The Right Mr. Wrong

Wind-driven snow hit them like needles when they stepped out of the patrol shack. Maddie ducked her head and zipped her parka to her chin. Any sane person would be sitting in front of a fire with a cup of hot cocoa now instead of outside on a pair of skis.

“It will be better when we get down in the trees,” Hagan called over the howling wind.

She nodded and followed him down a narrow run between the trees. As promised the wind was blocked here. The heavy dump of snow had buried all the rocks and snags visible the day before and transformed the run into a gentle roller coaster. Maddie relaxed. This wasn’t so bad after all. And they had the run all to themselves.

But as soon as they left the shelter of the trees, they hit whiteout conditions again. Sky merged with ground and it was difficult to tell up from down. Maddie slowed, and fought stomach-churning vertigo. She reminded herself of all the techniques for overcoming this phenomena—bend her knees more, ski close to the trees, focus on landmarks—in this case the back of Hagan’s red patrol jacket barely visible ahead in the swirling snow.

They skied over to the high lift and grabbed hold of the T-bar. They were alone up here today, with the exception of the bored attendant in the lift shack. The normally busy runs were deserted; they might have been the only skiers on the mountain. Ordinarily she’d love the solitude and the chance to fly through the powder. But right now her muscles were rigid with the effort to keep her thoughts focused and not spiral to images of every crash she’d ever witnessed…or experienced.

Maddie tightened her hold on the T-bar and ducked her head against the wind-driven blasts of snow. At the top, she slid next to Hagan. “Only a crazy person would ski in this,” she said.

Hagan nodded. “Some people think only a crazy person would race on skis,” he added.

Right. Maybe she had been a little crazy in those days. She stared out at the swirling snow that obscured the view of the resort and town below. Days like this on the racing circuit almost always meant bad news.

“Is Peel all right, or do you want to hike to Peak or Banana Funnel?” He named two other double black diamond runs.

She shook her head. “No hiking. The weather’s too brutal.”

She looked down the slope, trying to scope out the run, but everything about the place looked different from her visit during her orientation two weeks ago. Then, the best path down had been clearly visible, the tracks of other skiers etched between rocks and trees. Now everything was obscured.

“Then let us go,” Hagan said. Without waiting for an answer, he set off down the run. He disappeared in the swirling whiteness and Maddie followed him. But she had barely negotiated her first turn when she froze, and stared down the steep slope, heart pounding.

“You can do this,” she whispered, and gripped her poles with more strength. But there was no conviction in her voice. Inside her gloves, her hands were slick with sweat.

“What are you waiting for?” Hagan’s voice drifted up to her. She could detect his outline against the wall of snow and saw he had stopped partway down the slope.

“I—I’ll be down in a minute,” she said. She hoped he’d mistake the quaver in her voice for an effect of the wind. She planted her pole and told herself this time she would ski down. Straight to him without stopping. Yes, the slope was steep, and there was little room for error in the narrow chute, but she’d skied steeper and narrower before. She had the skills to do this.

She leaned forward, ready to go, and a wave of dizziness made her lurch back. The image of herself falling, bouncing like a rag doll down the slope, filled her head. The sickening sensation of having no control vibrated through every nerve. Nausea gripped her, and she clenched her teeth until her jaw hurt.

“Is something wrong?” Hagan asked.

Yes! she wanted to shout. I can’t do this. She had the skills, but she no longer had the nerve. That’s what her coach had told her when she’d tried to rejoin the team after her recovery. You’ve lost your nerve, Maddie. It happens after a bad injury sometimes.

She’d wanted to race so badly, but all the desire in the world couldn’t overcome the fear that left her shaking and weak.

“Then get down here!” Hagan shouted. “There is no other way off the mountain unless you want me to call Scott and tell him to send a snowmobile for you.” His tone was teasing, as if he was dealing with a reluctant tourist.

She shut her eyes. No! She’d be a laughingstock among the patrollers if she had to ride a snowmobile down the mountain. She was a skier, dammit! And as a patroller, she was supposed to be able to ski all the terrain. If she couldn’t ski, what else could she do with her life? Skiing was all she knew.

She took a deep breath, and shoved off, then half-skidded to the next turn. At every turn, she stopped and repeated the process, all the while fighting nausea and the sensation that she absolutely was going to fall, and maybe even die, before she got to the bottom.

“What are you looking at?” she demanded when she stopped beside Hagan. Though she couldn’t see his eyes behind his goggles, his mouth was set in a frown.

“Are you sure you are okay?” he asked.

“Leave me alone and ski!” She wanted to hit him over the head with her ski pole, but that would mean lifting it off the ground and risking losing her balance.

