Complete Harmony Read online

  “Thank you. Just say ‘thank you.’”

  He heard the words in a faint shout as he made his way to the outer doors, texting Laura and Dylan.

  * * *

  “I am going to die,” Laura said in a low, shaking voice.

  “It’s skiing. Not BASE jumping. You aren’t cage fighting. You’re riding down a tiny slope on skis.” Mike sighed. People let their fear get in the way of the exhilarating push down a mountain. The control, the easy glide, the heart-pumping challenge of the slopes—nothing was better.

  Well, sex was better. And fatherhood. And love. But aside from those…

  “Death on sticks,” she grumbled.

  Try as he might, he couldn’t get her off the bunny slope. This was a source of endless teasing from his staff. When Mike had been “just” a ski instructor here for all those years, he’d had a reputation for being the only instructor who could teach anyone, and have them up on the lower trails within hours.

  Fear? Fear had no place in skiing. Yet Laura was the hardest student he’d ever faced in well over a decade of teaching on the slopes.

  “Laura,” he whispered in her ear, “there’s no reason to be afraid. Worst case, you fall. And we’ve practiced falling.”

  “You’ve practiced falling. I’ve just actually fallen. Over and over.” She eyed the bunny slope with trepidation. Someone had put small barrels out to help new skiers to handle turns.

  He couldn’t help but laugh. That just made her scowl. She looked adorable with her ski goggles, white jacket, and tight white pants. Her golden hair peeked out from under a knit hat, and a white helmet with purple stripes topped her head.

  A pink nose poked out from under her goggles. It wasn’t cold enough for a balaclava, and the new powder made this a perfect day to spend hours out here instead of chained to a desk. Dylan was in the lodge, playing with Jillian in the new Kid’s Korner they’d installed shortly after she was born. The added playroom pulled in a lot of parents of small children, and by letting one couple share a single ski lift pass, he’d gained a huge following among parents of little kids.

  And why not? He, Dylan, and Laura knew how hard it was. Firsthand. When Mike watched the parents of two little ones come in, he always smiled. A bit wistfully. Jillian was pulling up now, and that meant she would walk soon, babyhood fading.

  Maybe she needed a sibling.

  He hadn’t said those words to anyone. Those were words that were very, very dangerous. Yet he knew they needed to be said one day.

  Just not yet.

  “I am going to snap a knee and it will be your fault,” Laura said in a tight voice as she looked down the puny hill. Before she could say anything else, Mike took the little bunny slope in ten seconds and cut at the bottom, sending an intentional spray of snow out like a giant fan.

  “Showoff!” she called from above.

  He couldn’t argue. “That’s right! And you’ll get to my level soon enough.” A lie. A complete lie, but he said it anyway because he knew that half the battle with becoming a competent skier was in the mind.

  “LIAR!” she screamed down the hill. A four year old whizzed past her and gave her a thumbs up, doing a credible imitation of Mike’s maneuver and filling Mike’s mouth with snow.

  Deep, loud laughter came out of him, the feeling coming from the bottom of his lungs, a release his body needed. “Awesome! High five!” The little kid shimmied over to him and jumped up on the skis to land a high five, then skittered off, bent over in that crouched way kids with lower centers of gravity had. No poles, either; Mike taught the young ones that way. Made them less dependent on the poles and—more pragmatically—less likely to poke themselves or anyone else.

  “You’re both showoffs!” Laura called down.

  “Quit stalling!”

  She planted her hands on her hips and shook her head, then put the poles down. Her legs went into snowplow position—like an inverted V—and he groaned. She was still stuck at that level.

  And then she pushed off, and to his surprise she pulled out a bit from the V, keeping the skis parallel as she slowly descended, her calves turning enough, tight muscles working to get around the first barrel. Good! Then she managed the second and third like a pro, gaining speed.

  “Good speed!” he called out. The shout unnerved her, he could see, and he regretted it instantly. No longer in control of her legs, her core muscles and arms didn’t give her enough balance, and he could predict, with pinpoint precision, what would happen next.

