Asking for Trouble (14 page)

It was the Friday night before a holiday weekend, and Alyssa
was in the car with Alec and Rae, heading up to Lake Tahoe along with what felt
like half the population of the Bay Area. There wasn’t a whole lot of conversation,
not on her end. Alec and Rae chatted, but talking from the back seat was too
hard, and after a while, she fell asleep.

She woke to the sight of black night outside, Alec following
turns that eventually took him into a community that seemed to be mostly trees,
with the occasional blaze of light breaking up the darkness. No surprise, Alec
had rented a ski cabin in a neighborhood where the houses were big and the
neighbors distant.

By the time he turned into a long driveway and pulled to a
stop next to Joe’s SUV, she could see by the dashboard clock that it was after ten-thirty.
She got out of the car, the shock of the cold mountain air a brisk wake-up
call, accepted her bag from Alec and headed for a steep flight of wooden
stairs, her way illuminated by concealed lighting along the sides.

“Nice cabin,” she said to Joe, because he was at the top,
holding open an oversized front door and letting her into a stone-flagged entryway
that led to another flight of stairs. A railing along one side of the spacious
entry ended in three or four steps down into a sunken great room walled by
windows. She could see a hearth with a wood stove at one end, the wall behind
it faced with more stone.

She guessed that it could be called a cabin. It was made of
logs, which made it a log cabin, no matter how big it was.

“Pretty late,” Joe said when they were all inside. “Traffic
bad?”

“My fault, really,” Alyssa said. “I thought I could get out
early, or at least on time, but Helene had some stuff for me to finish.” Which
hadn’t seemed all that urgent, but Alyssa wasn’t the boss, and Helene was.
Get along to get ahead,
she reminded
herself once again.

“No problem,” Joe said. “Come on, I’ll show you the
upstairs.”

“Alec and Rae in here,” he said when he’d led the way to the
second floor, opened the door of a large room equipped with a queen bed. “And
Alyssa, you’re here.” Next door, a slightly smaller room, twin beds this time,
more big windows. “Bathroom at the end of the hall. Everybody good?”

“Yeah,” Alyssa sighed. “Shower, bed. Sounds good to me.” She
didn’t spend a lot of time admiring her surroundings. She mostly focused on
appreciating the heated towel racks and massaging shower in the bathroom, the
flannel sheets on the bed. There were advantages to having a successful brother
and being allowed to tag along on his vacations, even though the comparisons
could get tough. And even though Alec and Rae, as always, made too much noise,
noise that she really, really didn’t need to hear right now. She put a pillow
over her head, gave herself a nice little fantasy as a consolation prize, and
fell asleep.

She woke up, though, with her good mood restored. She’d only
awakened once during the night. Instead of the traffic noise she’d grown used
to hearing, the occasional sirens, the loud voices and laughter of late-night
returners, the streetlight that insisted on shining into her window through a
crack in the drapes, there’d been nothing but silence and darkness enfolding
her, and she’d drifted off again, warm and content. Now it was morning, she was
in the mountains with two days of skiing ahead of her, and she couldn’t wait.

“Some cabin,” she said aloud when she’d got out of bed and
opened the heavy drapes next to her bed to find sliding doors leading out onto
a narrow deck that ran the length of both her room and Alec and Rae’s, and what
looked like acres of snowy pine forest beyond. She could imagine waking up on a
summer morning, drinking your coffee out there. Assuming you had a butler to
bring it to you, of course. Well, maybe not.

She pulled on her ski clothes, which made her even happier,
and came downstairs to the sight of the wall of windows from the night before,
drapes open to reveal an endless view of more evergreens, more snow. A leather
couch and two easy chairs formed a comfortable seating group near the fire, a
rocking chair sat in a corner next to a tall bookshelf full of books that
looked like somebody had actually read them, and the rafters soared a good 25
feet overhead. It was airy, yet cozy, made you want to snuggle up in warm
socks, drink coffee from a mug, read a book and look at trees. She wasn’t sure
how you got that effect, but whoever had designed and decorated this house had
managed it.

“Morning. Coffee’s made,” Joe said as she took it all in. He
was standing in a fully equipped kitchen that could have come out of any architectural
magazine, stirring something in a big blue ceramic bowl, wearing a dark red
plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up and looking more like a logger—a
really
hot
logger—than any man
cooking in a gourmet kitchen had any business looking. His hair was a little
longer now, more than military-short, and it looked even better.

