Love Me Reckless (Love Me Dangerous #2)

Chapter 30

Chapter Thirty

SAWYER

Though I must nod off for a few hours, by 4:00 a.m. I’m wide awake thanks to the swish of the giant sequoia branches against my window. The wind increases as I lay there cradling Kirilee, adding to my worries. Windy days on the mountain can be tough.

I beg the minutes to slow down so I don’t have to leave my bed and Kirilee’s warmth. At least I lined up a ride to work with Carson so she’ll have my truck to get around in today.

How do I warn her about Shel without coming off like an asshole?

I need to get him to drop his threats.

If I don’t, he’s going to ruin everything.

Kirilee stirs when I slip from the covers. I sit at her side and caress her silky hair from her brow, then lean down to kiss her shoulder. Her eyes open slowly, a look of yearning on her sleepy face.

“Stay,” she whispers, her melancholy tone cracking something open inside me.

“Have fun with your friends today.” I kiss her softly and force a smile.

She gazes up at me. “I’m glad your brother’s here. ”

“He’s not staying,” I say, mostly for my own benefit.

“Could it be a start of something for you two?”

Not likely. “We’ll see.”

She frowns. “You’re worried about him.”

I stroke the smooth curve of her shoulder and lean down to kiss my favorite constellation of freckles. “Yeah. He’s… still struggling.”

“Can I help?”

Her kindness fills the spaces around my heart. I smile. “I’ll handle it, okay?”

Her eyes turn troubled, but I try to ease her worries with another kiss. Then I tear myself away and dress in my long underwear and work pants, my belt buckle clattering in the quiet room. Outside it’s still dark, but the swaying branches against my window create an illusion of dancing shadows that sends goosebumps down my arms.

Downstairs on the couch, Sheldon is a silent lump under blankets. I’m both relieved he’s still here, and not.

Carson and Brody move silently in the dark kitchen making food and sipping coffee, slipping past each other in a dance we’ve perfected these last few months.

“Morning,” Carson whispers before diving into the fridge for last night’s leftovers.

The lump on the couch hasn’t moved, but I feel the need to glance in Sheldon’s direction to make sure. “Morning.”

“There’s sausages if you want some,” Brody says from the open fridge in between sips straight from his personal carton of milk. He conjures up a hearty belch.

“Dude,” Carson scolds, nodding at the lump on the couch.

Brody cringes and stuffs the milk back into place. “See you beauties at muster.”

He grabs his thermos and lunch and shuffles toward the garage.

Outside, the bitter cold clamps my throat and stings my eyes. It’s at least ten degrees colder than yesterday, which means opening the mountain is going to be a bear. A gust of wind whips through the pines, making the branches sway .

Once we’re in Carson’s truck, he doesn’t waste any time. “Sheldon’s quite the character.”

“Yep.”

“You guys going to spend some time together before he ships off?”

“Yeah.”

“Sounds like he’s been through a lot.”

I stuff my hands between my thighs to warm them. “Yep.”

Finally, Carson seems to read that I’m not in a sharing mood, and the silence stretches between us. I watch the snowy landscape whizz by, my thoughts just as hazy.

At the gate, I brace for the guard to raise some kind of alarm when he registers my badge, but we’re waved in and Carson cruises to the employee lot. I join the dozen or so mechanics filing up the heated walkway to the maintenance building. Dawn is just a hint of steely blue in the eastern sky, outlining the jagged silhouette of the Bitterroots.

At muster, I was correct in my pre-dawn assessment. After teaming up in threes, we’re sent to manually inspect each tower for ice. The wind picks up as the sun rises over the mountains, making it feel even colder.

The first order of business each day is to start the lifts and check the stop times. The machinery is capable of withstanding severe temperatures, but the cables and sheave wheels that stabilize them can build up ice overnight in conditions like this.

And to make matters worse, because we’ll need to closely monitor each tower as the wind rises, as soon as the lifts are running, we’ll need to be on skis.

Conditions aren’t exactly awesome for skiing today. The wind has turned the slopes to hard, unforgiving ice.

At least the howling wind makes it impossible to carry on a conversation. After an hour of climbing up and down towers and zooming over icy slopes, we finally get all three lifts running.

Will anyone even want to ski today in these abysmal conditions ?

Back at base, I park my sled outside the quad’s lift shack and tromp inside. The lift operator, a young woman with jet-black hair and quiet eyes gives me a nod as I pass through to the storage room behind her. With dread, I step into my ski boots.

I hiss in pain as my toes cramp against the front of the boots. After huffing several deep breaths, I rock step out of the lift shack with my skis to the lift line.