  Once you let fear take over, the muscles freak out and aim for what they know. When you’re in a situation so unfamiliar, and gliding on snow on wooden sticks in a body that’s only done it a handful of times, there is no easy “normal,” so the muscles go crazy and the brain can only see one option.

  Get on safe ground.

  Except you can’t, because falling on skis has its own set of dangers.

  And so panic hits, control abates, and you just—crash.

  Laura made it to the bottom of the hill and Mike skied quickly to her, to try to break her fall, but she crashed smack into the orange construction netting his staff had placed there to stop kids (and adults) from sliding off into the abyss and snowballing down into a culvert.

  Suppressing a smile, he stood over her and said quietly, “You did a great job until the end.”

  “Oh,” she groaned. The same word she used sometimes during sex sounded nothing like its aroused form. “I think I broke something.”

  Alarm shot through him and he looked up for a medical responder. “Leg? Wrist?”

  “Ego.”

  Adrenaline burst through him as her self-deprecating laughter clued him in that she was safe and unhurt. “Don’t joke like that!” He bent down and began untangling her ski from the orange mesh. “How did you manage to get the ski through three separate holes?”

  “I’m talented that way,” she grumbled, settling on her back, right leg twisted in a suspicious manner as Mike worked on the left leg. Seeing her in repose, eyes hidden by amber goggles but lips spreading in a sheepish grin, made him love her even more.

  Trying. She was trying to join him in his world, his love of skiing, and he loved her for it. His gloves were in the way of unraveling the mesh, so he pulled them off and she reached out to hold them.

  “I think we need to pop off your skis and figure out the rest.”

  “Good.” She laughed. “You do that and I’ll hobble over to the lodge for a latte.”

  “No way,” he said firmly. “You need to own this hill before I let you take a break.”

  “I will dominate the bunny slope! I have the power!” she shouted, tipping her head back as he stood and reached down to pull her up.

  “You can’t handle the bunny slope?” a kid with a snowboard said, pushing past. Twelve or thirteen, Mike guessed, a light sprinkling of pimples on the part of the face not covered by goggles or helmet. His voice dripped with condescension.

  “What?” Laura joked back, not letting him get to her. Mike admired that. “I own the bunny slope. Watch out! Bunny slope today, Chuck E. Cheese climbing structure tomorrow. I will dominate!” The kid shook his head and glided off, one foot hooked into the snowboard bindings, the other pushing himself to the ski lift.

  “Double black diamond for me!” he shouted back.

  “You can have it!” Laura responded, then looked at Mike. Without thinking, he reached down to kiss her, their goggles clanking against each other, pain shooting through his brow and ears.

  “Ow!” she said, giggling. Both pulled their respective goggles up over their helmets and the kiss was awkward. Heartfelt, but awkward.

  “What was that for?” she asked.

  “For joining my world.”

  “Well, then, thank you,” she replied.

  “For what?”

  “For rocking mine.”

  Josie

  The text simply read: You ever been on a plane before?

  Darla.

  Yes. You haven’t? she
texted back.

  Josie could easily imagine that Darla hadn’t, because it wasn’t like Aunt Kathy was a platinum club member of any frequent-flyer club. Living in a trailer in a tiny town in Ohio on the Pennsylvania border hadn’t given her niece Darla a life of luxury.

  When the hell would I? Between my champagne and lobster buffets when I worked midnights at the gas station and my caviar dreams when I slept in the trailer with the pipes all frozen? Darla texted back.

  That was about what Josie expected.

  What’s up with planes? The guys ask you to go somewhere special? Josie responded, ignoring the sarcasm. Darla was in a permanent, loving threesome relationship with Joe Ross and Trevor Connor, members of the band Random Acts of Crazy. She worked now as the operations assistant for Good Things Come in Threes, where Josie was the…hell, they didn’t have a name for what Josie did.

  She ran the place.

