Cinderella in Skates

chapter TWELVE





I open my eyes the next morning to an unfamiliar bedroom with an unfamiliar -- and very bright -- stream of light pouring in through the floor-to-ceiling windows that have no curtains.

It takes a second or two of rapid blinking and extreme cobweb-of-the-brain-clearing before I remember that I'm in Shane's cabin in upstate Wisconsin.

Laura and Nina lie sleeping in the beds next to mine after a long night of cards didn't end until almost three in the morning. I quietly creep into the bathroom to brush my teeth and pull on a pair of jeans and cable-knit sweater and head downstairs with the book I'd tossed into my bag yesterday before we left.

It's only 7:15 when I curl up on the big leather sofa looking out the windows as the sun comes up over this small ski town.

And as I stare outside, the book stays closed in my lap. I can't bury myself in the words and miss the stunning view in front of me. It's beautiful here -- and yes, while Arizona is still the most gorgeous place I've seen -- there's something different, something charming, about Wisconsin, or at least this part of it.

In the daylight, I can see more of the town and lodge that Shane had mentioned yesterday. I stand up and walk over to the window and as I stand there, watching the lake and trying to decide where or not it's frozen over, I feel arms snake around my waist.

"Morning," Shane murmurs into my hair, pressing his lips to the back of my neck.

I turn my head to face him. "Well, good morning."

He smiles and brushes a light kiss against my lips.

"You love it here, don't you?" he asks. I can hear the teasing note in his voice but there's some truth behind it, too. He's calling me out.

"It's not so bad."

"Yeah, I can tell," he says. "You left your book on the couch for this. You never do that."

He lets go of me and drops down onto the sofa. "Breakfast?"

"Whatcha got?"

"Every man for himself," he tells me. "My parents probably went down to the lodge already. Grant and Chase and them brought their own food. I have bacon and eggs for us. And pancakes. Or maybe there's some cereal from the last time we came up a couple weeks ago. I can check."

"Whatever you want is fine by me."

"Bacon and eggs it is. Stay here and enjoy the view. I'll call you when it's ready."

I smile as he trots into the kitchen in the plaid pajamas pants and white T-shirt he'd gone to bed in. I take the warm spot he just left on the couch, pull the blanket resting on the arm of the sofa into my lap and crack open the spine of my book.

I'm lost in Emily Bronte's fantasy world of Catherine and Heathcliff once again when Shane pulls me back into reality and calls me into the kitchen for breakfast.

"You make me feel like a bum in this," he says, pointing down to his shirt and PJ pants when I walk in.

"You just cooked me an entire breakfast. I think we're even."

He laughs and pulls out my chair for me before walking around to his side of the table.

"Dig in."

We eat in silence and even though it's quiet, it's comfortable. I keep straining my ears for sounds of his friends stirring, and realize that I'm dreading the idea of them coming downstairs and interrupting us even though we aren't doing anything other than sitting and eating together.

"Ready to hit the slopes?" Shane asks after he rests his fork against the edge of his plate.

"If I have to."

"Oh, you have to. Can't come up here and get away with not skiing, Nat. At least once."

"Fine, fine," I say, even though I knew what his answer was going to be before he says it. And I do want to give skiing a shot.

I'm just less crazy about the idea of ruining his day and making an idiot of myself.

"Get dressed," he tells me. "I'll clean up."

"No way, you made all of this. Let me do it."

"I know where everything goes. I can do it faster. Now go change."

I smile and kiss his cheek before I scoot upstairs to dig out my brand-new -- and totally ridiculous-looking -- ski outfit.

Both girls are still sleeping soundly so I tiptoe through the room to grab my bag and take it into the bathroom.

It takes me almost twenty minutes and one almost possibly deadly spill into the bathtub trying to wiggle into my snow pants before I'm dressed. I glance in the full-length mirror hanging on the back of the door and don't even recognize myself.

I grew up in shorts and sundresses and bathing suits and flip flops. I had a coat for those chillier winter months but I've never worn anything this thick before.

I don't look like me.

But I don't think I look wrong, either.





