It was bigger than she’d expected, with a pitched roof and stone chimney, but made entirely from aged logs. Someone had hung about a thousand Christmas lights that she suspected never got taken down and tied gold ribbons around stairs up to the front door.
He popped his skis off and stuck them in the snow with a crunch. Nicole followed, grateful to release her bindings and march over the snow in boots.
Inside, the Powder Keg smelled like old wood and wet wool and maybe a little beer, which seemed appropriate for the name. A fieldstone fireplace filled one wall, with a stack of kindling and a note written in black Sharpie:Don’t be a jerk. Replace what you burn.
A slouchy sofa of faded green sprawled through a living room, sharing the space with some bean bag chairs. A mini-fridge hummed next to a sticker-covered Yeti cooler. An old percolator sat on a shelf with a jar of coffee, all under about seven avalanche beacons hanging in a festive row.
Someone had made a half-hearted attempt to decorate a small artificial Christmas tree with some cheap ornaments and clumps of old-school silver tinsel that hung like frozen tears.
“I know, I know,” Cameron said with an apologetic shrug. “This place is half frat house, half cozy cabin, all…mountain.”
“It’s perfect,” Nicole said, perching on a bench by the front door to take her boots off while Cameron toed out of his. “I mean, if you had to design a fort for brave kids, it would have looked like this.”
He laughed at that, crossing the space to open a door to a back room. He glanced in, then closed it.
“Some brave, some just reckless, but”—he jogged up a set of stairs, slowing at the top to look through a wooden railing at a loft—“no one is here. I’m not surprised, since it’s Christmas week.”
As she poked around, Cameron found a lighter and coaxed a fire to life, and soon heat crawled into the room and into Nicole’s bones. They slipped out of their jackets, tossed them on a bean bag, and settled on the green couch.
“Lots of chatter about a weather system on my radio,” he said, picking up a small device clipped to his jacket, frowning at the screen. “But this looks bigger than the models said. If gusts hit forty, lifts’ll shut down.”
“But we can ski to the base from here, right?” she asked, glancing toward the window to see snow swirling harder.
“With me, you can,” he assured her.
Relaxing a little, she turned to him. “So what’s your best wipeout story?” she asked. “I know you’re not a first-timer but I want to hear it.”
His smile faded, giving her the impression it was a doozy.
“Break anything?” she asked when he didn’t answer right away.
His mouth set and he looked right at the fire. “It’s not…pretty. Or funny.”
He soundedsoserious. “I think that’s the whole point of a wipeout story. Mine certainly wasn’t pretty or funny.”
His brows flicked. “Let’s pick another topic.”
She inched back, more from the tone than the request, but she nodded.
“Fine, but so you know, I’m not going to shy away from the tough topics,” she warned him. “So, let’s start with…” She gave him a playful poke in the arm, not surprised there were hard muscles under his ski sweater. “Relationships.”
He chuckled. “You do like the difficult things.”
“Hey, I just did a blue run for the first time in nineteen years. I feel powerful.”
Smiling, he turned to her. “You start. Anything serious in your past?”
“Not really,” she said without a moment’s hesitation. “I had a long-term boyfriend all through high school, probably because he was the one guy at Canyon View High School who didn’t ski. That was my prerequisite.”
He rolled his eyes. “And look at you now. A date with a ski patrol.”
So, itwasa date, she thought, fighting a smile. “Right? All this time I’ve been missing the joys of the Powder Keg. Incollege, I dated one guy for a year, but we fizzled. And in the past five years, I’ve given my heart, soul, and time to building my business at the ski shed.”
He nodded, considering all that.
“And you?” she pressed when he didn’t offer anything.
“Me? You’d cry if you saw my schedule,” he said on a laugh. “I drive forty minutes twice a week for classes at Weber State in Ogden, then I have, oh, I don’t know, ten hours a week of ambulance ride-alongs—not working, but training. I do rotations in the ER, and patrol. Between all that and my, um, you know, family, I don’t have much time.”
