White.
White sleet, white flakes, white smoke rising from chimneys and into the white clouds in the late afternoon sky. A thick, pretty ocean of white lay claim to every piece of land that I could see, glittering snow coating the wintery landscape like sand caked the coast back home. It was like I'd blinked and woken up in the North Pole.
Or Narnia.
I turned away from the picture-windows and back toward Dex as he hovered in the spacious lounge. Although 'lounge' was a vast understatement of a room bigger than ten of Camden's dorm rooms combined. In fact, 'cabin' was an understatement of what that place truly was. If the building I'd wound up in—with its high ceilings, three floors, and lavish, open floorplan—was a cabin, then my mother's house on the coast was a shoebox.
A Louboutin shoebox. Naturally.
"So?" Dex asked, waving a hand about the room sheepishly. It was both rustic and sleek at the same time, planks of oak and blocks of stone adorning the walls and floors. "What do you think?"
What did I think?
I mirrored his gesture, drinking in the rich, fuzzy rugs and the slinky, sheer drapes. "It's beautiful, Dex. All of it."
He arched a brow. "But?"
I couldn't stop the smile that tugged at my lips. I had to give it to him; if that road trip was good for one thing, it was bringing Dex one step closer to reading me.
Maybe Noah had a point with that theory of his, after all.
"It's just ..." I shrugged, "I thought we were staying at a resort-resort. Like, a hotel ..." Our cabin seemed more like an Airbnb.
A ridiculously expensive Airbnb.
He scrunched his nose, not really understanding my insinuation at all. "This is a hotel."
I could only scoff in reply.
When Dex first pulled me out of Skip's truck to show off our view of the estate, I'd thought that the relics of civilization dotting the horizon were all part of some charming, small town that I'd simply never heard of. As it turned out, it was part of the resort. All of it. The dozens of restaurants and boutiques that looked straight out of a movie. The iced-over lake and skaters glazing it. The state-of-the-art chairlift that transported guests in skis to and from various peaks. It was far, far from anything I'd ever describe as a resort. It was its own little world encased in a snow globe.
Really, I should have been used to every word in my friends' vernacular being an understatement of what they were actually referring to. And, suddenly, I felt stupid for not realizing it sooner. Because when Dex assured me that his parents were happy to foot the bill for my stay, what I hadn't expected was to crash somewhere so obviously affluent.
It made me feel like a burden. A charity case. Amongst her old nose and her penchant for sarcasm, I'd inherited my distaste for being the subject of charity from my mother.
"Guys?" Noah's voice called from the next room.
"We divvied up the bedrooms on the way up here," Dex explained as he led me away from the windows and into the foyer. "You're upstairs, second door on the right."
I nodded absent-mindedly as I took in my surroundings. James, Skip, and Noah were sorting through our luggage at the foot of the mahogany staircase, which had been festively offset by garlands of holly wound around the wooden banisters. But while the three of them were working in tandem, I couldn't help but notice that conversation only flowed between two of them.
James, on the other hand, was uncharacteristically quiet.
I stepped over Dex's backpack to join him by the banister. He had his back to me as he rummaged around in his suitcase, and I placed my hand over his arm to get his attention. "Hey—"
He jolted upright, and I withdrew my hand apologetically.
He took a sharp breath before steadying himself. "Hey. Sorry. I was just ... thinking." He made a very clear effort to throw me a grin, but the concern threading his brow was starting to rouse mine.
In all honesty, I knew that something was up with James. I'd known as soon as the dust settled after our almost-collision on the road the night before. Because James Bennet was a lot of things. He was smart, he was capable, and he was calm, cool, and collected basically all of the time.
One thing that James wasn't was scared. He didn't even know the meaning of anxiety. As far as I knew, it just wasn't in his chemical makeup.
But when Dex offered to take over driving duty the previous night, when James slid in beside me in the back, I instantly felt that something was off. He was distant. He was quiet. He clearly wasn't okay. I didn't know why, but the why didn't really matter. All I knew was that, for once, James needed us to be there for him. He was the protector of our group, the solid foundation that kept us upright. But, last night, he'd needed us to support him.
Maybe he still did.
I rested my hand over his arm again, ignoring the butterflies that stirred in my stomach at our proximity. Now was so not the time to indulge them. Still, I loved that even in a room full of other people, it felt like the two of us were completely alone.
"How are you?" I asked, making an effort to keep my voice low. The others were still busying themselves with their luggage, but I knew that James would appreciate my discretion.
He peered back at me, the veil over his blue gaze making it unreadable. But I knew him too well—he couldn't really hide from me—and I knew there was something more than apathy bubbling under the surface.
He shrugged. "I'm fine." I didn't get a chance to press him further. He motioned to my suitcase at the base of the stairs. "I grabbed your stuff—"
"Well, technically, I grabbed it."
I whipped around, following the sound of the cool drawl that'd cut him off. Skip was hovering by the banister opposite us, running a red mittened hand through his dark, tousled hair.
James bit down on an unruffled smile, his expression devoid of jollity. "If you want to get technical, then you grabbed her handbag." He mimicked Skip's movements, leaning back casually against his banister and folding his arms beneath his chest. "I brought her luggage."
