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  But although she was beginning to feel better, warm and cherished as though nothing could ever harm her again, Mark was still responding to her pain. There was so much compassion in his gaze. He seemed to understand her even though she hadn’t revealed a thing.

  “I wish it were that easy.” he said simply.

  “It has to be.”

  “No,” he said tenderly, shaking his head and Lindsay realized he was speaking from his own experience. “It never is. Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

  “I wish I could,” she said and meant it. She knew intuitively that if anyone would empathize with her, Mark would, but she didn’t understand her feelings clearly enough to express them.

  “All it takes is getting the first words out,” he said. “They’re always the hardest.”

  “No. First you have to figure out what it is you need to say. I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “This is a great place for thinking things through. Maybe you’ll figure it out while you’re here.”

  He brushed a kiss across her forehead then and gave her a comforting squeeze. “Go on to bed. You could use a good night’s sleep. We’ll talk some more tomorrow.”

  She gazed into his eyes, expecting something more. He smiled tenderly and repeated firmly, “Go on to bed.”

  Lindsay walked to her room with conflicting emotions raging inside her. She was grateful that he had let her go, that he had probed only so deeply and no further. But unwittingly he had brought to the surface feelings and fears she hadn’t experienced in years, and she knew it was going to take more than a weekend in this peaceful, serene environment to cope with them.

  As if trying to deal with her long-buried memories weren’t bad enough, he had also stirred brand-new emotions and desires. Used to keeping most members of the opposite sex at arm’s length, she was confused and frightened by her longing to be more closely involved with this particular man. She was even more puzzled by his failure to pursue the advantage he obviously knew he had. With very little effort they both knew he could have joined her in her bed tonight, and yet he had chosen to send her on alone, to leave her with her tumultuous thoughts.

  Suddenly feeling a little lost, a little lonely, she gazed back at him. He was staring into the fire, and from the expression on his face she could tell that he had gone away into his private world, one that was far away from her and filled with a pain she couldn’t begin to understand.

  She wanted to go to him, to comfort him, as he had her, but she’d learned a few things about Mark Channing in the last twenty-four hours and she suspected that his pride was as strong as his sense of self-confidence. Whatever it was that had affected him so deeply, it was his burden alone. He would share it with her only when he was ready, just as she had her own fears and secrets to protect.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Sunday morning Lindsay was awake practically at dawn, too emotionally wound up to sleep any longer. She’d tossed and turned all night trying to figure out why she was so reluctant to become even casually involved with a man as attractive, vital and intelligent as Mark Channing. For that matter, she wondered why for so many years now, she’d been running so hard to escape any type of involvement. There was no denying that she had been running. Too many men had tried to get close to her and failed.

  She’d always told herself she wanted a meaningful career and that a relationship would only interfere with that goal. But she was established and successful now. She could afford to take time out for a personal life, and yet she had continued steadfastly to turn aside the overtures of most men. None of the others had been a particularly big loss, but she knew instinctively that Mark Channing was another story and perhaps that was the problem. He would never be easy to walk away from once she’d let him into her heart.

  So why do I feel so strongly that I’d have to leave him behind? she wondered, and suddenly she was right back at the beginning of the same vicious circle. Maybe Mark was right. It could be about time she tried to find the words to explain her fears, first to herself and then perhaps to him. She resolved to try.

  That decision made, she began to wonder again about the pensive state in which she’d left Mark last night. Had it been caused by something she’d said that reminded him of painful memories? She went over and over their conversation, trying to pinpoint anything that might have hit him too close to home. But the truth of the matter was she knew very little about Mark’s personal life and only somewhat more about his professional life. Trent had packed her up and sent her on her way with the skimpiest briefing she’d ever had. It was one of the reasons she’d been so furious with her boss. She never liked to go into a situation without knowing everything necessary, and in this instance she knew next to nothing about David Morrow. Hell, she hadn’t even known that he lived quietly in the mountains as Mark Channing.

  Finally, tired of dealing with questions for which she had no answers, she threw off the warm covers and climbed out of bed. Hesitantly, recalling yesterday’s disgustingly pale gray excuse for midmorning in Denver, she peeked through the blinds in her room and discovered shimmering streaks of gold in the sky. The sun here didn’t even pretend to offer the warmth of California sunshine, but it had created a veritable fairyland of diamonds glittering on the snow.

  She glanced at her watch and saw that it was barely seven a.m. By Mark’s standards that was probably the middle of the day, but she didn’t hear a sound anywhere in the rest of the house. He was either still asleep or already outside exploring the day’s offerings. Ironically, she realized she wanted to be out there, too. Even the idea of actually mastering this ridiculous cross-country skiing seemed important in her muddled state of mind. Some of her brain waves must have frozen yesterday while she’d been out there rolling around in the snow.

  She pulled on her ski outfit, which had miraculously dried overnight, and tiptoed down the hall, not wanting to wake Mark if he was still snug in his bed. In the living room she noted that the room was cold, the fire now no more than dying embers, and, to her surprise, Mark was sound asleep in front of it, still in his jeans and wool shirt, his dark hair tousled, his jaw shadowed with an early-morning beard.

