"Lucky"
by Brandy Dewinter
(c 2000, All rights reserved)
Chapter 12
"Your flight will be called shortly, Miss Piper, if you would like to
start heading toward the gate," the attendant said. Lonna and I were in
the executive lounge of the airport, waiting for our ski trip to begin.
We gathered up our carry-on items and made it to the gate just as they
announced our boarding. First class service takes a lot of the hassle out
of travel, for sure.
Just for grins, Lonna and I had decided to be 'twinsies' for the
flight. We wore matching snowy-white sweaters that were thick and soft,
yet still snug enough to reveal more than a hint of the upper parts of our
figures. There was nothing as subtle as a hint about the form below the
sweaters, though. The ski pants we both wore were tight enough you could
have counted the teeth on our combs, if we had combs. Or pockets to put
them in. Of course, with her bright blonde waves and my dark tresses, I
didn't think anyone would have any trouble telling us apart.
"I still can't thank you enough for paying for my trip," Lonna began
again as we took out seats.
"And I can't thank you enough for all you've done for me," I
countered. "Now, let's just enjoy ourselves for a few days, no keeping
score."
To get to Steamboat Springs, you have to go into Yampa Valley airport
which is most of an hour outside of town. Gee, what a coincidence. It's
hard to find space to put an airport on a mountain. That's why they're
good for skiing. I had been to Steamboat several times and liked it best
of all the ski areas in Colorado, but that didn't mean I liked the long
ride once we were already supposed to 'be there'.
The flight had been selected so that we arrived fairly late in the
evening, just enough time to get settled in to our condo and hit the sack.
Which created the first problem of the trip. When we arrived at the
condo, it was quickly obvious that there was only one sack, and that if we
were going to hit it, it would be together.
As in sleeping together.
"Oh, Lonna, sorry. I didn't think. I'll make up a bed out on the
couch."
"Don't be silly," she replied, laughing. "If I didn't trust you, I
wouldn't have come in the first place. Get your nightgown and come to
bed."
"What a statement," I said, laughing too. "At least, coming from a
pretty girl."
"Why thank you, Tami," Lonna said.
"What for?"
"That's the first time you've ever said I was pretty."
"No, I've told you lots of times."
She was suddenly quiet, and I realized I was being shown a window
into her heart when she said, "No. You've said, 'wow', but you never once
just said I was pretty. I, um, paid attention."
"Lonna, you are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. If I never
said that, well, it doesn't mean I didn't think it."
"Thank you again," she said, still quiet. Then she shrugged a little
like she was throwing off a too-strong feeling and grinned. "Last one in
the bed has to turn out the lights."
She beat me to bed, of course. I had a lot more to do to get ready,
mostly taking off items that Lonna wasn't even wearing. Besides, all
she did was pull on an oversized t-shirt, while I had to wriggle into a
soft nightgown. I should have checked what she was packing - so I could
have been more casual, too.
"Ha!" she said as she slipped under the covers. "Don't stub your toe
in the dark."
"Ha, yourself," I said, laughing while I slipped in beside her. "The
lights can be turned off from the bed. So there."
She giggled as we did the wiggle/slide thing to find out how much
room we each had in the strange bed. And the strange circumstance. Well,
maybe not strange, the circumstance that is, but at least unfamiliar.
Come to think of it, the circumstance was pretty strange at that.
"G'night, Tami," Lonna murmured softly, interrupting my thoughts.
"G'night," I echoed, settling down for the first time in a very long
time to try and sleep in a bed that was occupied.
~----------------~
The next morning came a lot sooner than I had expected. The rustle
as Lonna got up seemed so natural that at first I discounted it and almost
fell back asleep. But I woke up just enough to remember the real
situation. After that, sleep was out of the question. Which meant that
coffee was most definitely called for. By the time Lonna came out of the
bathroom, toweling her still-damp hair, I had one cup down and needed
desperately to go make room for more.
There didn't seem to be any need to comment when Lonna just started
in on my hair and my makeup after I got back to the main room. Well,
that's not exactly right, it's just that the comment wasn't what you
might expect.
"What color are your ski clothes?" she asked.
"Oh, um, red, and black and white, and some gray accents," I
answered, pointing out the sleeve hanging in the little closet.
She walked over and looked at the jacket a little more closely, then
smiled and said, "Let me guess, Trish picked this out."
A few months earlier, the sound of Trish's name would have made me
freeze up, tensing for the pain. Now, I could actually see some humor in
what we had shared.
