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  “Actually, this is ABC Norte,” Paolo explained calmly. “We’re only going to ski this half. ABC South is harder.”

  “Where’s that one?”

  “It starts up higher.”

  “And where are we in relation to the nearest steep cliff?” Elise asked.

  “The one you want to push me off of?”

  “Precisely.”

  “I’ll show you as soon as you show me you can handle the beginner’s terrain.”

  She ground her teeth together and stared up at the stunning views all around her. Snow-covered mountains rose up in the southern skies. Crisp air numbed her nose with each inhale and transformed into a small translucent cloud as it left through her slightly parted lips. The cold tingled the back of her neck, invigorating her in a way she hadn’t felt in over a year as long-dormant muscles twitched with yearning to spring to life once more.

  “Please, Paolo,” she pleaded. “I’ve waited so long, and we’ve already lost two days here to techs and paperwork and worthless meetings.”

  “Don’t lose another day to complaining,” Paolo said, exasperation growing thick in his voice. “Put your helmet on.”

  She obeyed, tucking a few stray strands of hair behind her ear, then snugged up the ponytail holder at the base of her neck before pulling the helmet down completely. “I imagined this moment a thousand times a day during my rehab, but I never imagined it quite like this.”

  He smiled kindly. “I know, but if I’d told you you’d have to start on the bunny slope, you wouldn’t have worked so hard.”

  She nodded, trying not to remember the excruciating pain in the early days after her surgery. He had a point.

  “Don’t go back there now,” he whispered, then pointed down the gentle slope. “Go forward.”

  Done arguing, she angled her skis downhill, then closing her eyes, took a long, slow breath. This might not be the moment she’d envisioned, but it was closer than anything she’d yet to experience on the long road back. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach a second before she leaned her body ever so slightly. Her skis started to slide. Such a little movement at first, but her heart jumped inside her chest. A gentle push with her pole extended the glide. Gravity took hold, pulling her more softly than before, but even the subtle tug felt like a call toward home.

  Opening her eyes now, her vision narrowed, closing out the skiers and the peaks around her. She saw only smooth snow and a slight grade. Easy skiing had never been her favorite, but now she relished the cut of her skis through the groomed trail. So effortless, so beautifully harmonious. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so at ease.

  Shifting her hips a fraction of an inch, she slid right, then pedaling the balance of her weight back to center, her line straightened again. She tried the same move on the other side and thrilled as she eased left. Weightless after a year of pain and the pressure of every physical and emotional burden, she once again moved as freely as a bird in the sky.

  Then it ended. She straightened slightly and slowed to a stop at the base of a ski lift, and her chest constricted at the sense of loss akin to the sun burning through the most beautiful dream.

  Paolo pulled up beside her, his smile pressing his cheeks against the earflaps of his helmet. “Yes?”

  She nodded, unable to speak for the emotion clogging her throat.

  “You moved like an angel riding over a bank of clouds,” he exclaimed, his chest puffed out with pride.

  The sentiment made her uncomfortable, and the emotion behind it even more so. She was not an angel. She couldn’t view this mountain as heaven, or even a cathedral, as its name implied. She’d merely angled downhill for less than a quarter mile. A slope of that nature didn’t even constitute a warm-up. She had work to do, so much it scared her, and she couldn’t allow herself to grow accustomed to pleasure under the prospect of the pain one false move could bring.

  “No more wasting time,” she said brusquely, hoping the frustration in her voice covered the deeper emotions she didn’t want to convey. “Let’s move up.”

  Paolo’s broad shoulders fell. “Never happy in the moment, Elise?”

  She bristled at the comment. “I’ll be happy when I stand on the podium with the medal around my neck.”

  “I hope so,” he said genuinely, but the sincerity of the sentiment did little to hide his doubt.

  For some reason tears stung her eyes. She tried to blink them away, but when they continued to come, she lowered her ski goggles and turned toward the lift. Anger burned like a hot rock in her stomach.

  Damn him. Why did he have to make such a big deal out of the silly little baby slope? She didn’t have the time or the energy for frivolity or sentimentality. And why all the concern about intrinsic happiness now? Had he been mushy when she’d struggled in the hospital? Had he gotten flowery when she sweat in the gym or tried to freeze her muscles back into submission under icy waters? Why did one moment of joy matter amid all the other grueling tasks? Nothing mattered but the podium, and she couldn’t get there from the middle of the mountain or the middle of the pack. There could be no rest, no joy, until she pushed to the top.

  She shook her head as she eased into position beside him on the lift. Maybe he’d gotten a little misty the first time she’d stood after the surgery. And she had perhaps noticed a small crack in his voice the first time she’d walked without a cane, but an “angel riding over a bank of clouds”? She wouldn’t settle for being a pretty sight, and since when did he get so damn sappy?

  Holly.

  She didn’t say the name aloud, but she knew the answer instinctively. He was falling in love with her. Poor guy. And for what? To be disappointed in a few months when the bottom fell out? It would be a sad story if it weren’t an Olympic year, but it was, which meant this little romance also posed a career-altering distraction. She needed to deal with the problem before the situation got truly out of hand.