  Lindsay stared at him, an odd, yearning ache filling her. Even asleep, he was an impressive sight, though he looked uncomfortable with his tall frame scrunched up on the too-short sofa. She wondered again what turbulent thoughts had kept him awake so late that he had fallen asleep at last right where he was, rather than down the hall in his own room.

  Lindsay got an afghan from her room and gently spread it over him, her hand lingering on his shoulder. She only barely resisted the urge to caress the dark stubble on his cheeks. Quickly, before she could give in to temptation, she pulled on her jacket and went out the door. As soon as she opened it to slip outside, Shadow rose up from his spot at Mark’s side and followed her. His tail wagged hopefully.

  “Okay, fellow, come on,” she whispered as they went out into the icy morning air. A blast of bone-chilling wind hit her full force, but she pulled her bright turquoise knit cap farther down over her ears and kept going. She was determined not to be put off by the weather, no matter how awful it was. She was going to be gliding around on these damn skis like a pro by the time Mark woke up. Either that or she was going to break something important and spend the next month recuperating on some nice, warm beach at Trent Langston’s expense.

  With Shadow frolicking along beside her in a display of suddenly boundless energy that seemed to match her own high spirits, she clicked her boots into place on the skis and set off across the field behind the house. Every muscle in her body protested her renewed attempt to perform this unnatural act, but she persisted and suddenly she realized that she was actually gliding instead of stomping, her arms moving in tandem with her legs and all of her staying perpendicular to the ground.

  “Shadow, I’m doing it,” she called excitedly as the dog bounded back to her and barked. They were in the midst of a rowdy, joyous celebration, when Mark po
ked his head out the door, rubbing his eyes sleepily.

  “What’s all the noise about?” he mumbled, his morning voice husky.

  Lindsay skied over to him, dropped her ski poles and threw her arms around his neck. “I did it. I actually skied.”

  Mark’s arms instinctively wound around her and held her against his chest, his suddenly laughing eyes meeting hers. “It’s not half bad once you catch on, is it?”

  “It’s wonderful,” she said gleefully, then grinned at his smug expression. “Well, maybe not wonderful, but it’s pretty great.”

  “I—”

  “Don’t say it,” she warned. “If you even think about saying I told you so, I will take these skis off and wrap them around your neck.”

  He feigned fear. “I promise I won’t say a word,” he agreed quickly. “Besides, I much prefer having your arms around my neck anyway.”

  Lindsay suddenly realized the intimacy of their embrace and started to back away, but Mark shook his head. “Oh, no, you don’t. You started this. You’re not quitting on me now.” He hesitated. “There is just one thing, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Do you suppose you could come back inside or wait until I get my jacket? I am about to freeze to death.”

  Lindsay started chuckling at the plaintive tone in his voice. “Interesting turn of events.”

  “Isn’t it, though?” he agreed dryly. “So, what’s it going to be?”

  “You come out here. Shadow and I are having too much fun to come inside.”

  “Shadow?”

  Lindsay looked around. The dog had vanished. She peered past Mark into the living room. He was flopped out in front of the fireplace again, apparently relieved that he no longer needed to chaperone her now that his master was awake to do it.

  “Traitor,” she muttered accusingly as Shadow’s tail thumped once. She grinned at Mark. “Okay, you come out and play with me. I’ll keep practicing.”

  The rest of the day held the same sort of magical spell that had begun in the morning. She and Mark skied for another hour, chatting amiably about everything from forest creatures and environmental protection to Sunday comics and freedom of the press. They carefully avoided discussing books and movies as if they both knew that to bring them up would lead to an inevitable fight about the contract that still sat untouched in Lindsay’s briefcase.

  When Mark said something that totally outraged her, something about women who worked getting too caught up in political office games to retain their natural femininity, Lindsay stopped, bent down and loosely packed a huge snowball in her mittened hands. Then she called out to him. When he turned around to see what she wanted, she threw it straight into his smug face.

  “Why, you little...” he sputtered, advancing on her, as he brushed snow off his ruddy cheeks and out of his hair, where it glistened like multi-hued opals against black velvet.

  Lindsay had the distinct impression from his menacing scowl that he was not coming after her to congratulate her on her aim. She began backing up. If she’d thought it difficult to learn to move forward on skis, she now discovered that it was virtually impossible to go backward, at least for her. Mark was on top of her before she could even consider simply turning around and skiing forward in the opposite direction.

  “Come here, you little rebel,” he ordered.

  She stood her ground. “I am not a little rebel. I am a woman who can successfully combine a career and a personal life perfectly well, thank you very much,” she said, conveniently dismissing the fact that her personal life consisted of an occasional movie with a friend and an endless number of salads eaten alone at night in front of a TV. “And except for this dumb underwear you’ve got me wearing, I am very feminine.”

  “Is that so?” he taunted, skiing closer. “Let me check that out.”

  “Take my word for it.”

