Snowfall Page 5
“I would love to.” She pulled him close and kissed him full on the mouth, letting it linger a bit, just as Gina approached.
Jean broke the kiss by lifting his head. Riley looked at Gina just as Jean’s arm went around her shoulders in a move that declared, This is my woman.
Anger furrowed Gina’s lovely face. She stamped her skis as the final lift arrived and Riley and Jean let it carry them up and away.
Smothering their laughter, they
sat thigh to thigh as it only inched up, giving people at the top time to get their torches and start down.
Jean put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “Thanks for the rescue, but I hope it means more than that. I realize how badly I must’ve hurt you. I am truly and deeply sorry.”
Close to tears because she was in his arms again and wasn’t sure it would last, Riley surrendered to all the hurt and pain she’d kept bottled up for years and let them spill out. “You not only ignored me, you then married the woman you said didn’t ski as well as I did. The woman who took the spot that should’ve been mine on that first World team. The meet I could’ve won gold for my country. “Even married, you could have sent word when I tore my ACL. Hundreds of people who’d never met me sent cards, flowers, candy, and stuffed toy animals. You didn’t just break my heart, Jean-Claude, you shattered it.”
“Good Lord, Riley. If I’d known how to reach you when you were hurt, I’d have been there for you, married or not. Right after I’d won a second gold, the team flew to Switzerland to tour and present exhibitions. We were gone a month, but as soon as I learned about your injury, I sent letters to your apartment. They weren’t answered. Would’ve left messages on your phone, but it wasn’t on. When I got back to the States, I left messages on your dad’s phone and sent letters to his address, but, again, no response.”
Riley’s heart ached when she realized what had happened. “Oh, I’m so sorry. My dad must have blocked you. He knew how much you’d hurt me and he was protecting me from more pain. He certainly didn’t give me any letters you’d sent, and didn’t mention you had called.”
“And I assumed you’d found someone else. Believe me, despite my crumbling marriage, I desperately wanted to reach you.”
Riley snorted. “A marriage I had to learn about, stuck in bed with a painful damaged leg, from a news magazine. Why did you marry the bitch?”
“That describes her perfectly.”
“I’m glad you agree. So, why marry her?”
“You were rarely in my life anymore, and drunk as shit on champagne and celebrating my second gold at World, I gave in to her sexual advances. We were in Vegas, and afterward, she lured me into a drive-in marriage ceremony. The next morning, I realized I’d tied the knot with someone I’d never liked. We quarreled daily about even the smallest things. Nothing, dammit, was too little for her to rail at me about. I married her while being intoxicated as hell—it was a wonder I could even get it up—and stayed only because she’d told me she was pregnant.
“I should’ve known it was a lie. I’d sensed I shouldn’t depend on her when she said she was taking contraceptive pills. Even though I was four sheets to the wind, I’d had enough sense to use a condom that first time. Continued using them after marriage, too. None of them had failed, and she said she’d forgotten to take a pill.
“Later, I discovered she’d had an inserted IUD that was over ninety-five percent effective. Between that and my condoms, there was no way I—or anyone else doing the same—could’ve impregnated her.
“I divorced her scheming ass when I figured out she’d never loved me. She’d lied to me to stay connected to a gold medalist. It gave her the status she craved, which her own skiing skills denied her.”
“Sort of like Gina.”
“Trust me, love, I spotted Gina’s motives a mile away. My divorce ended before I learned Margo had slept around on me. She’d tried to destroy my self-confidence with her constant criticisms, but I’d survived, grateful to be free of her. But learning of her infidelity was a major blow to my ego, and having lost contact with you really did a job on me. Only returning to skiing meets saved me. And now, at last, I’ve found you. “
Riley told him about Donley, and how Jean had probably been right when he’d mentioned Margo could have been sleeping with someone to be named in Riley’s place in that first World. “Having a private coach because of his obsession with me kept us apart too much.”
When they came off the lift, Jean pulled her into the darkness, drew Riley close, and kissed her until her knees buckled and those giving out torches encouraged them to ski.
“It was a terrible time for me. You were the one I’d planned to marry, and not being with or talking to you nearly killed me. But that lousy marriage reinforced how much you mean to me. I should’ve chosen a more dangerous run for training this winter, but I chose this one because you’re here, Riley. You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved.”
Tears raced down Riley’s cheeks.
He wiped them away with a gloved finger. “Until the season ends, and we figure out what to do next, will you please let me love you?”
“Oh, yes. Yes.”
They stood at the top of Satan’s Domain with their torches flaring brilliant and golden against the night sky, their gazes locked. Jean whispered, “Ski with me.”
Joy flooding her, Riley did.
And later, in the deep darkness of his cottage, she opened her body and her heart to him. She wept again as the sweetness that had always been Jean rolled through her after they had climbed the summit and found the stars together.
Still wrapped in his arms, naked and damp with sweat from their lovemaking, Riley roused because Jean whispered a question in her ear. “Always and forever?”
“Always and forever.”
THE END
ABOUT CAROLINA VALDEZ
For Carolina Valdez, books and writing have been a major pleasure in her life. She composed her first stories at the age of eight, and since books were almost nonexistent in her parents’ home, she read everything in the elementary school library. Her mother took her to the nearest county branch, and the librarian selected appropriate adult books for her to read. A major treat was to scout used bookstores searching for her favorite authors.
Multi-published and winning awards in nonfiction and fiction, Valdez decided to begin a novel. She had it in her head that if you were a real writer, you wrote a book. She had no idea what she was writing until a member of her critique group mentioned her “romance.” Enthralled by that genre, she has focused on it ever since.
She is a member of RWA-PAN (the Published Author Network of Romance Writers of America) and RWA's Orange County, California, and Pasic chapters. Suspense and murder crop up in her romances because she's also a member of the Los Angeles chapter of Sisters in Crime.
She and her husband reside in southern California, only minutes away from mountains, desert, or beach.
For more information, visit carolinavaldez.com.
ABOUT JMS BOOKS LLC
JMS Books LLC is a small queer press with competitive royalty rates publishing LGBT romance, erotic romance, and young adult fiction. Visit jms-books.com for our latest releases and submission guidelines!