Page 9 of Cold and Bitter Snow

He turned around and watched the door, ignoring her small hisses and gasps as she struggled with the T-shirt and the sweatshirt.

“I’m done,” she said. He turned around to look at her. She had recovered a bit of color around her cheeks. “I look a fright, don’t I?”

“You look great,” he said.

“Thank you, Conor.”

The fact that she remembered his name brought butterflies to his stomach again. Something twitched down in an area he wasn’t sure he’d ever find again, since his balls had climbed almost all the way into his body during the avalanche.

“You’re welcome.” He spoiled the moment by shivering. He needed to get changed as well.

He helped her out of the bathroom and sat her down on an old couch he didn’t think anybody had ever sat on before. From his locker, he grabbed a coconut power bar and opened it for her, placing it in her hand.

“Chew on this,” he said. “It’ll help. I’ll get changed and make you some tea.”

By the time he’d changed back into his dry uniform, noises at the front door told him the cavalry had found them.

Chapter 3

Siena

Siena grasped her tea mug tighter. She couldn’t have imagined she’d go from freezing to burning with anger in such a short space of time.

They’d been taken off the mountain in a helicopter. She’d refused to go to the hospital and insisted they head to the security chief’s office instead. It was on the second floor of a small building just off the slopes. She looked out the window. Just seeing the snow made her feel cold even though the heating was on high inside the well-appointed office. She wasn’t sure she’d ever feel properly warm again.

She looked at Markus Montgomery. For someone whose title was Head of Security, he seemed more concerned with what newspapers would report than with what had really happened out there.

He should be Head of Public Relations.

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him exactly what she thought of him but she forced herself to close her mouth. She already knew he didn’t want her here—maybe he considered it an affront that a younger woman had been hired to give him security tips, as he called them, or maybe he really didn’t think there was any room for improvement. Either way, they hadn’t started off on a good foot and she didn’t want to make it worse.

Conor’s boss, Jonatan Favre, was the exact opposite. Although it was clear Conor had gotten him out of bed with his call, he was alert and seemed determined to get to the bottom of the incident. Between them sat Laurent Lagarde, Le Miroir’s Operations Director.

“Are you sure there wasn’t anybody else there at the time of the avalanche?” Lagarde had asked before but it made sense to Siena that he’d want to check again.

“I’m 99.99% sure, Laurent,” Conor replied. “There was nobody else around and the lifts hadn’t opened yet.”

“We should hear from the ski patrol soon. Jacques and the team will be able to tell us what happened,” Montgomery said, smoothing an invisible wrinkle on his pressed chinos. He looked disapprovingly at her outfit—she was still wearing the same borrowed tracksuit bottoms and oversized sweatshirt.

“We already told you what happened,” Siena said, holding on to her patience by a thread.

The older man narrowed his eyes at her. “You claim you heard shots. How many shots, Miss Blake?”

Conor took a step forward. “I’ve already told you it was three shots, Montgomery, and the answer will not change regardless of how many times you ask us. I know what a shot sounds like.”

“Really?” Montgomery leaned back as if he’d just heard a good joke. “And may I ask why you are so sure, Mr. Hudson?”

A muscle ticked behind Conor’s jaw. Siena already knew what he was going to say, of course—she’d taken the chance to look into his past after meeting him one week earlier—but she didn’t know if anybody else knew.

“I was a Captain in the United States Army—retired three years ago.”

Jonatan Favre’s mouth opened in surprise but he closed it quickly.

“You can be sure I’ll check into that, Mr. Hudson,” Montgomery said noncommittally. “And you claim you were out jogging after your night shift,” he said accusingly.

“I was,” Conor said easily.

“And what about you, Miss Blake? What were you doing up there before the resort opened? Were you meeting Mr. Hudson, perhaps?”