“Men in Black!” someone calls. It’s two guys scissoring forward in the lift line.

I give them a salute and force a smile. When I try to let them go ahead of me, they insist I join them.

Great.

The searing pain in my toes steals my concentration, plus the two guests are super curious, asking all kinds of questions—how do the lifts run, what powers them, how do the detachable grips work, what happens to the chairs in the summer, are we ever going to expand the terrain, etc. Add in that I’m supposed to be observing the sheave assemblies as the chair passes through them without also freezing my face off, by the time I bid the two guests farewell my eyes are burning and my toes are on fire.

I’m about to ski down Powerline beneath the quad when my radio crackles. The Glory Basin chair has stopped, likely due to the higher winds in the upper basin. Up there, with only minimal tree cover, the lift is much more exposed.

“Where’s Reed?” McTavish barks over the radio.

I key my mike. “I just got off the basin quad.”

In the background, I hear only the wind, which means neither motor up there is working.

Shit.

“Hurry, bro,” Brody says over the radio.

I push off with my poles and race down the wide cat track, whizzing past thick forest and the occasional ski run that drops off to my right, into the abyss. After rounding a long curve that might as well tear my toes to shreds, the base of Glory Basin chair comes into view. It’s not as windy down here in the pocket, but a quick glance at the barren bowls and steep ridges above confirms that it’s howling up top.

At the base, about twenty skiers huddle in the cold, waiting in line for the lift, which isn’t moving, while descending skiers trickle in from the slopes above. All the way up the line, the chairs cradling our guests are swaying in the wind, skis and snowboards dangling into space.

I power wedge to a stop at the back of the loading zone and pop off both skis, then slip through the Ski Patrol gate and clomp to the stairs.

“Yasss, more help,” I overhear one of the guests say. “I’m freezing.”

The climb probably takes half a minute but it might as well be an hour. We are well past our “No Down Time” rule of a minute or less of no service—something McTavish warned should never happen. What’s gone wrong?

When I step onto the engine room, thanks to the windblown snow clinging to the plexiglass windows and the thick overcast sky, it’s dark and gloomy in here.

I hurry down the narrow corridor between the machinery and the deceleration assembly to where Brody, another mechanic named JT, and one of our electricians, a goofy dude named Ansel, are huddled over the diesel motor frantically working through a restart sequence. JT is an apprentice, so I’m not surprised he’s the one holding the giant flashlight for the others.

“Try it now,” Brody says from where he’s squatting at the base.

Ansel shakes his head.

“Shit,” Brody groans.

“Have you checked the fuel system?” I join Brody, whipping out my flashlight.

“Other than to make sure she’s gassed up, no.”

I follow the seams in the giant motor casing to the back, following the fuel line to the pump, where the fuel-water separator is located. It’s not in a very obvious spot, but it’s my first place to go in a no-start issue. It’s so dark in here that I have to get on my knees and crane my neck with the flashlight to see the clear housing section of the filter.

Bingo. “Fuel’s contaminated.”

“What?” Brody says, climbing over the hydraulic piston to get a look at the filter from another angle.

I point my gloved finger to as close as I can get between the machinery.

“Shit,” Brody says.

“Radio McTavish. We need a strap wrench and some place to drain the fuel.”

“You’re going for a bush fix when it’s twenty below?”

“You got a better plan?”

“Shit,” Brody says again.

McTavish comes over the radio. “Ski Patrol says we’ve got a medical situation on the one of the chairs. How close are we?”

“Ten minutes,” I say then curse to myself because no way can I meet that timeline. It’ll take me at least ten to get this mucked-up filter off and drain the fuel, and that’s only if I have the right tools.

Brody relays my ETA and request.

“Are you sure it’s the filter?” McTavish says in a rush.

“Reed says so.”

“All right,” McTavish replies. “I’m sending Stepanov from base with fuel. Strap wrench and siphon are going to take longer.” In the background, I hear the high whine of a snowmachine. Good, at least the fuel is on its way.

“What’s the medical?” I ask while feeling down and around metal parts so cold they sting my fingers, planning my next move.

Brody whips off his gloves to text using his phone, probably to one of the ski patrollers so he can keep the details off the radio.

“Not good,” Brody says, madly typing a reply. “A kid and his dad. The kid’s diabetic. It’s the cold. It’s zapping her energy. ”

I need to get that kid off the lift and safely into the arms of the ski patrol. Which means I’m not waiting for those tools.

“Ansel, hold the light. JT, get me a siphon and a container.”

The kid’s eyes widen. “How big?”

“Ten gallons should do it.” I give him a steely look of confidence. “Go!”

The kid takes off down the ladder.