"Well, Duh! My idea of clothes coordination ran out if I reached
some sort of compatibility with temperature. Which didn't always happen."
"Oh?" she said, offering a conversational opening while she resumed
doing my face.
"Well, the first time we went skiing, I just wore blue jeans and a
windbreaker. It's basically all I had, and I had seen pictures of
girls skiing in bikinis so I figured the sun reflecting off the snow made
everything pretty warm."
"And of course the big macho guy wouldn't need warmer clothes than
the *girls*," Lonna said, snickering.
"Well, I never said I was macho."
She nodded at my point. "So then what?"
"Oh, about what you'd expect. I found out later that the bikini
skiing is usually done in the spring. That first time we went in the
middle of February and I think I remember some sort of warning to watch
out for the puddles, they might be liquified oxygen."
"Been there, felt that," she said.
"And of course, I spent the whole day on my fanny or on my nose,
sliding along scooping up snow inside my shirt."
"Been there, done that," Lonna said, laughing even louder.
One of the funny things about skiing is that everyone has 'been
there, done that'. All the stupid, clumsy, embarrassing things that
a beginner does are laughed with, not laughed at, when you talk to
someone who is a bit better. They have left their own impressions on a
lot of mountains, too.
I was about to ask her about her own ski experiences, when she
stepped back and said, "Voila!"
You'd think I'd have been used to it by then. I wasn't fainting
any longer when Lonna worked her magic, but every time I thought I had
the 'rules' down, she'd do something different, and spectacular.
Normally she stuck to warm brown-to-dark-red tones for everything from my
eyeshadow to my lipstick. And I always thought it looked great. I mean,
really, amazingly great.
But this time my lips were a much lighter red and my eyes were
mostly a pale gray that just matched my ski outfit. It looked shiny and
bright, like sun on the snow.
"Wow," I said quietly.
"Glad you approve," she said, giggling. "You'll have to ski pretty
fast today to keep ahead of the boys."
"Yeah, right. If there are any boys after me, we'll do the girl-kiss
trick you showed me."
"Promise?" Lonna asked, a laugh on her lips and in her eyes. Was
there a hint of something more serious, though, in her voice? Don't go
there.
Instead of answering, I just went to the closet and got out my ski
outfit. It was out of style, nowadays, but it was comfortable and warm
and I had decided to keep it for yet another year. It was a one-piece
design, with pants and jacket hooked together. Trish and I had gotten
them when tight stretch pants were in. She wanted to do twinsies and I
wanted to see her in tight pants, so we compromised on a sort of unisex
style that made me wonder if Trish had always seen something of Tami in
me even at the beginning. In any event, wiggling into the pants occupied
me while I tried to ignore what I might have heard in Lonna's voice.
"That looks HOT!" Lonna gushed.
"Why thank you, beautiful. A girl tries her best, you know."
By then she was in her outfit, stylishly new in a sort of satiny
blue that just caught the lighter tones in her eyes. Some trick of
the contrasting color panels made her feminine contours seem even more
shapely, despite the thicker, quilted fabric.
"That looks cool as ice, and twice as comfortable," I observed in my
turn.
She just grinned and we did the last minute flurry of finding gloves
and goggles and ear muffs. Our condo was ski-in, ski-out and I had
arranged for the first day's lift tickets to be waiting in our rooms, so
it wasn't long before we were shuffling toward the Silver Bullet gondola
at the base. One really, really good thing about Steamboat is that even a
five minute lift line is a very rare thing, so it wasn't a much longer
time and we were sliding down the snow, trying to wake up reflexes that
had lain dormant for a year.
And it wasn't much longer than that when the first guys started
sniffing out our trail. It was sort of fun, really. The secret joke
that only Lonna and I shared was always there, just below the surface,
and the humor of that kept our spirits up even as a succession of
young men had their hopes dashed on our obliviousness. We flirted,
of course, but we were cheerfully uninterested in any invitations to
get a cup of hot chocolate, or 'go explore this really interesting
side trail.'
It turned out that I was a little better skier than Lonna, not enough
to make any difference in the trails we went on, but enough that as the
day wore on she started to get tired sooner than I did. And that meant
she started to ski slower than I wanted to. That wasn't really much of a
problem. I just let her get down the hill a little, then skied to catch
up at the speed I liked.
We were up at Storm Peak, starting on Buddy's Run when I got my skis
crossed just after Lonna launched off. It wasn't a big deal. Lord knows
I'd fallen more than once already, but it did put me further behind her.
