Mills and Boon Christmas Joy Collection. Liz Fielding

messed up than ever. I like sex with you. That part feels safe and okay, but the emotions and how tied you are to my skiing... I don’t like it.”

      “What are we going to do?” he asked.

      “You could maybe not always seem like everything works out for you. You act like nothing that happens between us fazes you,” she said.

      “Of course it does,” he admitted. “I’m always running and trying to catch you, Linds, and you are always just out of my reach.”

      She didn’t believe that for a minute. He had been there when she needed him, seen her at her worst, and always seemed so with it and cool. As if he was rolling on through life just as he had planned.

      “It doesn’t seem that way,” she told him quietly. “I wish you had some flaws like me.”

      “I have more flaws than you, gorgeous,” he said. “Everyone knows that.”

      “You still have your career. You seem great at everything you try—even skiing—and I have to admit I was sort of hoping you wouldn’t be.”

      “What can I say? I’ve always been good on the snow. You know...” Carter shrugged. “‘The cold never bothered me anyway.’” He sang the line from the Disney movie with a smile. “That’s why I’ve always been drawn to you.”

      He was playing again. Trying to lighten the mood...to distract her from her very real fears. She knew that was why she’d started the fight today. He wasn’t just a distraction to her anymore. He hadn’t been for a while, and she was afraid to admit to herself how much she needed Carter. She was serious—too serious about her life and about having him in it. Her biggest fear was that to him she was a temporary stopover. And once he moved on, she’d be left alone again.

      * * *

      HE FELT THAT he was losing again. Last night he’d dodged the bullet and hadn’t had to bare his soul, and now it felt as if he might have shortchanged himself by not doing that. But her doubts were spurring on his, and he no longer felt as confident as he had when he’d woken this morning in her bed.

      Alone in her bed.

      Maybe that had been some sort of sign that he was too blind to see. He stretched his arm along the back of the seat and released a ragged breath. He wanted to hold her. To pull her into his arms, kiss her until she was aching for more and somehow fix everything that was broken between them. But he was afraid that he couldn’t.

      That maybe there was no way for things to be fixed between them.

      “Singing isn’t your strong suit,” she said at last in that quiet way of hers that really revealed nothing of her inner thoughts.

      His lips twisted ruefully. “I guess it wouldn’t be fair if I could sing when I’ve got all this going on.”

      “Probably,” she said, slouching back against the arm of the seat and looking over at him. “What are we going to do now?”

      “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I want to shrug this off and pretend that nothing happened, but we are both wounded by what we said. I’m sorry, too, by the way. Is there a way we can move forward from this?”

      She tipped her head to the side, studying him. “Only if you are honest with me. You said that life isn’t as easy for you as it seems. Show me the real Carter.”

      The real Carter. Did that man even exist? He had been pretending for so long that he almost thought that this guy was the real man. But he knew that he wasn’t. He knew from the way he’d been chasing after Lindsey, that each time she walked away from him he wanted something more.

      “What’s real? I want you in my life,” he said.

      “I know that. Why?”

      How to put into words what he could barely understand as emotion. It was almost beyond him, and as he sat there in the quiet hallway he understood for the first time the real meaning of fear. He’d thought he’d experienced it before, but it paled compared with this. “You know how everyone in the world has an image of you?”

      She nodded.

      “Well, for me, I’ve always seen that beyond that you were this girl who wanted something more. You weren’t icy because you thought yourself above everybody.” He looked into her eyes. “You were cold because unless an endeavor improved your skiing, you didn’t bother with it. I liked that.”

      “Why?”

      He sighed. “You know how everyone thinks that nothing bothers me and I just keep rolling on?”

      “Yes. That’s why I want to know what you feel,” she said.

      “Well, I am the same as you. Underneath that, I do what I have to do to get back to the important stuff. I’ve always thought if we ever both dropped our guard, we’d have a lot in common and be a powerful pair. I’ve never told anyone, but I have dyslexia. It was hard for me to overcome.”

      “But we can’t be,” she said sadly. “We’d both have to change to do that.”

      “Change?”

      “Yes, you can’t give up your persona and I can’t give up mine.” She sighed. “I realized that when I saw you yesterday in that hot tub.”

      “That again? I thought we had settled it.”

      “We did. I understand that you aren’t really interested in those other women, but that’s your persona. Nevertheless, I can’t be in a relationship with someone like that,” she told him.

      “Careful, you’re starting to sound like I’m a distraction again,” he said. He had that sinking feeling in his gut that no matter what he said, Lindsey was slipping further and further away from him.

      “You are one. You have been great for motivating me to get back on my skis, and I’m not going to pretend I’d be as close to contemplating the Super G again without you, but at the same time we just don’t fit together.”

      “We fit together just fine when you stop worrying and just let us enjoy our time together.” He reached down and brushed his thumb over her lips, then clasped her chin in his palm. “What was it that spooked you this morning?”

      She jerked away, as if his touch had singed her. “I’m not going to fight about this. I don’t want to say anything else that is mean to you.”

      “Why not? Clearly you are okay with thinking them. So let’s be clear here,” he said, narrowing his eyes at her. “You are pushing me away for nothing other than your ego. Because you don’t want to be the woman who is confident enough in herself and in her man to be with me. Be with that public image of me.”

      She nodded. “You’re right. I’m not. Ego isn’t my thing the way it is yours. I have tried to do this every way possible, but I keep coming back to the fact that you and I make no sense.”

      Except in his heart. “Lindsey, please. I can give up my sponsorship if it will make you stay with me.”

      She smiled at him, and his heart really almost broke. “No. That’s not what I want. My fears stem from my own insecurities. I thought that maybe I could change that, but I can see now I haven’t.”

      “You are that way because you’ve never let yourself care about another man before. Are you going to deny it?”

      “No, because it would be a lie,” she said stubbornly.

      He thought it stemmed from his lack of a mother and how his father had never settled down. When Carter thought of forever— He didn’t think of forever. The future was always changing, and as much as he thought at this moment that he needed Lindsey by his side, he was afraid he might be wrong.

       17

      WATCHING CARTER