  “You know I’m happy for you and Holly, right?” she asked. “I like her. A lot. She’s fun, and she’s sassy, and she knows her stuff. Honestly, sometimes I’ve wondered if Corey could even manage to dress herself without Holly.”

  “You underestimate Corey,” Paolo said.

  “Maybe, but she thought Argentina and New Zealand were next-door neighbors.”

  Paolo laughed.

  “But Holly stepped in and handled everything. I don’t even know what goes into arrangements of that magnitude, but I assume she must’ve performed miracles to get them all here and practicing on time.”

  “We’re almost to the top of the lift,” Paolo pointed out. “You’d better get to the ‘but’ part of this conversation.”

  “I don’t want her to become a distraction,” Elise blurted out.

  Paolo sat quietly as they neared the top of the lift, then skied silently down the ramp, this time veering farther right before stopping at the top of a slightly longer slope. “Do you think my spending time with Holly has taken my attention way from your training?”

  “No,” Elise said quickly. “I didn’t mean your time. Paolo, you’ve been more dedicated to me than any coach could be expected to be. I know you had other offers. I know you could’ve found other clients or stayed with the team. Hell, you could’ve even taken a few vacations, and I wouldn’t have thought less of you.”

  “Then where does your fear of distraction come from?”

  “You just seem a little softer lately. You’re not pushing me as hard.”

  He smiled again. “And you think Holly has made me more weaker?”

  “You haven’t exactly been a hard-ass lately,” she said. “Not that I want you to treat me like a slave or anything.”

  “Oh yes, the Argentineans often use blond-haired, blue-eyed, white women from prep schools to do their manual labor.”

  She laughed. “Well-played, but you know what I mean, right?”

  “I do,” he said, dropping a big open palm on the top of her helmet and giving her head a soft shake. “But you’re wrong to worr
y. Holly makes me more stronger. She makes the work joyful again. Think about Corey in the gym with you. Do you not work harder when she’s pushing you?”

  She didn’t like the quick jump from Holly to Corey. The relationships were completely different. “I don’t know if I work harder or better.”

  “You do,” he said plainly.

  “She annoys me. She makes me angry. If I pedal faster or lift higher, it’s to prove her wrong.”

  “But you smile when you do. She makes you more better than you are on your own. You have a long way to go, amiga. You will fall. You will have bad days. You will lose to people you should beat.”

  Her shoulders knotted with stress, and she opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off.

  “The anger won’t sustain you, not at the pace we must set in order to catch up. Only joy can.”

  “How did this become about me? I only meant to talk about you and Holly.”

  “The two are related. Holly makes me happy. I need to find ways to make you happy. Holly has a sister.”

  “Stop,” she said quickly. “This conversation did not go how I intended.”

  He shook his head, but his dark eyes still danced with amusement. “The best ones never do.”

  “I’m leaving now.” She scooted her skis until they pointed downhill once more.

  “Not so fast,” he said.

  “What else do you have to say? And it better be coaching, because if you mention Corey again, I’m going to find a steep cliff myself.”

  He grinned. “That was coaching advice. Don’t ski too fast. But it’s nice to know the mention of Corey can get you worked up. The knowledge will be useful later.”

  “Shut up,” she grumbled and leaned into the slope, but her burning face didn’t feel the cold this time.

  • • •

  “Hot damn,” Nate said as Corey scraped the heel edge of her board across the snow to stop. “You slayed the start, dude.”

  Corey flexed her biceps. “Do you want to kiss the pythons?”

  “Give ’em here.” Nate grabbed her arm and made a dramatic smooching sound. “But it’s not only your arms, you’re using some seriously explosive power between your hips and thighs.”

  Pulling off her goggles and resting them atop her head, she said, “While I appreciate the sentiment, you cannot kiss anything between my hips or thighs.”

  He gave her a shove. “Go over there.”

  She slid a couple of feet to the side of the course, then plopped down on her butt. She unclipped the ankle and toe straps on her right foot, then relaxed back on the snow as Tigger slid into one of the starting gates high above her. She had a center chute between two Canadians, a veteran Corey had raced for years and a newcomer she’d yet to meet. A bevy of coaches shouted instructions while they all worked on their positioning.

  “Get back up there,” Nate said. “You’re not done for the day.”

  “I wanna watch the kid.”

  “You want to sit on your keister and catch your breath.”

  “Maybe,” she admitted, “but I haven’t gotten to see her much out there. The team has her on a tight leash.”

  “She’s seventeen,” Nate said, turning to face the gates as well. “She’s barely housebroken. They can’t let her roam around the mountain freely. She might get lost or run off.”

  “We roamed freely, and look how we turned out.”

  “Exactly.” Nate laughed. “And now you know what they are trying to avoid in the next generation.”

  “Good point, but we sure had some good times, didn’t we?”

  He turned. “You sound like you think they’re over.”

  Had she? She hadn’t meant to. When had she started thinking of her wild days in the past tense? Sure, she’d made some conscious choices to surround herself with better people, and maybe not be quite as reckless off the slopes as she had in the past, but she still had plenty of adventures ahead. Didn’t she? The gate above her sprang open with a loud metal clang, and the racers shot out. Both the Canadians jumped hard and fast over the edge and cut toward the first jump, leaving Tigger nearly sideways behind them.