So I was really ripping down the hill after her when disaster
struck. Not the worst sort of disaster with an injury, but I caught an
edge and then started having a yard sale. One ski came off, then the
other. I lost my poles and my ear muffs. I swear, if my pants weren't
hooked to my jacket, I think I'd have lost them, too.
When I finally slid to a stop, I looked way back up the hill at the
trail of 'stuff' I'd left behind and contemplated the long walk in ski
boots on snow. Not a happy thought.
About halfway back up, though (I'd picked up one ski, and most of the
rest of my things), a guy swooped in with my other ski and offered it to
me. "You know," he said, "I don't think I've ever seen anyone end up
farther from their equipment."
"Thanks a lot," I snapped.
"Oh, lighten up," he said, laughing. "As long as you're not hurt,
there's nothing to be upset about."
"Yeah, right." I was not convinced.
He stood by politely while I dressed myself again, shaking snow
out of gloves and knocking more off my boots. After a very long time
(during all of which he stood there with this smirk on his face), I
was finally ready to go again.
"Thanks for your help," I said, putting smile number 14 on my face.
It wasn't really appropriate, but it was the best I could do.
"My pleasure," he replied, bowing neatly despite his skis.
When I launched off again, I was mostly trying to catch up to Lonna,
but I realized the guy was more or less pacing me - nothing obvious or
close, but he stayed level with me on the hill.
Lonna was down by the lift back up to Storm Peak, watching for me and
looking fairly anxious by the time I arrived.
"Are you okay?"
"Nothing injured but my pride," I said. By now the skiing had put me
back in a better mood and I was able to smile with a little more
sincerity.
A masculine voice joined in uninvited, "You ski very well."
It was him, of course, the guy who had brought me my ski.
"Not all the time," I answered, smiling ruefully.
He laughed and said, "Oh, it happens to the best of us."
Lonna had to know, of course. "What happened?"
I shrugged. "Crash. Burn. Pile of rubble."
"Not that bad," the guy said. "She just lost a ski, or so."
Then he did the polite thing I had been carefully avoiding. "By the
way, I'm Roy Clifton."
"Lonna Roberts." "Tami, um, Tami Piper."
Since he was now a 'real' person, with a name, I took a moment to
look at him, really look at him. He was sort of neutral in coloring,
light brown hair and dark brown eyes. There was a piratical beard that
made me envious. Every time I'd tried to grow a beard, it had come in
patchy and ugly. Of course, after a couple of months of waxings, I didn't
even need to shave very often any more. Standing on level ground near the
lift showed that he was several inches taller than me, which made him
almost six inches taller than Lonna. And I assumed his shoulders looked
so wide because of a bulky jacket. If not, there was another thing I
didn't like about him. Typical ski hunk, just like in the movies. I'm
surprised he didn't go by Chip, or, um, what did he say his last name was?
Clifton, so 'Cliff'.
Lonna was the next one to speak, and her voice had a funny tone.
When I turned to look at her I realized I had been staring at Clifton for
a surprisingly long time. Lonna's eys were going back and forth from him
to me even as she said, "I'm, um, getting a little tired. I think I'll
call it a day."
I tried to get her to change her mind. "Oh, c'mon, Lonna. There's
lots of time yet."
"No sense pushing it," Roy said. "That's how you get hurt."
"Right," Lonna agreed. "I'll just take it easy down to the base, and
hit the showers."
"I'll go with you," I offered, though my voice held it's own note of
contrast with my words.
"Don't be silly," she said. "Ski till your legs drop off. You know
where to find me."
She waved and headed off down the hill. That path takes you down a
long gliding trail and it's frankly boring unless you catch some other
lift on the way to the bottom.
"So, what runs do you like to ski?" Roy asked.
"Oh, um, whatever. I don't usually do the moguls, but I don't mind
steep."
"Good. I'm about up for Heavenly Daze. You want to give it a try?"
"Uh, sure."
The first step toward that run was to go back to Storm Peak, so we
caught the lift. And had nothing to do for several minutes but talk. It
turned out he was an airline pilot (of course, what else?) and arranged
his trips so that he could lay over in Steamboat about two weeks out of
three in the winter. I gave my more-or-less true story about writing, but
I figured I ought to claim to write as Brenda Carstairs rather than as Tim
Piper. It turned out he hadn't read any romance novels, big surprise, so
I didn't have any problems with him getting too close to my secret.
