A Magical Christmas. Elizabeth Rolls

inside her; feelings she’d tried to ignore rose to the surface. She wished she were more like Élise, who viewed sex as a physical act as simple and straightforward as eating or drinking.

      Élise would have simply told Tyler how she felt, stripped him naked, had sex with him and then moved on as if all they’d done was enjoy a meal together.

      “Tyler, you don’t need a book. You know plenty about sex.” More than plenty, if rumor was to be believed. There had been times when she’d wished she could walk around wearing noise-reducing headphones to block out the gossip.

      “Doing it, yes, but not talking about it with teenagers. And to make it worse, she keeps finding all this stuff that’s been written about me, and most of it’s crap. I already have parental control on her laptop, but that’s not going to stop her reading all sorts of stuff that isn’t true.”

      Brenna thought about all the stuff she’d read about him and wondered which bits weren’t true.

      The night after he’d won a World Cup downhill in Lake Louise when it had been rumored he’d spent several hours in a hot tub with four members of the French women’s team? Or the night he supposedly skied seminaked on part of the Hahnenkamm, one of the most notorious runs in Europe, with a whiskey bottle in his hand instead of a ski pole?

      Oblivious to her train of thought, he ran his hand over his jaw. “Any ideas? Can you remember being thirteen? What did you think about when you were that age?”

      Him. She’d thought about him. Tyler O’Neil had played a starring role in every dream and adolescent fantasy.

      “She probably already knows everything. They teach them pretty young at school.”

      “Yeah, but how much do they teach them? I want her to be fully informed, that’s all. I don’t want some guy with a libido on overdrive taking advantage of her.”

      “She’s not even fourteen, and all she thinks about is skiing. I don’t think you need to worry about that quite yet.”

      “I want to be ahead of the game.” He glanced up at the sky. “It’s snowing again. You’ll freeze standing here. Have a drink with me, and you can tell me what sounds right and what doesn’t.”

      She wasn’t freezing. She was boiling hot. She was pretty sure her face was scarlet. “You want to talk about sex?”

      “You were a teenage girl once. Help me out here, Bren.”

      Should she confess that sex wasn’t exactly her specialist subject? “You’re supposed to be at family night.”

      “All the more reason to have a drink. A meeting followed by an evening of O’Neil family togetherness is too much for any man.”

      He took it for granted, the closeness of his family, the fact that they were always there in the background supporting each other.

      He’d never known anything different.

      “If we go to the bar, you’ll be accosted by guests.”

      “Which is why we’re going to drink the beer from your fridge. I promise to replenish it tomorrow.”

      “My fridge?” Her heart bumped a little harder. “You want to come back to my lodge?”

      “Why not? You do have beer?” He slipped his arm around her shoulders, and she was conscious of the weight of his arm, of the power of his body as it brushed against hers.

      His touch was casual.

      The way she was feeling was anything but. It would have been safer for her pulse rate and her blood pressure if she pulled away, but that would have raised questions she didn’t want to answer, so she decided her cardiovascular system was going to have to take the hit.

      “Jess has talent,” she croaked. “You’re too busy to ski with her all the time, so I was thinking that maybe she should join the under-14 class. I’m focusing on mountain free-skiing, bumps, gate training, gate drills and freeski skills. We’ll mix up the fun with the work. She might enjoy it, and it would be good for building confidence. What do you think?”

      “I think she’ll be bored out of her mind. That’s fine for most of the kids, but not Jess. She needs to be stretched.”

      “Are you saying my lessons are boring?”

      “No. You’re a gifted teacher, but Jess is different. She has something.”

      “She’s her father’s daughter.”

      Tyler gave a grim smile. “Which is probably why Janet kicked her out.”

      They’d reached the steps to her lodge. A single light glowed in the window. “I agree she needs to be stretched, but if you’re going to make the most of that something, it’s important to get the basics right. To focus on style.”

      “Style is irrelevant. Speed is what’s important.”

      Brenna rolled her eyes and delved for her keys. It was an argument they’d had more times than she could count. “Good style comes before speed.”

      “Nothing comes before speed. You want to be the fastest, not the prettiest.” He tugged her hat down over her eyes. Then he stooped and scooped up a handful of snow from the steps and she backed away, her keys still in her hand.

      “Don’t you dare! Tyler O’Neil if you so much as—crap.” She ducked too late as snow hit her on the chest and exploded into her face. “I am soaking!”

      “You shouldn’t have unzipped your jacket.”

      “I hate you, you know that, don’t you?”

      “No, you don’t. You love me, really.” He was smiling as he scooped up more snow, but this time she was quicker, and the snow in her hand hit him full in the face.

      She did love him. That was the problem.

      She really loved him, but there was no way she was going to let him know that.

      She made the most of her temporary advantage and let herself into the lodge, reasoning that even Tyler wouldn’t dare throw snow indoors.

      The lodges were the pride of Snow Crystal. Set in the forest and overlooking the lake, each one felt private and intimate, but Forest was her favorite. “I’d forgotten what good aim you have. I have snow blindness.” Still laughing, Tyler wiped snow out of his eyes, tugged off his boots and coat and left them by the door.

      “You’re neat and tidy all of a sudden.”

      “I’m trying to set a good example. I’m working on being a responsible parent. It’s exhausting.” He sprawled on one of the sofas, his powerful frame dominating even this large, spacious room. The fabric of his jeans clung to hard, muscular thighs, a legacy of years of downhill skiing.

      Brenna pulled off her hat and hung up her coat. It was only when she noticed Tyler taking a leisurely look at her body that she realized her soaked, roll-neck sweater was clinging to her breasts.

      Alternatively freezing and then burning, she turned away, but it was impossible to ignore his presence or the fact they were alone.

      It felt strangely intimate. The lodge was at the far end of the lake, wrapped by the forest that showed itself as dark shapes through acres of glass.

      The only other property partially visible through the trees was his.

      If she knelt on her bed high on the sleeping shelf, she could just glimpse his bedroom.

      Trying not to think about his bedroom, she pulled open the fridge and took out two beers. She opened them both and handed him one.

      “I’ll be back in a second. Thanks to you, I need to change my sweater.”

      His gaze collided with hers briefly, and then she backed away and took refuge in the bedroom.

      When had he ever looked at her before?