He opened his mouth as if to reply, then turned and raced down the run. She stared after him, envious of the perfect form with which he executed turns and maneuvered in the narrow chute. Guys like him made it look easy. She’d been able to do that once. Until the accident, when all confidence had deserted her. That loss hurt more than all the pain of her physical injuries.

She made it down through sheer determination, fighting panic the whole way, her heart pounding and her limbs shaking. Hagan was waiting for her at the bottom, but she slid past him, not wanting to hear any more of his cutting remarks.

On less steep terrain now, she poured on the speed, anxious to get off the mountain altogether. Let Hagan write her up or fire her or whatever he wanted—there was no one here she might run into and she needed to burn off the adrenaline that left her shaky and sick to her stomach.

To his credit, he kept up with her. “Maddie, wait!” he called, but she ignored him. She had nothing to say to Mr. Hagan Ansdar. She’d fallen apart in front of him and no doubt the news would be all through patrol by tomorrow. She’d be lucky to have a job, much less any chance of salvaging her pride. Just when she’d thought she’d sunk as low as she could go by working as a patroller, she’d proven to herself that she didn’t even have the guts to do that. Her life as a skier was over.

HAGAN WATCHED Maddie race away, confusion warring with anger. She had looked like a different woman up there on Peel. Gone was the graceful skier he had admired, replaced by a shaking, hostile amateur. If that was the true Maddie, she had no business on the mountain let alone on patrol.

She skidded to a halt outside the Gothic Center cafeteria, clicked out of her skis and hustled inside. Zephyr was emerging from the building and stared after her, then turned to Hagan. “What happened to her? She looked a little green.”

“We went up on Peel to check out the powder,” he said. “We got to the top of the run and she freaked.”

“You took her down Peel? No wonder she flaked on you.”

“What do you mean?” He brushed snow from his shoulders and frowned at his friend. “She ought to be able to ski double black. She was supposedly an Olympic-caliber skier.”

“Yeah, but she had that horrific accident.” Zephyr shook his head. “I bet it’s like post-traumatic stress or something. You know, where soldiers flash back to battle and relive horrible stuff? She was probably up there remembering her accident.”

Hagan stared at Zephyr. The man had such a stoner-rocker-boarder image he forgot sometimes that Zephyr was actually pretty smart. “I knew she had an accident. Was it really that bad?”

“Dude, it was sick! The video’s on YouTube somewhere. You should take a look.” He glanced toward the door where Maddie had disappeared. “Truth? I’m surprised she ever got back on a pair of skis again.”

HAGAN DID NOT SEE Maddie the rest of the day. He suspected she was avoiding him. He alternated between feeling guilty about talking her into skiing Peel, and anger that she had not spoken up and told him she was afraid to ski the steeps in these conditions.

Of course, in the same position, he would not have admitted he was afraid. But she was a woman. They were supposed to be better at admitting their true emotions, were they not?

After his shift he turned down Zephyr’s invitation to check out a new band at a local club, and headed to his cabin. After feeding Fafner and heating soup for himself, he logged onto the Internet and searched YouTube for “Skiing accident” and “Maddie Alexander.”

The film was in color, apparently part of the video from television coverage of the event, one of the final World Cup races before the Olympics, in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Maddie, wearing the skintight one-piece red, white and blue racing uniform of the U.S. team and a blue helmet painted with clouds, popped out of the gate and barreled down a steep slope that glinted blue with ice.

Though the sun was shining at the top of the slope, halfway down she momentarily disappeared from view in a cloud of blowing snow. She skidded around a sharp turn and fought for control, miraculously righting herself and tucking tightly to regain speed.

She was a blur as she soared down another straightaway and into the next right turn. The steel-on-ice screech of ski edges scraping the hardpack rasped from the speakers. Hagan gripped the edge of the desk, his whole body tensed, his own muscles tightening, his body bracing as she took yet another curve at breathtaking speed.

Then she hit a jump and soared through the air. Too high, he could tell, and he sucked in his breath along with the spectators on the video as she hit the ice hard, at the wrong angle. Arms and legs flying, she bounced, then rolled like a crumpled wad of paper hurtling down the slope, hitting, rising, hitting again.

Hagan groaned as she came to a stop, arms and legs at unnatural angles. She was still. Absolutely still. The screen went black, yet he continued to stare, fighting nausea.

If he had not known better, he would have thought the woman in the video was now dead. How had she survived such a fall, much less come back to ski again?

He took a deep breath and sat back in his chair. No wonder she had freaked out up there on Peel. The snow swirling around her, the steep pitch and narrow chute were not that different from conditions the day of her career-ending accident.

So why had she not let him call for a snowmobile to take her down? He did not have to search hard for the answer to that question. He knew a little about pride himself.

He thought back to part of the conversation they had had at the Eldo, when he had spouted that nonsense about facing fears. As if he knew much about that. He was much better at taking the other advice he had given her—that sometimes it was better to avoid the fear-inducing situation altogether.

