Snowy Mountain Nights. Lindsay Evans

way he took the mountain. Flecks of snow flew up under his board. Reyna watched as he soared off the mountain and hung in the air for a moment, one hand gripping the side of the board, the other outstretched. He was a dark outline in the bright landscape, a wild and beautiful thing, before landing once again among the white then disappearing around a bend in the mountain and from her sight.

      A few more lightning-quick shapes whipped past her, each in brightly colored clothes that made them stand out against the snow, but it was the man in gray who caught and held her attention. The other snowboarders zipped down the mountain, as exuberant as children, calling out to each other, shouting in masculine camaraderie.

      Distracted from her sketches, she searched for the man in gray. Ah, there he is. She followed his somber presence down the mountain, the way he sliced across the snow, beautiful and untouchable.

      Before she was aware of what she was doing, Reyna began to sketch him, the sharp grace of him racing down the mountain, knees bent, arms outstretched as if he was flying, his entire face covered up. She lost herself in the rhythm of sketching, the world as she saw it coming to life under her fingers. Long minutes passed.

      “Aren’t your fingers cold?”

      Reyna stiffened at the sound of the shouted question. It was Garrison Richards. Again.

      “No,” she said. “They’re fine.”

      But she put down her pencil—her hand was actually damn near frozen—and curled it in her lap. Only a few feet away, Garrison was slowly skimming down the hill toward her...on a snowboard? Her mouth fell open.

      If she wasn’t seeing him with her own eyes, she would have thought a sport like snowboarding completely unlike him. He seemed best suited for cold and emotionless things like chess, polo or even rowing. Not this howling and graceful sport that was all adrenaline, physical power and falling down in the snow. She couldn’t even see him falling, being messy and human enough to tumble and get up and try something again. She imagined that he always did everything right the first time.

      Garrison had pulled his gray ski mask from over his mouth, revealing full lips and that unexpected dimple in his chin. His goggles reflected twin images of her sitting on the dark rock with her mouth open.

      She snapped her teeth together with a sharp click.

      Garrison turned skillfully on the board and stopped near her. He was dressed completely in gray. Gray? She did a double-take and glanced down the hill toward the man she had been sketching. He wasn’t there. She had a sinking feeling that he was the one at her side. He must have taken the lift back up and circled around.

      Garrison clicked his feet from the latches on the snowboard. He was slightly out of breath, his lips parted to blow trailing heat into the air.

      “I feel cold just looking at you.” He started to pull off his gloves. “Take these. Your friends would be very disappointed if you came back to the ski lodge with some fingers missing from frostbite.”

      She shook her head and picked up the thick pair of snow gloves next to her. “I already have some.” She pulled on the gloves, wincing as her fingers burned from the cold.

      Garrison resituated his gloves on his hands. He watched her, his face expressionless. No smile, merely his eyes hungrily moving over her, like a visual devouring. It left her with a strange feeling, that voracious gaze. Not unpleasant...but not exactly warm and fuzzy, either.

      She stared back at him, refusing to look away.

      They were hardly alone. Occasional skiers and snowboarders blew past them, whipping up snow and stirring up the cold in the air. But it felt as if they were isolated together on the mountain with only the sky and sun to look down on them. She didn’t want to feel that with him. Reyna deliberately turned away from Garrison. “What do you want?”

      “You didn’t use my business card yet.”

      “I’m not going to.”

      Snow crunched, and the air moved as he came closer to her. Over the crispness of the pine trees and the cool bite of the snow, she smelled him. Sweat and a faintly woodsy cologne. The tang of sunblock. His gray jacket brushed her bright yellow one when he sat next to her. Although she knew it was impossible, it felt as if their skin touched.

      “So, be honest.” There was amusement in his voice, although his face did not change. “Do you plan on hating me forever, Ms. Allen?”

      “I don’t hate you.”

      She sat with him, unable to get even that simple fact out of her mind. She was sitting with Garrison Richards. The man who she perhaps may not have hated, but had strong and poisonous feelings for. On that first day in his office, receiving the brunt of his cool and arrogant stare meant to unnerve her and make her give up everything else she had, she’d wanted nothing more than to rush from the conference room and out into the sun, letting it burn away the ice-cold bath that had been his gaze.

      And now he was here with her in the snow. Under the burning sun, asking her about hating him forever. The world was a strange place.

      “Isn’t there some sort of ethical problem with you being here with me?” she asked.

      “You are the wife of a former client. Ian Barbieri doesn’t have me on retainer, and he and I have no business dealings. I see no conflict of interest here. But I can check if that makes you feel any better.” She heard the smile in his voice again. Bastard.

      The only real conflict was probably in her. She remembered the past much too vividly and irrationally blamed him for what happened to her during the divorce. More so than even her ex-husband.

      Reyna squirmed at that uncomfortable realization.

      She wanted to get back to her sketching, but her hand hurt too much from the cold. She must have made some motion toward her sketch pad because Garrison looked over at it. Too late, she remembered that she had been working on a sketch of the snowboarder—of him!—just before he sat down. She didn’t justify his curiosity by trying to hide her work.

      He took off his thick gloves, revealing thin black leather that clung to his fingers like a second skin. His hands were big, she noticed, but graceful.

      “May I?”

      She clenched her teeth against refusing him. Maybe the sooner he saw what she was doing, the sooner he would leave. His fascination with her was...distracting. She ignored the rational part of her that chimed in about her own unwanted fascination with the ruthless lawyer.

      “Sure,” she said in response to his question. “Just don’t get my stuff wet.” Reyna froze and almost bit her tongue off at what she just said.

      He arched a dark, slashing eyebrow. “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever had a woman say that to me.”

      She stared at him in shock. But he was reaching for her sketch pad, and his austere grace seemed even more so beneath the brilliance of the early-afternoon sunlight. Except for the reflective goggles crowning his head, he could have been in any boardroom in the world. Removed and critical. His powerful hands carefully handled her sketchbook, flipping through its pages, pausing at one or two before moving on. Yes, definitely critical.

      “These sketches are wonderful.” He flipped another page of the book, going from the images of the snowboarder she’d captured more thoroughly, to her earlier on-the-fly doodles of the mountain, the snow, the dots of people winding below her toward the lodges. “You’re very talented.”

      “Thank you.” She hid her surprise at his unexpected compliment, not quite knowing what else to say in response. If this was part of his campaign to satisfy his strange curiosity about her, he was choosing the wrong way to go about it. She didn’t respond well to insincerity.

      But a brief look from his hawkish eyes made her realize that this wasn’t a man who said something he didn’t mean. An unwelcome warmth began to unfurl in her belly. Reyna hissed quietly and braced her gloved hands against the rock, glad for the dull pain that distracted her from his