“What are you making?” she asked, pouring herself a cup of
coffee, then looking around in vain. “Wait a minute. Tell me there’s a fridge
in here.”

Joe smiled, set his bowl down and came over to open a
cabinet that was hiding an extra-large refrigerator.

“How would you even know?” she wondered. “What’s wrong with
having a refrigerator that looks like one?”

“It ruins the aesthetic,” he informed her solemnly.

“Huh.” She looked inside and found her milk, and a whole lot
more, slammed the fridge—the cabinet—door. “You did a lot of grocery
shopping.”

“That’s what I get for starting my vacation early. And the
answer to the question about what I’m making is, blueberry pancakes and eggs.
You ready for pancakes?”

“Sure.” She scooted up onto a stool at the breakfast bar,
sipped her coffee, and watched him. “I didn’t know you could cook.”

“Pancakes and eggs, anyway. Somebody has to. I thought
nobody in the world could be as hopeless at cooking as Alec, until I met Rae.”

“I know,” Alyssa said. “She’s worse than me, and I’m bad. So
are you the chef for this whole trip? Do I just get to sit back?”

“Nope.” He ladled circles of batter studded with lumps of round
berries onto the griddle that was set into the middle of the huge
restaurant-style stove, then pulled out another bowl and began to crack the
better part of a carton of eggs into it. “You get to help me. But I figured
we’d do some eating out, too. I’ve got a plan.”

“Why am I surprised?” He was so relaxed, so approachable. So
unlike Joe. “You seem like you’re quite at home.”

“Well . . .” He smiled at her. “Because I am.”

“What? You’re kidding me,” she said as he continued to
smile. She waved an arm around. “I thought Alec rented this place. You mean
it’s yours? You have a
vacation
house?”

“Is that so amazing?” He handed her silverware and a napkin,
then flipped his pancakes, dumped half the egg mixture into a pan that had been
heating on the stove and began to stir it with a spatula.

“Well, yeah,” she said. “It is. I thought you worked all the
time.”

“I have really good wireless.” He smiled again, put eggs and
pancakes on her plate and handed it to her, went to the fridge and pulled out a
butter dish and a crock of maple syrup, then fixed his own plate and set it
next to hers, got his own coffee. “And this way,” he went on as they began to
eat, “I don’t have to mess with rentals. I’ve got a base for whatever I want to
do, skiing, backpacking, hiking, whatever, got enough space for anyone I bring
up with me. Efficient.”

“Nice if you can do it,” she said dryly. “But it’s a great
place,” she went on hastily when he shot a look across at her.

“You like it?” he asked.

“No, I don’t think it’s quite plush enough for me. Of course
I like it. It’s . . . well, I think the word is
fabulous,
and I’ve only seen a little bit of it.” She gestured to
the wide, snow-covered wooden deck that extended the entire width of the window
wall. “Is that a hot tub out there?”

“Got to have a hot tub,” he said. “It’s in the rules. Feels
good after skiing, too.”

Getting into a hot tub with Joe after skiing . . . yeah, that
would be good.
 
She’d never seen him
in the summer, all these years, only at Christmas and a few Thanksgivings.
Which meant she’d never seen him in a swimsuit, and she’d
really
like to see that. She sneaked a peek across at the size of
the thigh taking up the stool next to hers, the width of his back, the breadth
of his shoulders in that plaid shirt. A swimsuit—yes, please. She might
not get to touch, but she’d sure like to look.

“Morning, guys.” Alec and Desiree looked over the railing
from the second-floor landing, headed down the pine staircase with its
hand-hewn log rail. “Breakfast ready?” Alec asked. “Guess I’ll withdraw my
letter of complaint. Maybe the service at this hotel isn’t so bad after all.”

And that was the end of her cozy time alone with Joe.

She got to be impressed again an hour later, when everyone
was buckling ski boots and pulling on coats.

“Are we driving up in your car,” she asked Joe as he came to
sit on the bench beside her to put on his boots, “or is there a shuttle?”

“Neither,” he said. “We’re walking.”

“We’re walking,” she said slowly. “To the ski area.”