"And I drove her here."
James didn't quip back. That was unusual—he was the last person in the world to be bested at banter. But only silence consumed us, so heavy and thick that we could have heard a pin drop. We could have heard an atom drop. We could have heard literally any sound in the universe, because no one was breathing let alone speaking.
Only ten seconds ago, I'd truly believed that both James and Skip were as close as society would get to recreating perfect gentlemen in the twenty-first century. Both were charming. Both were perpetually easy-going and almost too polite—too polite compared to the likes of me, at least. But, now, both were throwing verbal daggers over my head, the air between them becoming colder and denser with every dry quip.
It was still the politest disagreement I think I'd ever witnessed, like two baby fawns were fighting over a patch of freshly sprouted grass. Still, it was cause to wonder—what the hell happened between them while I was asleep?
I cleared my throat loudly, but that did little to pull their attention.
"Okay..." I clapped my hands together, as though the sudden noise would jolt them from their silent standoff. My discussion with Dex about the finances of our arrangement would have to wait; my new priority was separating James and Skip before the cold war brewing between them generated sparks of the nuclear kind. "I'm going to get settled so we can go—"
Before I could wrap my fingers around the handle of my suitcase, my hand was intercepted by a far larger mittened one.
"I've got it," Skip beamed, looking down at me fondly from the second rung of the staircase.
I peered up at him curiously, resisting the urge to knit my brow. How had his mood swung back from brash to charming so very quickly?
Boys were confusing.
My very first instinct was to shrug him off. I could handle my own luggage, thank you very much. But then I realized that Skip had actually handed me a solution to my initial problem. This was the perfect way to break up the warring fawns before they turned into warring leopards. In fact, it seemed like the only way.
Besides, I wasn't one to pass up on free labor.
"Second door on the right!" Dex reminded us as we took to the stairs.
But, as I followed Skip up that staircase, letting him lead me down the winding hall on the other side, something in my gut warned me that this wasn't going to be as simple as a case of free labor. Moreover, I knew deep down that none of what Skip was doing would come without some kind of cost. The kind of cost that I actually could afford to pay, but the kind of cost that I really didn't want to.
I guess that's what I got for putting myself in that situation.
Because I'd be an idiot not to see Skip was kind of, sort of, maybe into me. Deep down, I knew I wasn't just another customer to him. It was that very hunch that had driven me to wield my womanly charms against him in the first place. Somehow, I'd justified taking him up on his offer to give us a ride. After all, he was the one who'd offered, and when I'd asked him whether he could drop us off at the resort, he'd told me that it was on his delivery route anyway.
I couldn't help but notice that he hadn't unloaded any trees here.
I also couldn't help but notice that his latest favor—swapping his chauffeur hat for a bellboy one, that is—had nothing to do with helping my friends. That is, it was a Madison-specific favor. Which likely meant that he was expecting a Madison-specific sign of gratitude.
I felt a ball building in my throat at the thought, but my mouth was too dry to swallow it away.
He was first to make it to my intended room, dropping my things by the foot of the bed as I slunk in after him.
And then passed away.
If I thought that the first floor of the chalet was breathtaking, then I'd need a ventilator to assist my poor lung capacity on the second. The far-side of the all-white master bedroom was on a raised platform, culminating in floor-to-ceiling windows that looked down on the snowy grounds below. The king-sized bed was dressed in silk and cashmere, a white fur rug draped underneath to make the whole thing look as though it was floating in the sky. I hoped it was faux, but I highly doubted it. Nothing in that room was fake—not the wood, not the fur, and certainly not the glimmering cabinet details.
I nodded to myself, confirming my earlier thought. There was absolutely no way that Dex's parents were paying for my stay here. They were wealthy, of course, but this was some next level nobility kind of rich. As far as I knew, Derek Van Der Yates wasn't a duke.
Although, at the rate things were going, I wouldn't have been all that surprised.
"Thanks." I smiled gratefully as Skip popped the last of my things on the floor. The thick rug welcomed my feet like a cloud, and I resisted the urge to lie down and nap right on top of it.
Like me, Skip appeared to be encased in a trance as he took in the view in front of us, his eyes likely as wide and glassy as mine. The overcast sky was starting to set in golden and orange tones, casting a warm hue over the cool sea of blue.
"How long are you in town for?" he asked, his voice coming out in a low timbre that startled me.
I felt a small frown cloud my features. "I'm not sure." Actually, it was the first time I realized that my friends had never given our trip an actual end date. Still, there were two days until Christmas, so an end date wasn't really that high on my list of immediate priorities. "Until the twenty-sixth, I guess."
"That's perfect actually ..." he trailed off as he turned from the view, bowing his head slightly and taking a deep breath.
I felt a squeeze in my stomach. I felt like I couldn't breathe.
When his eyes fluttered back to mine, they burned with intensity so bright that it rivaled the sun bouncing off the snow.
"Madison," he asked, "do you want to go out sometime?"
What do you think? Does Madi want to go out sometime?