Snow Angel (8 page)

They only had to turn back once to make sure Stan had locked the front gate.

Some years, they flew to wherever they were going from the airport in Ontario—forty-five minutes south down the Cajon Pass. Since the Marshall’s Peak Ski Resort in Utah was only a six-hour drive from Pasodoro, they’d opted for the road trip. It was easier to take all their gear that way.

In the past, they’d gone to Tahoe, Mammoth, Vail, Taos, and even some pricey resorts back east. They’d skied in most of the western states, too, as well as areas of Canada. Banff had been a group favorite.

In lean years, or ones with limited time, they went to their local resorts in Big Bear or on day trips to Mountain High in Wrightwood.

This was their first trip to Marshall’s Peak.

Since the drive promised nothing but winter-dead, dirt-brown desert for a view, and maybe a few canyons in the tiny slice of Arizona they’d pass through, Melinda wasn’t too worried about missing the scenery by sleeping the entire way.

It would take nearly half an hour just to reach the fifteen-freeway from their small town on the south-eastern edge of Hesperia’s mesa.

Her mom, who’d grown up in Hesperia, sometimes talked about the old days when there had only been one stoplight on Main Street and no overpass for the railroad tracks, so people had had to wait for the trains to go by. Now there were stoplights on almost every corner.

In Melinda’s opinion, even with the overpass and no traffic so early in the morning, getting to the freeway still took forever.

“In-N-Out!” Christian and Wendell chorused from the third row, evidently coming awake through some cosmic sixth sense of awareness as they passed the fast-food restaurant sitting at the corner of Main Street and the freeway entrance.

“Shut up, we’re not stopping already,” Gabe said from his seat behind Danny. “Go back to sleep.”

“They’re not even open yet, morons,” Jacob grumbled.

Wedged in the middle row behind Melinda, Jacob had his long legs stretched through the space between her and Danny, resting his sock-covered feet on the center console, and sounded like he was less than half awake.

“Fifteen north and straight on ’til evening,” Danny said, far too cheerfully, when they hit the onramp.

“
Mmmph
,” was the most Melinda could manage, her face buried deep inside her blanket.

She already had a crick in her neck from leaning against the passenger window. Twisting to the other side, she laid her left arm across Jacob’s legs, pillowed up her blanket on top of it to cushion her head, and shuffled around until she found the right spot.

By the time they’d wound through Victorville and out the other side, the car was quiet again, and Melinda happily drifted off.

Less than forty minutes later, she woke to the slowing of the SUV as they exited the freeway toward the McDonald’s at Barstow Station.

“You’ve got to
-o-o
be kidding m-me,” she yawned, stretching her legs as far as they’d reach. “We’ll never get there at this rate.”

“Grown-ups need coffee,” Danny said, following the first car into the parking lot. “As long as we’re here, children, anyone need to pee?”

Melinda dragged her blanket off and kicked out at him with her foot raised over the center console and Jacob’s dangling legs, but he batted her away with ease.

Much grumbling and shifting around of big, male bodies came from the backseats before the driver’s side passenger door opened. Gabe and Wendell practically fell out onto the asphalt before they gained their feet and loped into the nearly-empty restaurant, Wendell’s red hair glistening like a halo in the light of the just-rising sun, a sharp contrast to Gabe’s long, dark locks.

“Didn’t they have a ton of coffee in their thermoses?” Melinda asked through another yawn, rotating her head left and right to work out kinks caused by sleeping scrunched over in the seat.

“A
ton
,” Christian echoed grumpily from the back.

Jacob leaned over the top of Melinda’s chair to rub her neck and shoulders, pressing expertly into the knots and melting them away. He’d always had a talent for backrubs. The firm touch of his strong, lean fingers made her
hmmmm
with pleasure, which brought her previous night’s dream, and that—
wow
—kiss, strongly back to mind.

She shifted uncomfortably as her nerve endings sat up and purred.

Hot. That dream was very hot. And…

“God, I can’t wait to get out of this freaking desert for good,” Jacob said, and reminded her once again why they’d always be friends and nothing more.

Pasodoro and the high desert meant home for her. For Jacob, it was a no-man’s land to escape as soon as possible.

Melinda rubbed a hand over her heart. Did Jacob realize how often he said those exact same words? He repeated that sentence almost every time they drove past the cemetery or visited Seth’s grave. He said it almost every time they went out to the memorial garden to sit on their bench overlooking the riverbed, too.

She closed her eyes. He said it a lot, period.

And every time, the words stabbed a little harder into her heart.

She’d miss him so much when he finally left for good.

“According to your dad,” Danny said through a wide stretch, dragging her attention back to him, “there’s not enough coffee in the world to compensate for being on the road this early.”

Honestly. Every year.

“He set the damn schedule,” Melinda answered, getting her head back in the conversation with effort.

Her dad was as much a night owl as she usually was, yet every year he seemed to forget that fact when it came time to leave for the trip. Why it was so important for them to get to Marshall’s Peak, or whatever ski resort they were going to in whatever year, by early afternoon was something she’d never understood. If they didn’t get there in time to ski that first day, they certainly had enough time to make up for it the rest of the week.

“Don’t shoot the messenger,” Danny said, lolling his head against the seat rest with his eyes closed. “Uncle Stan wants coffee, Uncle Stan gets coffee.”

Melinda gave a disdainful sniff, but let it go. It was too flipping early to be thinking—or speaking—so much.

“How’d you sleep?” Jacob asked her, yawning through the words and bringing the dream right back into her head.

“Okay,” she said, glad he couldn’t see her expression from his angle, or the reflection of that sizzling dream-kiss in her eyes.