     ***





Shane meets me downstairs dressed in his ski gear five minutes after I get there.

"You look like a real snow bunny," he says when he sees me.

"I don't even know what that means."

He shakes his head and laughs. "Don't worry about it. Come on."

We walk out onto the front porch and I realize there's nothing that looks like a really great place to ski nearby.

"Are we walking to the mountain? Um, wherever it is?"

Shane laughs. "Follow me."

We walk to a shed at the very edge of his family's property right before a pine forest begins.

Shane unlocks it and the next thing I know, there's a snow mobile in front of me.

At least, I'm pretty sure it's a snow mobile, considering I've never seen one in person before.

"Hop on," he says, tossing his leg over it and pulling goggles down over his eyes.

"Uh, what?"

"Come on, Nat, I know you've seen a snow mobile before."

"Yeah, on TV."

"Put these on." He hands me another pair of goggles and I look at them with a wrinkled nose. He laughs. "Get on the back and hang on tight."

"To what?"

"To me!"

I can't help but smile as I climb awkwardly onto the back of his snow mobile and wrap my arms around his solid waist, pressing my chest into his back.

"Ready?" he shouts, and then suddenly we're off racing through a snowy path lined with evergreens, and I squeeze my eyes shut after it looks like we're one second away from a head-on collision with a Christmas tree.

We whiz through the forest -- or at least, I assume it's a forest but I'm too nervous to look -- until Shane brings the snow mobile to a gentle stop.

"Open your eyes," he says.

It seems safe enough now that we're no longer moving and it doesn't feel like I'm going to blow right off the back of this thing and break my neck.

I peek out from behind his back and my eyes widen.

"Oh, wow," I breathe.

Shane's stopped us right at the edge of a cliff. This would probably terrify me if I wasn't so distracted by what I saw in front of me.

"This is my favorite spot in all of Wisconsin," he says quietly. "Even more than the terrace on campus."

I look over at him and smile, the happiness of that memory washing over me.

"This is incredible."

The cliff overlooks the ski town with mountains surrounding it on every side. There's a giant lake glittering against the rising sun in the middle of the valley, and uniform buildings rest along the water's edge.

"Those are the condos," Shane says, pointing to the cream-and-brown, pointy-roofed three-story buildings lining the lake. "There's a cafe or shop on the first floor of each one. Some of the restaurants have patio seating right on the lake in the summer. And then there's the lodge."

It's beautiful, completely breathtaking. I've never seen anything like it.

"I love this."

"Thought you might. A little different than Arizona, huh?"

"At least the parts of Arizona I've been to."

"The view's even better at night when everything's all lit up. Maybe I'll show you sometime."

He takes a step closer to me, ducks his head and kisses me right there on the snow-covered edge of the cliff. I press myself into him, arms wrapping around his neck, deepening the kiss.

He takes my face in his hands and I can feel his rough thumb brush against my cheek.

I'm not sure how long we stand here this way before he breaks the kiss and takes a step back.

"You're alright, you know that?" he says to me, wrapping him arm around my shoulders. I smile and kiss his cheek.

We get back on the snow mobile and I resume my position of clinging onto him with my eyes pressed shut as he drives us, twisting and turning through the mountains.

"Alright," he says after finally bringing it to a stop for the second time. "Let's ski."

He's parked the snow mobile in a long row next to a bunch of others.

"Snow mobile parking?" I ask with a shake of my head. "This is a real thing?"

He shrugs. "It is here. Come on, let's get going."

He leads me into a barn where racks and racks of skis line every inch of wall space. I follow him over to the line with the shortest wait.

"I'm surprised you don't have your own skis."

"I do," he says, "But if you're going to rent them, it's easier for me to rent them, too. Plus we get a really good deal on them."

We're at the front of the line in no time and Shane explains to the gray-haired woman behind the register exactly what we need.

Ten minutes later, we're both outfitted with everything we'll need for a day on the slopes. I've even got one of those fancy ski tickets hanging from the zipper of my jacket. I'd only ever seen those on television.

"You're really proud of that thing, aren't you?" Shane asks as we wait in line for the lift to take us to the top of the mountain.