  A dating service for women who want two men and want the triad to work out forever was one hell of an anomaly in today’s world, but then again, Josie was, too. Assembling a family of her own out of good friends who were all living a little (or a lot) off the beaten path was about all she could manage, aside from the incredibly normal boyfriend she’d stumbled into finding eight months ago, at her best friend’s birth.

  How did she snag normal? Thinking about Alex came as easily as breathing or masturbating. You just did.

  Aren’t you working right now? Josie asked. She needed to get her mind off Alex and masturbating, because she was going to get that hot, tingly flush that would dog her for hours, making her clit scream for attention and driving her to rub one off in a bathroom if she didn’t divert now.

  Yep. New lead! A chick named Callie. That makes six new signups from women and three from men this week, Darla replied.

  You coming home for dinner? Josie asked. Mundane details. Ask about mundane details and make the rising swell inside her go away. Was this what it was like for guys who thought about baseball statistics to keep from prematurely ejaculating during sex?

  She would have to ask Alex later.

  And…there she was, back at thinking about Alex. That tight, inviting body. The smattering of dark hairs over a chest with muscles that swelled, his cobra back hot and chiseled. How his muscles curved in at the hips, making her drool just to imagine him. His fevered breath hissing her name as he thrust into her…

  Damn it.

  She was at an office supply store, picking out a printer stand, the most mundane task on the planet short of choosing curtain rods. Who gets horny in an office supply store? Maybe Steve Carell. Who knows. But for Josie, just the fact that thinking about Alex could get her into this kind of throbbing state was a huge warning bell and source of tremendous joy.

  Both. Warning and joy. Because Josie was that fucked up on the inside.

  Nope. Back to planes. Help? Darla texted.

  Didn’t Trevor and Joe give you advice? Josie responded.

  No, the guys didn’t. Just asking. What do I need to know? Darla replied. Something about that sentence did not make sense, but Josie didn’t feel like prying when she had a big old red clit like a button that, if pressed, would scream out something other than, “Yeah, we got that.”

  Don’t joke about bombs, Josie texted back.

  Haha, Darla replied. A chill shot through Josie, helping to quell her need for Alex, for an electronic vibrator, for her own hand. If Darla made a joke in front of a TSA agent, she’d get the cavity search of her life. Though, Josie assumed, Trevor and Joe had probably done quite well in that area…

  THAT killed off her arousal lickety-split. Whew.

  No—seriously, Darla, don’t you make a single fucking joke about a bomb, she typed back, slamming her fingertips against the phone as if Darla would realize her emphasis. This was serious stuff.

  Like I look like a bomber, Josie. What am I going to do? Eat a can of beans and sit on the pilot’s head? That’s about the only bomb I can manage, Darla said with a smiley face.

  No one looks like a bomber, you idiot, Josie replied. That’s the point.

  Especially me, was Darla’s response. You could take her out of small-town Ohio and put her in classes at Harvard, and have her in a long-term relationship with two guys in Ivy League law schools, but sometimes Josie wondered about Darla’s provincialism. Being blond and curvy didn’t mean anything when a TSA agent was concerned about abnormal behavior.

  And while Darla was no terrorist, she cornered the market on abnormal.

  So help me motherfucking God, if I have to come bail you out of federal prison and explain that shit to Aunt Kathy because you couldn’t shut down the short circuit between your funny bone and your mouth, I will make you sponge bath my mother when she is too old to care for herself, Josie answered in two texts.

  Silence.

  More silence.

  And then: Point received.

  Whew.

  Any more advice that doesn’t mean I need to go poke my eyes out with a hot car cigarette lighter after reading it? Darla added.

  Josie thought for a moment, imagining Darla at a TSA checkpoint.

  And then: Yes. Don’t wear an underwire bra.

  WHAT? Darla texted. WHAT does my bra have to do with flying? I’m not going to stab someone to death with my underwire.

  The thought made Josie giggle, and she looked down at her own modest chest. I read it somewhere, Josie answered. Research it for yourself.