Melinda sat up straight and patted his hands in a thanks-and-you-can-stop-now signal, then twitched the blanket back around her legs. He patted her head in return and flopped back in his seat, giving a dramatic, high-pitched screech as he stretched.

What was wrong with her that she could clearly see him in her mind’s eye, all sleep-tousled and sexy, his chest and biceps sleek and tan and warm beneath his black jacket and t-shirt, which would rise up a bit with his stretching, exposing an inch or two of his flat, toned belly…

God.

She shook her head like a dog coming out of icy water. Jacob, sexy? She’d never, in all their lives, let herself truly consider him in that light, except as simple fact. He
was
sexy. But not in any way that related to her. Except maybe that one time when they’d both been drinking and—

And it didn’t count. Jacob, she was pretty sure, didn’t even remember that little event.

But she did.

Ohhhh, she did.

Melinda shivered, glad she could blame it on the chilly air.

Remembered or not, she knew what Jacob would say. They were just friends. One drunken make-out session wouldn’t change his opinion.

Period.

Frowning out the passenger window, she wrangled her emotions. How could she even be thinking such things? She was still in mourning for Mitch. Mitch was the love of her life, not Jacob. Mitch had broken her heart. There was no way she could get over him that fast.

Only… Her heart didn’t feel all that broken anymore.

Melinda chewed a fingernail. That worried her more than anything else. If she was already over Mitch, then clearly she must have no idea what true love really felt like in the first place. Was she that shallow, that coldhearted?

It had to be the rebound thing, right? It totally did.

She hoped.

The guys piled back in, their noisy chatter thankfully distracting her. The adults returned to their cars from their own bathroom breaks, fresh coffee cups in hand, and a kaleidoscope of memories flashed through Melinda’s mind of all the times they’d stopped here over the years.

When she was little, the old railcars making up the dining section of the McDonald’s restaurant had been magical places to play and run through, as often as not with her cousins and Jacob running right behind her, all of them clamoring for ice cream cones or candy from one of the gift shops.

As they’d gotten older, they’d stopped at the station many times with various school sports’ teams traveling for games, or on family trips farther north.

Her heart gave a little twist for the kids they’d been, and she smiled out the passenger window as they pulled out of the parking lot, leaving the station behind.

Sleep still called to her as their mini-caravan headed north once more, but she was wide awake now, like it or not. She sipped her hot chocolate and listened to the guys with half an ear.

Danny and Gabe speculated about the double-black-diamond runs at Marshall’s Peak and how the conditions might compare to other places they’d been. In the very back, Christian and Wendell played games on their hand-held devices, and Jacob egged them on halfheartedly, disparaging their skills and handing out insults in a routine sort of way.

They passed through the rest of Barstow, and the brown and gray desert took over the landscape again, only interrupted by random buildings, low-roofed houses, and the occasional tumbleweed.

“You guys hear from Zach recently?” Gabe asked. Along with Danny, Gabe was one of her brother’s best friends.

“He called on Christmas and talked to everybody,” Danny answered before Melinda could. “Still living the high life in Japan. You?”

“Nah. I talked to him before Thanksgiving, though. Said he was working his ass off and having a blast. Nearly fluent in Japanese, now, too.”

“He had a head start with the Jitsukawas,” Danny said.

Katsuo Jitsukawa and his wife, Manami, had helped manage the Honeywell’s garden nursery since before Melinda was born. Her brother had learned Japanese and all about their culture alongside their daughter, Natsuko, who was only a few years older than Zach.

No one could have predicted back then how much that knowledge would come in handy for him as an adult, but he’d always loved the lessons—and the Jitsukawas—who were like family to them all.

“I hope he’ll really be home in time for camping this summer,” Melinda said, giving another stretch and hiding a yawn behind her hand. “He promised he would.”

“Is it that hard to get time off?” Jacob wanted to know.

“The guy he’s working with now is pretty intense about craft and business and the whole deal,” Danny said. “I think Zach doesn’t want to risk blowing the opportunity by whining about going home. The dude’s going to make him famous by the time they’re done.”

The SUV overflowed with deep, masculine voices as the miles rolled past, but Melinda was used to being the only girl and found the guys’ low timbres soothing. She was the only female in the kid generation in her entire family, including the cousins on her dad’s side. Well, at least until her brother or one of her cousins married—though she could hardly imagine any of them settling down.

She was the only girl in most of their friends’ extended families, as well.

Gabe had two sisters—his twin, Holly, who had a massive crush on Zach, though Melinda didn’t think the guys were aware of that fact, and their older sister, Tessa—as well as two younger brothers. The boys and Tessa didn’t come around that often, and Melinda hadn’t seen much of Holly since Zach left for Japan.

Of the rest, Jacob was an only child. Eddie had no sisters, and his two older brothers weren’t into skiing, though they usually came along on the summer camping trips. Wendell had two younger brothers and a sister, as flame-haired as himself, but his family had never taken part in their annual vacations. Seth had had a younger brother and sister, but they’d never been on any of the family trips, either, and she hadn’t seen either of them very often since he’d died.

Which left Melinda surrounded by boys most of the time, even though the size of their group changed often.

Her dad’s Honeywell relations always camped with them in the summer—adding another seven boys to the younger generation’s mix—although they usually spent their winter vacations either at home or traveling the world, only rarely coming along on the ski trips.

Melinda did sometimes bring a girlfriend along, and a couple of the guys had brought girlfriends once or twice, too, at different times, including the one Jacob brought last year. But one or two extra females weren’t enough to make a dent in all the testosterone.