He had built a life for himself based on that one principle, a life that, though lacking in a certain warmth, left him in control of events and emotions. He knew all about maintaining control.

But Maddie might be able to teach him a thing or two about courage.

MADDIE DID HER BEST to avoid Hagan for the next few days. She was mortified that she’d fallen apart in front of him, and had no desire to hear any more comments about her supposed Olympic skiing abilities.

Maybe if she’d freaked in front of another woman, or any other man on the patrol, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But Hagan was so infuriatingly perfect—a great skier and a skilled patroller with a reputation for always being cool in a crisis. The other patrollers looked up to him and of course, almost every woman he met drooled over him. She couldn’t deny she’d done a little drooling herself, though that particular weakness annoyed her greatly. She didn’t need Mr. Perfect reminding her of her own imperfections.

But Crested Butte was a small community, and she knew she’d run into him eventually. She told herself she’d keep things cool and cut him off at the knees if he even tried to bring up that day on the mountain. She succeeded in not seeing him for a week, but Friday night found her at the Eldo with Andrea, Scott and Lisa, Zephyr and Trish. She couldn’t stop watching the door and sure enough, a little after eight o’clock, Hagan and Max walked in.

Maddie turned away and pretended interest in Zephyr’s description of the new outfit he’d put together for his Free Skiing Championship debut. “What you wear says a lot about you,” he said seriously.

“So does your outfit say ‘this man is out of his mind?’” Trish said.

He grinned at her. “Crazy like a fox. I’ll dazzle everyone with my threads, then blow their minds when I show my stuff on the mountain.”

Trish rolled her eyes. “My mind is blown already, just contemplating it.”

“Hey, where’s Casey?” Trish asked as Max pulled out the chair beside her.

“She’s helping Heather with some wedding stuff,” Max said.

“Hers or Heather’s?” Trish asked. Maddie had learned Dr. Ben Romney and Heather Allison, Casey’s boss at the Crested Butte Chamber of Commerce, were due to wed in a few weeks.

Max shrugged. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know. I leave all that up to her. I told her to just tell me when and where to show up and I’ll be there, ready to say I do.” He reached for a cup and the pitcher of beer in the center of the table. “It would be fine with me if we went to the courthouse in Gunnison and got it over with.”

“A wedding should be more than a business transaction,” Andrea said. “It should be a romantic day to remember.”

“Women think like that,” Scott said. “Men don’t see what all the fuss is about.”

“Maybe if it was conducted like a business transaction, people would be more realistic about what to expect from a marriage,” Hagan said.

Scott laughed. “Like you’d know a lot about it, Casanova.”

Hagan’s face remained impassive. Maddie told herself she should quit looking at him, but she couldn’t seem to help it. The man was a puzzle. Just when she thought she’d figured him out, he came up with some comment like that one about marriage and sent her thoughts spinning in a new direction.

As if feeling her gaze on him, he turned and for a split second, their eyes met. She quickly ducked her head, but not before registering the sadness in his expression.

No. She must have imagined it. Hagan was the always-sure-of-himself playboy. Mr. Perfect. What did he have to be sad about?

“Excuse me for a minute.” She shoved back her chair and headed for the ladies’ room. She needed a few minutes to pull herself together. To rehearse all the comebacks she’d thought of if Hagan said anything to her about what had happened up there on Peel.

In the ladies’ room, she used the facilities, then lingered in front of the mirror, brushing her hair and touching up her lip gloss. Anything to delay going back out there. Not that she had anything to be afraid of. She was ready for anything Hagan had to say to her. As she’d discovered during her long period in rehab, anger could get her through all kinds of uncomfortable situations. Focus on the anger so that the hurt and shame didn’t have a chance to creep in.

At last she put away the gloss and brush, slung her purse over one shoulder, and shoved out the door.

Straight into a solid wall of unyielding male muscle. Hagan steadied her with his hands on her elbows. “I was hoping I would have the chance to talk to you,” he said.

She had to crane her neck to glare up at him, which spoiled the effect. It was tough to look fierce when you were scarcely five feet tall, especially when confronting a giant like Hagan. She tried to move out of his grasp, but he had a grip like iron. Short of hitting him with her purse and making a scene, she was stuck. “I don’t want to talk to you,” she said.

“We need to talk,” he said, his voice firm. “About what happened on Peel.”

Here it came. He was going to tell her she had no business being a patroller if she couldn’t ski the double blacks. He was going to question why she’d been chosen for the Olympics in the first place, maybe even accuse her of trading on her reputation and that infamous Sports Illustrated cover to get her job with the resort.

“I apologize for taking you up there,” he said. “I should have backed off when you told me the first time you did not want to go.”