"I didn't know they really existed!" I say happily, fiddling with the ticket.

"I'm just showing you the world, aren't I?" he teases.

"So how do we get to the top of the mountain, anyway?"

He creases his forehead as he gives me a funny look. "The ski lift," he says. "You know, the thing you have that ticket on your jacket for."

"But what is it?"

His eyes widen slightly. "Uh oh."

"Uh oh what?"

"You've never seen a ski lift before?"

I shake my head.

"Not even on TV?" he asks.

Another shake.

"Promise you won't freak out?"

"No."

He grins. "Let's get in line."

We walk out of the barn carrying our skis and poles and I instantly realize exactly what he was talking about.

"How the heck am I supposed to get on that?" I ask. "I mean, it stops for you, right?"

Shane shakes his head. "No, but it's easier than it looks. Promise."

"Well, okay, but I don't have to do it in the skis or anything?" He shakes his head again. "Stop doing that!" I tell him, a small bubble of panic forming in my stomach.

"Look how slow it's going," he says. "Come on, let's get you in these babies."

He gets my boots all strapped into the skis before he puts on his own.

"There. Now watch me." He puts his poles into the ground and just sort of glides forward. It looks pretty simple to me.

"You try," he says once he gets about ten feet away from me.

Sure. No sweat.

I dig my poles into the ground as hard as I can and catapult myself forward.

The poles don't move and I sort of swing forward before the skis get tangled underneath me and I tumble to the ground.

I glare up at Shane as he claps his hand over his mouth, eyes wide, before he closes the distance between us in two seconds.

"Are you okay?"

"What the heck? That didn't happen when you did it."

He helps me untwist the skis and get back on my feet.

"Maybe not so hard with the poles this time."

I let out a sigh. He shows me again and even though it takes way longer than it should, I eventually manage to propel myself over to the line for the ski lift.

"I can't even go fifty yards with these things on my feet. How am I supposed to get on this machine without killing myself?"

He grins. "It's not hard. Really."

I study the people in front of us each time as they get on, and even after watching five or six groups go, I'm still amazed the moving chair doesn't knock their legs out from under them.

"See that red line?" Shane asks, and I nod. "We're going to ski up to that when it's our turn. Then just pick up your poles, bend your knees a little and watch for the chair."

"Then what?"

"Then you sit."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

I watch a few more people go as we creep up to the front of the line and then suddenly it's our turn. I drag myself -- there's definitely no gliding going on with me -- to the red stripe, gather the poles in my right hand, take a deep breath and turn around to watch for the chair that I'm sure is going to knock me right over.

"Here it comes," Shane says, taking his eyes off the lift to look at me and smile. "Ready? Okay, sit now."

I drop into the seat as the back of the chair lightly nudges me in the knees. It's hard not to sit. Shane reaches up and pulls a metal safety bar down in front of us.

"See," he says with a grin. "Easy."

I nod. "Not so bad."

"Can't beat the view from up here."

"I can't watch," I say. "Too worried about getting off."

He looks over at me with raised eyebrows and my eyes grow wide when I realize what I said, and I giggle.

"The lift," I say. "Getting off the lift."

"Just as easy as getting on. Look, there's our mountain." He points to the right to a hillside dotted with tiny specks.

I can't focus much on the view, though. I'm having a hard enough time moving in a straight line on these skis and I can already tell that I'm going to have to maneuver down this tiny little hill once we get to the end of the lift, and I'm pretty sure that just means impending disaster.

The chair starts its descent and I'm intently staring at every group in front of us as they disembark, trying to memorize the exact way they do it.

"Just relax," Shane murmurs. "Keep your skis pointed up slightly and you should just sort of slide right off. You'll see. Don't overthink it. Remember. Just as easy as getting on."

He lifts the bar back up over our heads and I feel like I'm dangling above the earth, ready to plummet out of the seat at any moment. The group of three in front of us gets off their chair and then suddenly, it's our turn.

"Skis up," he reminds me. "Go."

The back of my skis hit first and I sort of stand up by force, balance myself out and glide -- yes, me, gliding -- down the little bump of snow.

