Winter's Kiss (2 page)

Until I saw it was Nick coming out the door of Ms. Abernathy’s room and into the hall. At six feet tall, he filled the doorway with his model-perfect looks and cocky attitude. He flicked his dark hair out of his eyes with his pinkie, looked down at me, and grinned brilliantly.

My first thought was,
Oh no: fuel for the fire
. About a month ago, one of my best friends had hooked up with one of Nick’s best friends. Then, a few weeks ago, my other best friend and Nick’s other best friend had gotten together. It was fate. Nick and I were next, right?

Wrong. Everybody in our class remembered that Nick and I had been a couple four years ago, in seventh grade. They gleefully recalled our breakup and the resulting brouhaha. They watched us now for our entertainment value, dying to know whether we’d go out again. Unfortunately for them, they needed to stick to DVDs and Wii to fill up their spare time. Nick and I weren’t going to happen.

My second thought was,
Ah, those deep brown eyes
.

Maybe snowboarding could wait a little longer, after all.

“Fancy meeting you here, Hoyden.” He closed the door behind him, too hard. He must have gotten in trouble for talking again, and Ms. Abernathy had sent him out in the hall.

Join the club. From my seat against the cement block wall of our high school’s science wing, I gazed up at him—way,
way
up, because I was on the floor—and tried my best to glare. The first time he’d called me
Hoyden
, years ago, I’d sneaked a peek in the dictionary to look up what it meant: a noisy girl. Not exactly flattering. Not exactly a lie, either. But I couldn’t let him know I felt flattered that he’d taken the time to look up a word in the dictionary to insult me with. Because that would make me insane, desperate, and in unrequited love.

He slapped his forehead. “
Oh
, I’m sorry, I meant
Hayden
. I get confused.” He had a way of saying
oh
so innocently, like he had no idea he’d insulted me. Sometimes new girls bought his act, at least for their first few weeks at our school. They were taken by the idea of hooking up with Nick Krieger, who occasionally was featured in teen heartthrob magazines as the heir to the Krieger Meats and Meat Products fortune. And Nick obliged these girls—for a few dates, until he dumped them.

I knew his pattern all too well. When I’d first moved to Snowfall, Colorado, I had
been
one of those girls. He’d made me feel like a princess for a whole month. No, better—like a cool, hip teenage girl who dated! The fantasy culminated with one deep kiss shared in the back row of the movie theater with half our English class watching us. It didn’t end well, thus the aforementioned brouhaha.

I blinked the stars out of my eyes. “Fancy seeing
you
here, Ex.”

He gave me his smile of sexy confidence, dropped his backpack, and sank to the floor beside me. “What do you think of Davis and Liz?”

My heart had absolutely no reason to skip a beat. He was
not
asking me out. He was asking me my opinion of my friend Liz and his friend Davis as a couple. That did not necessarily mean he was heeding public opinion that he and I were next to get together. Liz and Davis were a legitimate topic of gossip.

I managed to say breezily, “Oh, they’ll get along great until they discuss where to go on a date. Then he’ll insist they go where she wants to go. She’ll insist they go where
he
wants to go. They’ll end up sitting in her driveway all night, fighting to the death over who can be more thoughtful and polite.”

Nick chuckled, a low rumble in his chest. Because he’d sat down so close to me and our arms were touching, sort of, under layers and layers of clothing, I felt the vibration of his voice. But again, my heart had no reason—repeat,
no
reason—to skip two beats, or possibly three, just because I’d made Nick laugh. He made everybody feel this good about their stupid jokes.

“And what’s up with Gavin and Chloe?” he asked next.

“Chloe and Gavin are an accident waiting to happen.” I couldn’t understand this mismatch between the class president and the class bad boy, and it was a relief finally to voice my concerns, even if it
was
to Nick. “They’re both too strong-willed to make it together long. You watch. They’re adorable together now, but before long they’ll have an argument that makes our tween-love Armageddon look like a happy childhood memory.”

Suddenly it occurred to me that I’d said way too much, and Nick would likely repeat this unflattering characterization to Gavin, who would take it right back to Chloe. I really did hold this opinion of Chloe and Gavin’s chances at true love, but I’d never intended to share it! I lost my inhibitions when I looked into Nick’s dark eyes, damn him.