She blinked, all the angry words she’d been rehearsing stuck in her throat. He was apologizing? Mr. Perfect was admitting he was wrong?

He released one arm, but kept hold of the other and guided her gently toward the door. “Let us go somewhere we can talk. Alone.”

Disarmed by his unexpected humility, she let him lead her out the door, down the stairs and across the street to a new bistro that had opened on Elk Avenue. “The coffee here is almost as good as Trish’s, and they have good desserts,” Hagan said as they sat at a table for two near the front.

Maddie nodded, still dazed. She swallowed and found her voice. “I can ski those runs,” she said. “I’ve done it before. It was just that morning, in those conditions…” Her voice faded and she looked away. She couldn’t explain exactly what had happened there at the top of Peel, except that for a moment she’d been back on the course at St. Moritz, and the memory of her fall had overwhelmed her.

Hagan said nothing else until their order of coffee and crème brûlée was in front of them. He stirred sugar into his cup and regarded her with a sympathetic look. “I watched the video of your accident on YouTube. I had not realized before how horrible it was.”

“YouTube?” She gave a weak laugh. “Figures it would end up there. Me and that guy from The Wide World of Sports who illustrated ‘the agony of defeat.’” She’d watched that show as a kid and winced every time they’d replayed the anonymous skier’s crash. Now she was the one making people wince.

“Zephyr said that day on Peel that maybe you were reliving what happened to you. Something like post-traumatic stress in soldiers.”

“Zephyr knows what happened?” Did everyone know? Were they all discussing her behind her back and she had no idea?

“He is the only one. I did not tell anyone else.” His voice was stern. “It was none of their business.”

She relaxed a little and nodded. “Yes, I guess that’s what happened. I looked down that run, all the swirling snow, and just…froze.” She shuddered, remembering. She had never been so terrified in her life, absolutely paralyzed by fear.

“Why not leave skiing altogether?” Hagan asked. “Or be a tourist? Why take a job that puts you out there every day?”

She’d asked herself that question often enough, and always came up with the same answer. “Skiing is what I do. I was given a talent and I screwed it up.” She swallowed hard. “I hoped being on patrol would help me figure out how to move past the fear—to get over it and go back to doing what I’m good at. And to…I guess I figured if I used my talent to help others, it would make up for that mistake.” She’d spent a lot of time lying in her hospital bed, alternately reliving the accident and bargaining with God, as if the right combination of penance and practice would bring her old life back.

“It is a dangerous sport,” he said. “What happened was not your fault.”

She shook her head. “I was being reckless. Taking too many chances. I knew I had to pull off an exceptional time to win, so I went for it.”

“That is what competitors do, is it not?”

“Yes.” She scooped up a spoonful of the crème brûlée and studied it. “But my coach had warned me to be careful on that curve, to pull back a little. He knew I had a tendency to push and warned me not to press my luck. But I didn’t listen.”

“Your gamble could have paid off. You might have won.”

“It didn’t, and worse, it ended my career.”

“You could have been hurt on Peel. I should not have let you continue when I saw what was happening.”

She looked him in the eye, some of her earlier anger returning. “I’d like to have seen you try to stop me,” she said. “It was my decision to go down that run, even if I didn’t do it with the best form. I don’t want anyone making allowances for me and don’t you dare pity me.”

He nodded, his expression serious. “Pity is not the word I think of when I think of you,” he said.

“Oh? Good.” She ate another bite of the dessert, then curiosity got the better of her. “What word do you think of?”

He paused, as if considering the question. “I think of words like grace. Determination. Courage.”

“I wasn’t very brave up there on Peel.”

His eyes met hers again, so blue and clear and unblinking. Eyes that held no false flattery or flirtation. “There are different kinds of courage,” he said. “And there are ways in which every one of us is a coward.”

She didn’t believe Hagan had ever been a coward; he was only saying that to make her feel better. But the knowledge warmed her more than all the hot coffee or fleece mittens ever could. She smiled. “Thanks,” she said. “You’re not such a bad guy after all. Even if you are a player.”

He acknowledged this little dig with a nod. “Think what you will about my relationships with women,” he said. “You are better off as my friend than you would be as my lover.”

The sudden tightness in her chest at his words caught her off guard. Why would he say something like that, and use such a charged word—lover? Unless, perhaps, he’d been thinking about the possibility.

She tried to dismiss the thought outright, but could not quite let go of it. Hagan was a strikingly handsome man who was rumored to have had many lovers, which implied a certain skill. She, on the other hand, could count her own serious relationships on the fingers of one hand. What would it be like to have a man like Hagan as her lover? She felt flushed and out of breath at the idea.

Of course she didn’t want Hagan as her lover. He was the last man she’d ever consider.

But she couldn’t quite ignore the small voice in the back of her head that whispered, Liar.

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