoring the throbbing roar of earthmovers as they worked to smooth the final hundred yards of the new ski run, where it came down to the lift house. Between running the hundred-year-old Hotel Mount Jefferson and overseeing the upgrades to the newly acquired ski resort across the highway, he was beginning to have a lot more sympathy for those circus clowns with all the plates on sticks. It had taken some mad spinning, but so far he was keeping it all on schedule and under budget. If the new run passed muster with J.J., they’d be all set. The Hotel Mount Jefferson Resort and Ski Area would be the hospitality powerhouse of New Hampshire.

      “So I’ve got good news and bad news,” said a voice behind him.

      Gabe glanced over to see J.J., who sported an odd grin on his sunny beach boy face. “What have you screwed up now?” he asked, glancing back down at his clipboard.

      “The good news is that the top of the run checks out fine,” J.J. continued, ignoring him.

      “And the bad news?” Gabe glanced back up. J.J. stood there with his right hand curled around the gooseneck of his mountain bike and his left arm hanging down loose. Weirdly loose. Almost as if—

      “The bad news is I’m calling in my marker on all those rides I gave you