Ansel comes in behind me, shining the light straight down. I unzip my ski suit to my waist so I can slip off my belt, then get as low as I can so I have a visual on the filter. It’s going to be tight to get in there, but I can do it.

“Any word from the power company?” Brody asks McTavish over the radio.

“Power’s out across the valley.”

Brody huffs a giant sigh, then seems to realize what I’m up to. “You’re gonna run it without the filter?”

“It’s short term.”

“McTavish is going to eat his fucking lips off.”

“Better than a kid going into a coma.”

“Right.”

“Hand me that channel lock,” I say, my voice strained from my odd position.

Brody wriggles between me and the hydraulic pump and slides the tool into my hands. I use it as a clamp on my belt looped around the cylinder. “Got it.”

The ladder rattles as JT returns. “What now?” he asks talking fast.

I eye him hurrying toward us with one of the Rubbermaid trash bins used to collect garbage from guests in the lift line and a section of hose I’m pretty sure came from the snowmaking equipment.

Fucking genius.

“Start siphoning the fuel.”

To my relief, he gets right to it. After this, I’m going to buy him a beer .

I crank the channel lock, which turns my belt into a cinch and bites the tension on the fuel filter. I hinge back and slip the belt to get more slack, then repeat the cinch action, rotating until the section with the filter comes off and drops into my other hand. I drain the housing into the catch bowl below it, then remove the filter and screw the housing back on.

“Almost done,” JT calls from the other side of the engine box.

The whine of an approaching snowmachine echoes between the walls.

“How much longer?” McTavish barks.

“A few minutes,” I say. Brody relays on the way down the ladder to meet Carson. They both return just as JT gets the last of the contaminated fuel from the tank.

Carson shuffles toward us, straining to hurry with the five-gallon jug. It only weighs forty pounds but it’s not an easy load one handed.

“Let’s do this,” I say, rolling to my feet and slipping my thick gloves back on.

Carson assembles the nozzle and pours in the fuel, which sloshes around inside the tank, making an odd echo in this place that’s usually too loud to carry on a conversation without shouting. Once Carson’s done, the three of us make eyes at each other before I start the engine.

A throaty rumble fills my ears and the diesel engine comes to life.

Below us, cheers ring out from the guests.

“We’re in business,” Brody says into his mike. “We’ll stay and shut her down after everyone’s unloaded.”

McTavish clicks the mike in acknowledgement.

After a quick round of high fives, we all clamber down the ladder.

I’m feeling pretty damn good about my efforts until I realize I still have to ski down once the lift closes. My toes give an angry throb inside my tight boots.

It’s late afternoon when I finally get a chance to eat lunch, which is a rock-hard power bar and a cup of lodge coffee huddled in the gondola lift shack with the liftie. So when my radio crackles to life, I suppress my groan. The diabetic kid Ski Patrol evacuated to the hospital is supposedly doing okay and the electricity came back on an hour ago… so what now?

“Need you to report to HR,” McTavish says.

“Uh, why?”

Before he can reply, another mechanic jumps in. “Drug test.”

“Now?” I ask, draining my coffee. When I hired on, passing a drug test was part of the deal, and the HR rep told me to expect random tests throughout the season.

“They just did one a week ago,” my lift shack companion says from his command post facing the giant windows. “This kid next door to me in the dorm popped positive for weed. They sent him home.”

“On my way,” I tell McTavish. At least I can change out of my ski boots for the walk over.

HR is on the other side of the laundry from the outfitting booth where I picked up my uniform and winter clothes from those cute little old ladies that first day. I’ve only met the hiring assistant, Leslie Jones, that one time when I completed my paperwork.

When I arrive at her office, five clear envelopes with vials inside them are lined up on her tidy desk. We’re brought in one at a time. Besides me, there’s one other mechanic, a ski patroller, and two lifties.

Leslie swabs my cheek and helps me fit it into the little tube, then double checks my name on it and on the plastic sleeve. Once it’s sealed, she peels off the pink receipt from the triplicate form on her desk.

“We’ll let you know the results by tomorrow.”

“I already know the results,” I say, mostly to myself.

Leslie gives me a polite smile.

After leaving HR, I join the gondola crew shutting down for the day.

I’ve been so busy I’ve only had quick moments to monitor my phone. Thankfully, Shel seems to be behaving himself, but I’m eager to rejoin Kirilee and the others to make sure.

First, however, I need to get to the bank before they close.

Because I don’t want to spend another day apart from Kirilee with Sheldon sniffing around. It won’t be long before he cooks up a plan to use her. The easiest way to protect her is to give him what he wants, then show him the door.