We made quite a few runs before the lifts started closing. When we
were on the last swoop down the hill, it was his turn to fall and my turn
to help him get his things together. By that time, we were way past
simple politeness, so I ragged him pretty well about his own yard sale.
He took it pretty well, better by far than I had, and we were laughing
all the way to the base.
"Let me buy you a drink," he offered.
"No thanks."
"Not even some hot chocolate?" he asked, making puppy dog eyes.
"Oh, um, sure. I'd like some hot chocolate."
We forced our way into the base lodge, and I tried to run a brush
from my fanny pack through my hair while he got the drinks.
"So, come here often?" I heard an unfamiliar voice say; a feminine
voice, chirpy and soprano. Turning, I saw Snow Barbie, complete with
oh-so-stylish outfit, way-too-much way-too-blonde hair, and way too big
. . . well, an improbable figure.
I just smiled at her joke, figuring she was playing on the oldest
pick-up line in the books. She was very pretty, in a plastic sort of way,
and I figured she'd heard it so often she felt entitled to use it as an
icebreaker of a different sort. I was sort of flattered that she seemed
to think I would understand.
"Need some help with that?" she asked, moving closer and resting her
hand on mine where it held the brush. I smiled politely again, ready to
decline but she interrupted my words before I spoke them when she realized
I had not gotten her real message. So she made it really clear by leaning
close to me and whispering, "I'll be glad to help you in *any* way you
want, gorgeous."
I'm surprised the sprinklers in the building didn't go off with the
heat of my blush. Hell, I'm surprised the whole mountain of snow didn't
melt. I was doing the fish routine, mouth hanging open and looking
stupid, when Roy arrived with the hot chocolate.
Snow Barbie leaned back to her own seat, and Roy offered me one of
the cups. He had a sharp little twinkle in his eye as he said, "So,
come here often?"
It's a good thing I was still so frozen from Snow Barbie's offer that
I hadn't reached for the hot chocolate, or I'd have sprayed it all the way
back to the counter. As it was, I started coughing and spluttering so
much that Roy was honestly concerned.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes, just . . swallowed wrong," I lied, reaching for the drink and
nearly burning my mouth with a too-large gulp. Well, why shouldn't my
mouth be as hot as my cheeks?
He must have thought I needed a moment on an easy topic or something,
because he glanced at the brush I had been using and said, "You have
beautiful hair."
"Oh, um, thanks."
When he saw that I had myself back together, it was his turn to lean
close and whisper, "I see you met our blonde lioness. Rumor has it, she
makes a notch on her belt for every young maiden she . . . enjoys.
Apparently hunting is good on the slopes. I hear she's on her third
belt."
This time I did spill some hot chocolate, only I was laughing, not
shocked. Roy's voice might have been just large enough for Snow Barbie to
hear. In any event, she picked up and moved on. Or maybe it was just the
redhead she saw across the room.
Roy watched her go and smiled with an interesting combination of
triumph and embarrassment. He changed that into a sheepish grin when
he realized I was looking at him, and said, "Sorry, that was probably
unfair. I guess I'm just a bit jealous. If I'm repeating rumors at all,
I should repeat the one that says all her . . . friends, were smiling
afterwards. I, um, didn't mean anything by it."
Yes he did. And he knew I knew, yada, yada. But instead of calling
him on it, I just smiled back and tried to decide what my own feelings
were about being propositioned by a pretty girl, who was then run off by a
handsome man that felt he had a prior claim. It was too difficult a
question for any immediate answers so I tuned back in to whatever he was
saying, but the question lingered in my thoughts.
We ended up sitting there until it started to get dark, just talking
about favorite ski areas and runs despite what might have been considered
an opportunity for more . . intimate topics. All of the sudden I realized
it had indeed gotten dark, and I sat up straighter.
"Oh my goodness. I need to be getting back. Lonna must be
starving."
"I'll walk you to your place."
"Um, thanks, but that's not necessary."
"I know," he said, another smile I didn't want to decipher on his
face.
We gathered up our stuff and I realized for the first time that I had
forgotten about the ski-in aspect of the condo. The lifts, even the bunny
hill one that would have gained enough altitude to allow a glide to the
condo, were long closed so we had to trudge uphill, only about a quarter
mile, but at that altitude, in ski boots, and carrying my equipment, I was
too winded for conversation until we got to the door.
I should have just pushed right on in, calling for Lonna.