“No, we’re walking ten minutes up the road. There’s a lift
into Alpine Meadows from there.”

“So let’s recap here.” She finished her boot-fastening and
sat up. “You have a ski cabin with about the nicest bathroom I’ve ever been in,
never
mind
in somebody’s ‘cabin.’ I
barely came out this morning. The
floor’s
warm in there!”

“Radiant heating in the subfloor. You liked that, huh?”

“And a refrigerator that hides in a cabinet because
refrigerators are so pedestrian,” she went on, “and a private ski lift.”

“Not private,” he said, a smile threatening. “I have to
share it with all those neighbors.”

“Hey,” Alec complained from his spot on the living room
couch a few steps below, where he and Rae were fastening their own boots. “A
whole life’s worth of experience with your fabulous brother, and Joe’s the one
getting all the love?”

“You
don’t have a
ski cabin,” Alyssa pointed out. “One lousy house in San Francisco. Pfft. Get a
private ski lift, and I’ll be impressed.”

And then Joe went back to being Joe again. “Is this
absolutely necessary?” Alyssa asked when they’d taken the chair lift up, got to
the ski area, and . . . not skied. “Couldn’t you just tell us what to do while
we ride the lifts or something? Or give us the PowerPoint presentation tonight,
so we could ski today, sometime before the snow melts?”

“It’s necessary if you want me to take you backcountry
skiing tomorrow,” Joe said calmly. “Because you’re not going up the mountain
with me until I’ve seen you use this equipment, and until I’m convinced you’re
going to remember how to do it.”

Alec, Alyssa, and Joe were standing in the ski area’s
avalanche beacon practice area, and Joe was giving them a lesson in rescue
techniques. A long, boring lesson.

“Yeah, Liss,” Alec said. “There Joe and I’d be, buried under
tons of snow, thinking about your eyes glazing over during his Rescue Beacon
Lecture. Yeah, that’d be reassuring. We’d know
we were dead meat.”

“I thought you said there wasn’t much danger, though,” she
said, but she had to laugh, because Alec was right. She couldn’t help it, she
wanted to
ski.

“There’s always some danger,” Joe said. “Being a
mountaineer’s a little like being a pilot. There are old mountaineers, and bold
mountaineers, but no old bold mountaineers. So you check conditions ahead of
time, and right now, conditions are pretty safe. But you still check your terrain,
and you pay attention. You know what to do if the unexpected happens, and
you’ve got the equipment to do it. That’s how you get to go skiing again next
year. This is important, so pay attention.”

“Hoo-ah,” Alyssa muttered, but she paid attention.

Twenty minutes more, and Joe was finally satisfied. “All
right,” he said. “Looks like everybody’s got it. You good, Alec?”

“I promise to find you and dig you out,” Alec said. “And I
know you know how, so if you’re on top of the snow, I’m not worried. The
question is . . .”

They both looked at Alyssa, and she sighed with impatience.
“You just saw me do it, and I’m betting Joe gives me the refresher course
tomorrow. I’ll bet you give me a test, in fact, Joe. I’m not sure if I’m more
scared of the avalanche or of you flunking me. Who knows what would happen?”

“Bad things,” Joe said, and he was smiling a little. “All
right, let’s go find Rae. You want to ski with me a while, Alyssa? Want to show
me your stuff?”

“Think you can keep up?”

“Oh,” he said, “I think so.”

He could, too. He didn’t even raise an eyebrow when she
wanted to start out on one of the steepest slopes, and as soon as they started
down, she realized why. She wouldn’t have called him graceful even now, but he
skied tougher, pushed it harder than she’d ever have given him credit for, powering
down the most technical runs with a raw athleticism that gave her a rush just
to watch. Sometimes she led, sometimes he did, and she enjoyed the rare satisfaction
of skiing with somebody even better than she was, somebody who enjoyed it as
much as she did.

They must have covered close to half the mountain when Joe
pulled up with an aggressive spray of snow at the base of a double black
diamond run that had had Alyssa laughing aloud on the way down, trying to keep
up, pushed to the edge and loving it.

“Lunch,” he said, breathing a little heavily.

“Time for one more first?” she begged.

She saw the flash of his teeth under the goggles. “No. After
lunch, I promise. Having a good time?”