I slow down naturally and slam my poles into the ground, afraid I'm going to go right into a tree. I wobble a bit but stay on my feet and when I find him, Shane's looking at me from a few feet away with an amused smile on his face.

"I guess that works," he says. "Come over here and I'll teach you a few things before we go down the bunny hill."

I awkwardly pilot myself over to a patch of snow without any obstructions nearby, away from the hordes of people getting off the chair lift.

"Okay," he says. "I'm going to teach you the first move I ever learned."

"What's that?"

"Listen and you'll find out," he tells me. "Point your skis together."

I do as he says and the next thing I know, the skis keep going, cross over one another and my butt's on the ground, covered in cold snow.

He's laughing as I shoot him a dirty look and try to pick myself up, but I just tumble back down into the wet mess.

Shane waltzes over on his skis with an annoying ease and untangles me before getting me back on my feet.

"Great idea," I mutter.

"Sorry," he says. "Trust me, I fell a lot when I first started. This might not make a lot of sense but when you cross the skis you need to bring your knees together but kind of push your feet apart."

I lift an eyebrow. "I have to do what?"

"Like this." He shows me what he means. "See how I'm kind of keeping my knees together but not letting my feet drift together all the way? Keeps the skis from getting tangled but this lets you stop and control your speed and stuff. It's important."

"How do I stop because I'm doing this? I really want to know how to stop."

"The more parallel your skis get to each other, the faster you'll go. So, the better you know this move I'm trying to show you, the better control you'll have over your speed."

"Okay." I won't pretend that the physics of skiing make any sense to me, but I'll take Shane at his word.

"Ready to try?" he asks.

I nod and manage to do the snowplow thing a couple of times in a row without further bruising my butt, and Shane seems satisfied that I'm not longer a full-on hazard on skis.

"Let's hit the slopes."

We make our way over to the top of the bunny hill. I'm standing at the top of the very wide, slow-sloping, barely-angled "hill." It isn't far to the bottom and I think it'll probably just be like one extended run of getting off the chair lift.

Families with little kids seem like the most common group on the bunny slope but I refuse to get irritated that there's a child who looks like he's maybe eight years old impatiently skiing circles around his father and even younger-looking brother.

"But Daddy," the kid's whining. "I'm bored of this lame hill. I wanna do the bigger ones."

His father glances over at him. "We will, Jackson, but first we have to teach Cameron how to get down this slope. Then I'll take you on the mountain we skied last week."

"The blue square," the kid insists.

I shoot a glance at Shane, who's clearly overhead the same conversation and is trying not to laugh.

"Great," I mutter. So much for not getting irritated.

"Oh stop," he says. "This is Wisconsin. It's what we do."

"Turn into champion skiers before third grade?"

He grins. "I'll have you caught up to that little guy's level in no time."

I sigh. "Okay. What do I do?"

Shane launches into an explanation of how I should go down the hill and I try to pay attention but nothing he says makes a whole lot of sense.

"Got that?" he asks, and I snap to attention.

"Oh. Um, yep."

I don't, but he doesn't need to know that. If the little kid can get bored of the bunny hill that quickly, I'm pretty sure I'll have it mastered in a trip or two.

"Then let's go," he says, and with that, he's off on his way down the hill. I watch him for a few seconds before I push off with my poles and expect smooth cruising.

I try to do the whole knees-together-feet-firm thing that he talked about before but it's hard to remember all of the details when there are people flying around everywhere and I'm afraid I'm going to crash into them. Or a pine tree.

And the next thing I know, my skis have crossed each other one more time and I land on my butt. Hard.

Shane's already at the bottom of the hill watching me while I'm struggling to get back on my feet.

I give up and sink back down into the hard, wet snow, waiting for him to get over here and help me.

While I'm still there, the little kid, his father and the even younger son all go sailing by me, laughing and cheering as the smallest child masters his baby pair of skis.

I let out a sigh.

Maybe skiing is just one winter sport too many for this Arizona girl.





     ***





I'm cold.

I'm wet.

I'm not sure I'll ever feel my toes again.