  “Tsk, tsk,” he retorted. “And you a lawyer.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “You should know all about evidence. You can’t build a good case without evidence.”

  She eyed him narrowly. “Exactly what evidence do you hope to gather?”

  “I might be able to tell if you’re as feminine as you say you are from a kiss,” he suggested, as heat began to build slowly and persistently inside Lindsay until she felt as though she was again in front of the fire.

  “My femininity is not at issue here.”

  “Oh, yes, it is. You brought it up, in fact.”

  “No. You brought it up.”

  “I merely made a general statement about the femininity of certain women in the business world. You took it personally. Now that you have, I think you ought to back up your statement.”

  “Sounds like a self-serving demand to me.”

  “Oh, I think a kiss might be worth both our whiles.”

  “And a kiss would do it?” she asked, suddenly breathless. “You’re sure?”

  He nodded. “It’s a start.”

  “Well...”

  Before she could complete the sentence, Mark’s head had descended toward hers and his lips were teasing the corners of her mouth, his tongue flicking against her lips until they parted on a sigh. His arms went around her then and their mouths locked with a hungry urgency that robbed her of all strength. She felt weightless, as though he’d lifted her off the ground and carried her away to another time and place that was filled with warmth and sunshine and joy. She wanted that kiss to go on forever, but Mark’s lips were leaving hers and then she really was in his arms, her legs dangling crazily with her skis clattering together like noisy wind chimes.

  “Put me down, you idiot,” she pleaded, laughing. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Inside.”

  “Inside?”

  “I think I need to gather more evidence.”

  “You can get all the evidence you need right here.”

  He looked her straight in the eye and shrugged, plunking her unceremoniously back on her feet, but not letting her out of his arms.

  “If you say so,” he said pleasantly. Too pleasantly, she realized too late. He began to unzip her jacket.

  “Now what are you doing?” she asked, her eyes widening in dismay as she tried to bat away his all-too-persistent hands. She didn’t seem to be doing a very effective job of it, either. Her jacket was unzipped and his hands were grazing breasts that were instantly taut and aching despite being underneath still more layers of clothes.

  “I was wrong. There’s more to this evidence stuff than just a kiss,” he informed her airily.

  “But you promised a kiss would do it,” she responded, a hint of desperation in her voice. Two more minutes of this spiraling pleasure that curled through her and she wasn’t going to be able to ask him to stop. If anything, she would be begging him to go on, to make love to her.

  “One kiss. That’s what you said,” she repeated dazedly.

  “That was before I knew that it was only the tip of the iceberg.”

  A little flicker of fighting spirit rallied. “You take a single layer of my clothing off out here and I will be an iceberg.”

  He grinned at her hopefully. “Then you’re ready to come inside?”

  She beamed back and nodded. “I am going inside,” she said agreeably, then added, “but you’re not. I think you need the Boulder equivalent of a cold shower. Go roll around in the snow.”

  Mark’s expression fell. “Now I know how Morrie must have felt,” he said in a dejected tone. “You’re cruel and heartless, just as I suspected. It’s all that fighting for position in the business world.”

  “Don’t think you’re going to manipulate me into your bed, Mark Channing,” Lindsay retorted, waving her ski pole at him threateningly. “I’ll make love to you when I’m good and ready.”

  His eyes lit up and she had a feeling she’d just uttered a very backhanded commitment, one she’d had no intention of making.

  “Then you will make love with me?” he said. “Soon?”<
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  “When hell freezes over,” she said defiantly, then looked around her at the icicles clinging to the tree branches and the never-ending snow that covered the ground like a thick winter blanket and wondered if it already had. Certainly the odds of her holding out much longer against Mark’s increasingly provocative advances were not something they’d want to bet on in Las Vegas.

  However, not once for the rest of the day, did he even brush up against her by accident, much less by design. They ate lunch, then spent the afternoon in front of the fire reading in companionable silence while classical music played softly on the stereo. Every now and then Lindsay would peer over the top of the book and watch Mark as he read, his brow furrowed in concentration. It was the first time she could ever recall being so at ease spending time with a man in an environment that didn’t contain a desk or conference table. It was, in fact, the first time she’d had so much unplanned time stretched out in front of her to do with as she pleased. Right now simply being with Mark pleased her very much. She felt no need to entertain, no desire to be entertained. Just being with him gave her an enormous feeling of contentment.

  Later, they fixed dinner together, battling over the proper way to do the lettuce for the salad. She thought it should be torn. He wanted to slice it into shreds. Stubbornly, they each fixed one their own way and traded the finished product.

  “Okay, so it tastes the same,” Lindsay grumbled, when they were sitting at the table. “I’m sure Craig Claiborne and Julia Child would be appalled if they saw lettuce all diced up into little shreds this way. Can you imagine this being served at the Four Seasons?”

  “This isn’t the Four Seasons,” Mark retorted. “As for your experts, if they’re that picky, I would never invite them to dinner. I refuse to have culinary snobs at my table.”

  “They would love this stew though. Did you make it?”