  K. Tnx. was the only response.

  She tipped her head up and her neck muscles groaned with the stretch. How long had she been bent over her phone, a texting zombie like half the population of Cambridge and Somerville? Slapping one hand on the printer stand she was sure would work, she realized it would be easier to order it on her phone and have it delivered to the office than to buy it here and haul it there on her own. The order took all of five clicks.

  Done.

  Ah, technology. She heard they even had vibrator apps on smartphones these days. Alex had come home from work one day telling her all about them, a weird smirk on his face.

  Alex. Back to thinking about Alex and sex.

  She needed to go do something about that.

  Right now.

  * * *

  Outdoor sex was their thing, but this was going way too far. “I am not fucking on a public ice-skating rink, Alex!” Josie said as his hands pawed at her jeans, trying to work the button with fingers so cold she feared having one slip inside her, like a vagina popsicle.

  “Why not?” Hot breath tickled her ear. What tiny sliver of ear skin she allowed to touch the air. Boston was experiencing one of the coldest weeks on record and it was twilight, the air temperature dropping more with each breath.

  She had to hand it to him—the setting was amazing. An open-air pond that had frozen just right, leaving skaters to play on the ice for free, bare trees surrounding the little alcove he’d pulled her into. Streetlights dotted the landscape on the road above them, but otherwise the only light came from the full moon.

  Full moon. It always brought Alex outside, his cock hard as a rock, his mind in single pursuit of her body and her heart, unencumbered and outside, air a strong aphrodisiac, the pull of which she found hard to fight.

  Like gravity.

  Like sexual tension and need, all rising up inside her but abruptly cut off by his icicle fingers.

  Bet his tongue is nice and warm, though, her little devil inside said. “Devil” was a euphemism for clit. Her clit said it, and she was unabashedly out for some action right now. Unable to get home after her earlier shopping trip, Josie had walked around town with fire between her legs.

  And Alex had just the right hose to put it out.

  He took her glove off and shoved her hand down the front of his jeans. Ah. Commando. How could guys go around without underwear when it was six degrees outside? Seriously? Didn’t their mushroom caps turn into little push-up bars? How could you leave so much to the cold elements?

  Her hand warmed up
instantly as she brushed against his soft, thick goodness. “Who needs hand warmers?” she murmured, and then slipped on the ice, her hand caught in his pants and dragging him down with a lurch and a strangle cry.

  He sounded mutilated. Her fingers were tangled in the thatch of his hair and one testicle was clenched in her fist that she’d involuntarily made as she struggled to remain upright.

  “Did I break something?” she said, worried now—unable to stop giggling at the absurdity of what they were doing, though.

  “If you did,” he said with a choking sound, “I know a way you can fix it. And,” he muttered, looking at his package, unbuttoning his jeans, “after what you just plucked out, I won’t need to be waxed for months.”

  Her giggles increased and she couldn’t stop, overcome with wet eyes and whooping gasps as Alex tried in vain to get her to re-engage in some semblance of sex.

  “How about on the shore?” he finally asked, struggling to stand. In the moonlight he was quite a sight, knit cap pulled over his unruly brown hair, crystal-clear brown eyes full of lust.

  And his pants were hanging open under his ski jacket, like some kind of flasher.

  “Snow is way better than ice. I think I wrenched my shoulder when I fell,” Josie admitted.

  Alex reached up under her coat and shirt to cup a breast.

  “That’s not my shoulder.”

  “Really? I’m so sorry. I’m really bad at anatomy.” He teased her nipple until she gasped and began to tremble with need.

  “You’re a doctor and you don’t know the difference between a shoulder and a breast?”

  He pulled her hand over his now enormous erection. “Can you give me a neck rub? My neck really needs you.”

  “If that’s your neck, then what have I been kissing all this time?”

  A rush of power and he was on her, Josie’s back crunching against fresh snow, the cold somehow shifting to warmth as his body was over hers, bare abs rubbing against her own as her shirt pulled up, his hands fevered against her skin, unclasping her jeans and pulling them down.

  Cold. Frozen buttocks. “ALEX!” Josie squealed. “The snow’s all over my ass.”

  “Let it go,” he whispered.