I slid my arm around him conspiratorially—not as titillating as it sounds, because his parka was very puffy—and cooed, “But that’s just between you and me. I know how good you are at keeping secrets.”

He pursed his lips and gazed at me reproachfully for throwing our seventh-grade history in his face, times two. Back then he’d brought our tween-love Armageddon on himself by letting our whole class in on his secret while he kept me in the dark.

Not that I was bitter.

But instead of jabbing back at me, he slipped his arm around me, too. And I was
not
wearing a puffy parka, only a couple of T-shirts, both of which had ridden up a little in the back. I knew this without looking because I felt the heat of his fingers on my bare skin, above the waistband of my jeans. My face probably turned a few shades redder than my hair.

“Now, Hoyden,” he reprimanded me, “Valentine’s Day is a week from tomorrow. We don’t want to ruin that special day for Gavin and Chloe or Davis and Liz. We should put aside our differences for the sake of the kids.”

I couldn’t help bursting into unladylike laughter.

I expected him to remove his hand from my hip in revulsion at my outburst, but he kept it there. I knew he was only toying with me, I
knew
this, but I sure did enjoy it. If the principal had walked by just then and sensed what I was thinking, I would have gotten detention.

“Four years is a long time for us to be separated,” he crooned. “We’ve both had a chance to think about what we really want from our relationship.”

This was true. Over the four years since we’d been together, I’d come to the heartbreaking realization that no boy in my school was as hot as Nick, nobody was as much fun, and nobody was nearly as much of an ass. For instance, he’d generated fire-crotch comments about me as I passed his table in the lunchroom yesterday.

Remember when another heir called a certain red-haired actress a fire-crotch on camera? No? Well,
I
remember. Redheads across America sucked in a collective gasp, because we
knew
. The jokes boys made to us about Raggedy Ann, the Wendy’s girl, and Pippi Longstocking would finally stop, as we’d always hoped, only to be replaced by something infinitely worse.

So when I heard
fire-crotch
whispered in the lunchroom, I assumed it was meant for me. Nick was the first suspect I glanced at. His mouth was closed as he listened to the conversation at the lunch table. However, when there was commentary around school about me, Nick was always in the vicinity. He might not have made the comment, but I knew in my heart he was responsible.

Now I chose not to relay my thoughts on our four-year-long trial separation, lest he take his warm hand off my hip. Instead, I played along. “Are you saying you didn’t sign the papers, so our divorce was never finalized?”

“I’m saying maybe we should call off the court proceedings and try a reconciliation.” A strand of his dark hair came untucked from behind his ear, and he jerked his head back to swing the hair out of his eyes. Oooh, I
loved
it when he did that! I had something of a Nick problem.

His hair fell right back into his eyes. Sometimes when this happened, he followed up the head jerk with the pinkie flick, but not this time. He watched me, waiting for me to say something. Oops. I’d forgotten I was staring at him in awe.

A reconciliation? He was probably just teasing me, as usual. But what if this was his veiled way of asking me on a date? What if he was feeling me out to see whether I wanted to go with him before he asked me directly? This was how Nick worked. He had to win. He never took a bet that wasn’t a sure thing.

And if he’d been listening to everyone in class prodding him to ask me out, the timing was perfect, if I did say so myself. He was between girlfriends (not that I kept up with his dating status) and therefore free to get together with me. Everett Walsh, my boyfriend of two months, had broken up with me last week because his mama thought I was brazen (no!). Therefore I was free to get together with Nick.

Playing it cool, I relaxed against the wall and gave his puffy parka a squeeze, which he probably couldn’t feel through the padding. With my other hand, I found his fingers in his lap and touched the engraving on his signet ring, which he’d told me back in seventh grade was the Krieger family crest. It depicted bloodthirsty lions and the antlers of the hapless deer they’d attacked and devoured—which seemed apt for our relationship in seventh grade, but
not
for our relationship now, in eleventh. I was no deer in the headlights. Not anymore. Coyly I said, “I’ll mention it to my lawyer.” Ha!

