‘Mind you, in these mountains all you have to do is keep your eyes open and you’re looking at a great view.’
‘True.’
‘Have you visited this place before?’ he asked.
She glanced at him. ‘A few times. Why?’
‘To know that this is up here, I mean. It must have taken a bit of exploring to find.’
Damn. She hadn’t thought about that. ‘Yes, I suppose so. I like exploring.’ She shrugged her shoulders to emphasise the supposed randomness of finding of this spot.
‘Me too.’ Shuffling a gloved hand through some of the snow resting on the sloping roof, he sent a pile cascading onto the ground. ‘Are we agreeing about something?’ he said, his gaze on the view.
‘Must be a first,’ she said. ‘Don’t let it go to your head.’
‘Good point,’ he replied. ‘A sudden rush of blood to the brain like that could send me off balance. And then I’d have no chance of staying on your tightrope.’
‘I thought you’d have forgotten all about that,’ she said. ‘Listen, I apologise for standing you up yesterday. It was immature of me, but …’
She huffed a breath, unsure how to phrase her explanation. How to sum up, in a few words, the complex emotions she felt and the simplistic solutions she applied to survive her relationships with the opposite sex. Or rather, her lack of relationships. Her emotionally stifled, arm’s-length, taking-what-was-gratifying-without-giving-what-was-precious liaisons.
Nor did she know how to explain that the needs of her friend had crashed this particular party and had outweighed what she had presumed would be nothing more than another non-relationship anyway, with him.
On top of which, she had no idea how to express her feelings about the ramifications of that decision not to meet him. The churning of her stomach while she’d lain awake all night, with his note on the bedside table. Eyes wide open in the dark, wondering if she might just have made a huge mistake, even though she had no idea why she felt that way.
The air swirled away from her lips, giving her a momentary distraction. In the end, she decided not to explain. Never explain, never complain– wasn’t that the way it was supposed to be? Certainly, it was the mantra she had adopted over the years to deal with the intrusive nature of the world. Always a smiling face for the cameras, even if you were dying inside, right?
‘The thing is, after yesterday, I can’t imagine why you’d care what I think of you,’ she said.
He brushed more snow from the slope of the roof, watching it trickle over the edge like white sand, building up into little piles on the ground beneath.
‘And I can’t imagine why you’d think I didn’t,’ he said. He patted his gloves across one another, decisively ridding them of snow before he looked at her. ‘I know I went about this whole thing wrong, in that bar.’ He shook his head. ‘You can’t imagine the words I’ve been having with myself since then. But when I realised you weren’t coming to the pizzeria, it crystallised for me. I’d been kidding myself that you were interested, trying to force something into life from what was clearly nothing more than a self-assured, confident woman trying to politely tell a man to go and jump off a … well, it might as well be a mountain. For convenience’s sake.’
She huffed a laugh. ‘Politeness? Not one of my better-recognised qualities.’
He didn’t rise to the bait, remaining focused on finishing what he wanted to say. ‘The bottle of génépi was supposed to be an apology. For my inappropriateness in Le Bar.’
‘A bottle of génépi? As an apology?’
‘Well, there was another reason.’ He tilted his head. ‘I also thought we might get to enjoy it together. In the fantasy I’d constructed in my head, anyway.’
‘In a hot tub, I imagine?’ She was teasing, but he looked away, this time up at the star-studded sky.
‘I’m such a moron.’
When he didn’t say anything else, Tania said, ‘I feel it’s only fair to tell you that your line wasn’t the worst one I’ve ever heard.’
‘No?’
‘Not even top five.’
‘I’m not sure if I’m pleased about that or whether it leaves me feeling even more inadequate. Sad singleton eyes up super-sexy woman. Worst chat-up line ever ensues.’
She laughed softly. ‘Have you ever had sex in a hot tub?’
He frowned. ‘Oh, God. Stop punishing me. No, actually, I haven’t. Why?’
‘You’ve missed out. It’s fun.’ She watched his face, watched as his frown morphed into something bordering on surprise, then confusion. He looked at her, his face a hotbed of changing expressions. She liked the way he seemed incapable of hiding his emotions. ‘I’m just saying don’t discount it as an idea, but maybe keep the suggestion for a few dates in.’ She smiled at him. ‘Nothing wrong with your thought process, though.’