  Corey raised her eyebrows at Nate.

  “What?”

  “She got boxed out.”

  “Not my circus, not my monkey.”

  “But she’s kind of our friend,” Corey said.

  “Something you decided on your own,” Nate pointed out.

  “I didn’t mean to. It just happened. I only invited her to one party to be nice, because she’s Team USA.”

  “You keep saying ‘team,’ but I thought we’re all about being individuals and doing our own thing. Aren’t you Ms. I Hate Uniforms? Ms. Don’t Tell Me What To Do? Ms. ‘Drink Water’?”

  She grinned. “You summed up my whole life.”

  “We’ve met.”

  “Yeah, but you forgot the part where we’re not assholes. We do this for the love and thrills.”

  “And to score chicks,” he added.

  “Mostly for the chicks, but also not being assholes.”

  “Fine,” Nate said, then called to Tigger, who was bent over unstrapping the board. “Hey, kid.”

  “Yeah?” Her smile had grown grim, but not completely vanished.

  “Hike the start with Corey, okay?”

  “Uh, really?” She brightened. “Can I do that?”

  “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission,” Corey said, hauling herself to her feet.

  “And as Corey reminds me,” Nate said, “you’re on the same team.”

  “We are!” Nikki said, seemingly over her burn-out moments before. “Okay.”

  They kicked their boards off completely and carried them up the steep incline back to the starting gate with Nate close behind. As they reached the top, another group came flying out of the gate, two Brazilians and two Brits, judging by their bibs. After training in New Zealand for years, Corey had lost track of all the people who trained in Argentina. She sort of liked the fresh crop. Most of them had crossed paths at various tour events over the last few seasons, but the training camps offered real chances to interact for prolonged periods, and even with the language barriers, she still got a pretty good sense for who someone was as a racer by how they worked in close quarters with others on the same patch of track over and over and over.

  Another set of racers edged into the gates, this time all men, most of them recognizable to Corey. Five of them this time, promising more congestion on the first dip toward the turn.

  “You know who Nate Holland is?” Corey asked.

  “Uh, yeah.” Nikki said, leaving the obvious ‘duh’ unspoken.

  “He’s, like, 36 years old, but he’s still hanging strong with these guys half his age.”

  Nikki stared at her, clearly confused. “Okay, and?”

  “And nothing,” Corey said. “I only wanted someone else to note that fact. But he’s not the Nate you should focus on right now. The Nate huffing and puffing up the hill behind you is going to break down your start.”

  “Right,” Nate said. “Watch these guys here. You’ve got the same positioning, but you lacked the fluidity.”

  The men got into position with their arms gripped tightly on the little handlebars sticking out from each side of their chute, then slid back with their boards until their arms extended and their backs were level and flat.

  “Riders ready,” came the call. “Attention.”

  Then the barricades dropped and they sprang forward. Jostling for position, they didn’t stop at the top of the turn but kept right on going farther down the course.

  “What they did there wasn’t any different technically from what you’re doing,” Nate explained. “Your starting form is good, but you run through each and every step as if you’re trying to get them off a list. Like they’re separate little boxes and you’re ticking them as fast as you can, but you can’t check three things faster than one.”

  “Nate.” Another coach walked over. “How’s it going?”
>
  “Good, Chad.”

  “I’m Matt.”

  “Right,” Nate said in a way that made Corey snicker.

  “What’s up?” Matt asked.

  “Going through a little starting-gate practice.”

  “Cool,” he said, then nodded to Corey. “Nice work out there.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “All right, Nikki.” Matt motioned for her to follow him. “I want you to come back to the tech tent real quick.”

  • • •

  “Actually, Corey invited me to hike the start with her a couple times.”

  He frowned, then made a show of checking his watch: a bullshit move. He didn’t have a time schedule to follow.

  “Two runs,” Corey said.

  “Normally,” he shrugged, “I’d be all for it, but the youth camp directors . . .”

  She let the silence hang long enough to make him feel awkward. “She’s got a chance to work with the pros. Isn’t that who she’ll face when she makes the tour this year?”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “It’s just, we’re working a tight program these days. It’s not like it used to be.”

  “Back in ancient times?” She laughed. “I’ll make you a deal. You give us two runs, and if you don’t see improvement by the second time, I’ll come over and practice with your kids, your way, for two whole days.”

  “And if she does show some magical improvement?”

  “Then you let her spend some more time running with the big dogs.”

  “I assume by ‘big dogs,’ you mean you and Nate?”

  “Anyone else out there have three world championships and two Olympic medals?”

  He gave her a grudging nod of respect, and she felt a little relief to find her accomplishments still carried some weight, even if she hated having to play on the past to make a point.

  “Deal?” she asked.

  He folded his arms across his chest and lifted a shoulder. “Two runs.”

  “Come on,” Corey said to Nikki as they slid into position once again, between the two Canadians.

  “I can’t believe you talked back to him,” Nikki said, wonder heavy in her young voice. “I’ve never talked back to a coach.”