He eyed me uneasily, like I was a chemistry lab experiment gone awry and foaming over. But Nick was never truly uneasy. He was just taken aback that I hadn’t fallen at his feet. Then he asked, “What are you doing for winter break?”

Winter break was next week. We lived in a ski resort town. It seemed cruel to lock us up in school the
entire
winter. They let us out for a week every February, since the base might or might not start to melt by spring break in April.

Was he just making convo, whiling away our last few minutes of incarceration at school, or did he really want to know what I was doing during our days off? Again I got the distinct and astonishing impression that he wanted to ask me out. Perhaps I should notify Ms. Abernathy of a safety hazard in her chemistry classroom. Obviously I had inhaled hallucinatory gas just before she kicked me out.

“I’m boarding with my brother today,” I said, counting on my fingers. “Tomorrow I’m boarding with Liz. Actually, Liz skis rather than boards, but she keeps up with me pretty well. I’m boarding with some friends coming from Aspen on Sunday, the cheerleading squad on Monday—”

Nick laughed. “Basically, anyone who will board with you.”

“I guess I get around,” I agreed. “I’m on the mountain a lot. Most people get tired of boarding after a while, which I do not understand at
all
. And then on Tuesday, I’ve entered that big snowboarding competition.”

“Really!” He sounded interested and surprised, but his hand underneath my hand let me know he was more interested in throwing me into a hot tizzy than in anything I had to say. He slid his hand, and my hand with it, from his lap and over to my thigh. “You’re going off the jump? Did you get over your fear of heights?”

So he’d been listening to me after all.

My friends knew I’d broken my leg rappelling when I was twelve. That actually led, in a roundabout way, to my family’s move from Tennessee to Colorado. My dad was a nurse, and he got so interested in my physical rehab that he and my mom decided to open a health club. Only they didn’t think they could make it fly in Tennessee. The best place for a privately owned health club specializing in physical rehab was a town with a lot of rich people and broken legs.

Though my own leg had healed by the time we moved, I was still so shell-shocked from my fall that I never would have tried snowboarding if my parents hadn’t made me go with my little brother, Josh, to keep him from killing himself on the mountain. Josh was a big part of the reason I’d gotten pretty good.
Any
girl would get pretty good trying to keep up with a boy snowboarder three years younger who was half insane.

And that’s how I became the world’s only snowboarder with the ability to land a frontside 900 in the half-pipe
and
with a crippling fear of heights. Not a good combination if I wanted to compete nationally.

“This competition’s different,” I said. Growing warmer, I watched Nick’s fingers massaging the soft denim of my jeans. “For once, the only events are the slalom and the half-pipe. No big air or slopestyle or anything that would involve a jump. Chloe and Liz swore they’d never forgive me if I didn’t enter this one.”

“You’ve got a chance,” Nick assured me. “I’ve seen you around on the slopes. You’re good compared with most of the regulars on the mountain.”

I shrugged—a small, dainty shrug, not a big shrug that would dislodge his hand from my hip and his other hand from my thigh. “Thanks, but I expect some random chick from Aspen to sweep in and kick my ass.” And when that happened, I sure could use someone to comfort me in the agony of defeat,
hint hint
. But Nick was only toying with me. Nick was only toying with me. I could repeat this mantra a million times in my head, yet no matter how strong my willpower, his fingers rubbing across my jeans threatened to turn me into a nervous gigglefest. Sometimes I wished I were one of those cheerleaders/prom queens/rich socialite snowbunnies who seemed to interest Nick for a day or two at a time. I wondered if any of them had given in to Nick’s fingers rubbing across their jeans, and whether I would too, if he asked.

“Anyway, those are all my plans so far,” I threw in there despite myself. What I meant was: I am free for the rest of the week,
hint hint
. I wanted to kick myself.

“Are you going to the Poser concert on Valentine’s Day?” He eased his hand out from under mine and put his on top. His fingers massaged my fingers ever so gently.

Nick was only toying with me. “That’s everybody’s million-dollar question, isn’t it?” I said. “Or rather, their seventy-two-dollar question. I don’t want to pass up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see Poser, but tickets are so expensive.” I may have spoken a bit too loudly so he could hear me over my heart, which was no longer skipping beats. It was hammering out a beat faster than Poser’s drummer.