I look over at the gorgeous guy next to me with the great smile and wavy blonde hair and dorky purple ski beanie.

And you know what?

I don't care about everything that's going wrong.

I'm happy anyway because all of the important stuff is right.

By the time we sit down in the lodge for an early -- very early; it's just after four o'clock -- dinner, the only things I really want to do are shower and curl up in a heap of blankets in front of the Stanford's fireplace.

Shane had convinced me after my first spill on the bunny slope that I shouldn't give up so fast. He said he knew there was a Wisconsin girl in me waiting to break out and you know something?

He wasn't totally wrong.

I'm nothing close to a champion skier and I'm sure I never will be, but after I got the hang of the bunny hill, he'd taken me over to a green circle trail for beginners, and I'd managed to get all the way down to the bottom once without injuring myself, someone else or any wildlife.

We'd both decided it was a pretty good way to end our day on the slopes.

"The seafood's really good here," Shane says, not bothering to pick up one of the menus the waiter left on the table.

"Seafood?" I wrinkle my nose, and he laughs.

"Not a fan?"

"I grew up in the desert. That's not exactly by the ocean."

"No excuse. Wisconsin isn't seaside, either."

I shrug. "Just never tried it, really."

"Tonight's a good time to start."

"I think I've had enough firsts for one day."

"I think that's exactly why you should do it." He smiles sweetly at me from across the table.

I reach for the menu and glance at the delicious-sounding list of burgers and steaks and salads before I force myself to look over at the seafood section.

Salmon. Crab cakes. Tuna. Lobster. I can't keep my top lip from curling upward and my eyes from drifting back to the barbecue bacon cheddar burger topped with cooked onions.

"Oh, get the burger," Shane says.

I look up at him through narrowed eyes. "I wasn't thinking about that."

He raises an eyebrow. "Liar."

"I am not," I say defiantly. "In fact, I was just looking at the...pecan-encrusted crab cakes and green beans."

Shane smirks like he knows I'm full of crap. Which I pretty much am.

"Great choice," he says, reaching over and plucking the menu from my hands. He folds it closed on top of the one he never touched and smiles at me.

I try not to sigh.

Our waitress comes over then, and I indicate Shane should order first -- filet of salmon with a baked potato -- and when she turns her attention to me, I take a deep breath.

"I'll have the barbecue bacon burger, please," I say in a rush. "Cheddar cheese, medium well. Fries are good. Thanks."

The waitress looks at me funny for a second before scribbling my order in her notebook and walking away. I go straight for a sip of my water without meeting Shane's eyes.

When I finally look up, I see he's watching me with a bemused expression on his face.

"Called it," he says.

"Oh, whatever. I like what I like."

He grins. "Promise you'll try a bite of my fish?"

"Deal."

Shane leans back in his chair. "So what do you think?" He pauses for a second, then clarifies before my mind can start wondering just what he's getting at. "About skiing, I mean."

"Pretty sure I've lost all permanent feeling in my butt, but other than that, I'd probably do it again."

"Uh oh, I hope not."

"You hope not," I say. "I'm the one who doesn't even know she's sitting down right now."

He laughs. "I guess that's a good point, but if I'm ever going to get you on skis again, I don't want to send you home damaged."

"Oh, you want to take me out again?"

"I think we have to work on those skills."

"I'm not so sure I'm cut out for skiing," I admit. "Maybe I should stick with hockey."

"You trying to tell me something about my abilities as a ski teacher?"

I tilt my head to one side. "Well, now that you mention it, I'm pretty sure I'm not about to make any ski team rosters anytime soon."

"You might be right about that."

"I usually am."

He grins. "And modest, too. Are all the Arizona girls like you?"

I shake my head. "No chance. This right here is all unique, baby."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

We're smiling these dopey smiles at each other over the small table in the lodge's restaurant and maybe it's the adrenaline from the day or just being near each other like this, but suddenly Shane is on his feet, hands pressing down onto the edges of the table. He's leaning over the small candle flickering in the middle of the table, leaning over the plates and the napkins, and he's pressing his lips against mine.

Right there at our table in the restaurant.

And I kiss him back.