The Man She Loves To Hate. Kelly Hunter

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СКАЧАТЬ in lonely silence. ‘I’ll practise beforehand.’

      Hare just rolled his eyes again and looked out of the tower window and up at the sky. ‘Kia waimarie, little one.’ Good Luck. ‘Keep your head down. And close up behind you as you go.’

      Hare waited until Jolie was out of the door before rubbing at his aching arm again and letting out a sigh. The girl wasn’t wrong to want to avoid Cole Rees on this of all days, but whether she could was a different matter altogether. Chances were that at some point during the ride down the mountain Cole Rees would look twice at the youth who rode down with him. Chances were that he’d start adding up the inconsistencies.

      Hare employed teenagers on the mountain if they had the experience and steadiness he was looking for, but he didn’t take them that small. Ever.

      Nor did they come with alabaster skin, a delicate jaw and, if a man could get past those lips—and some couldn’t—eyes the colour of snow clouds.

      It’d be Jolie’s eyes that would give her away. No one had eyes like the Tanner women. Not that colour. Not that … challenge that lurked in their depths. A siren’s mix of sensual self-awareness shot through with aching vulnerability.

      Fact: a man could get lost in such eyes and never surface.

      He’d seen it happen.

      And witnessed the carnage it had caused.

      ‘Eyes down, girlie,’ he whispered. ‘You give that boy a chance.’

      Cole Rees put his head down and quickened his stride as he headed for the ski gondola. The weather matched his mood: filthy and unpredictable, his emotions a roiling mess of sadness and regret, anger and defiance. He hadn’t been able to sit through his father’s funeral, not all of it. The glowing accolades had turned his stomach. His mother’s genuine grief had fuelled his fury. His sister’s anxious pleading for him to please not make things worse had only cemented his decision to get the hell out of there before he cursed his feted father to rot in hell for eternity.

      There would have been no coming back from that.

      His mother the society maven would have crumpled completely.

      Hannah, his sister, was stronger than that. Hannah would have made him pay dearly for subjecting the family to yet more scandal.

      Only the gossip mongers would have been satisfied, but not for long. They never were.

      He’d wanted a woman to lose himself in—and there were plenty around—but even that small comfort reeked of his father’s legacy. Of thoughtlessness and recklessness and appetites not easily sated. And maybe Cole had outgrown thoughtlessness a few years back, and maybe he did his best to check his recklessness, but on that third count he was as guilty as sin.

      When it came to women and sexual relationships he didn’t satisfy easily. When it came to the mindless use he would make of a woman’s body tonight and how little chance she had of engaging his emotions, well … no woman deserved that. Better for everyone to simply practise what his late, great father had never practised and do without.

      His mother had organised a wake for after the funeral, but Cole didn’t intend to put in an appearance there, either. He’d come up the mountain instead. To mourn his father in his own way and in his own sweet time.

      If at all.

      The enclosed ski lift was a new addition to the mountain and one he’d been in favour of. It had replaced a series of ageing four-man chairlifts and doubled Silverlake’s profits overnight. The sport of skiing had changed. Braving the elements and putting some effort into getting uphill was no longer part of the on-slope experience. Not any more.

      These days it was all about comfort.

      He looked up at the gondola control-tower windows and sent his father’s ski-field manager a wave. Why Hare hadn’t been at the funeral was anyone’s guess, but the big Maori always had been a law unto himself.

      Loyal to James Rees though. Utterly.

      A bundled-up youth stepped out of the tower and headed towards the waiting gondola, slipping into step some distance behind Cole and locking down doors and gates behind them. Cole shrugged the snow off his coat and swiped a hand through his hair once he got beneath the boarding station roof. The gondola door stood open and a duct-taped box sat just inside the door. Cole crossed to the opposite wall of the gondola and leaned back against it, hands in his coat pockets for warmth as he waited for the boy to finish closing up.

      Cole wasn’t dressed for the ski fields. Beneath his heavyweight woollen overcoat he was dressed for a funeral. The only concession he’d made towards the mountain had been to exchange dress shoes for snow boots.

      It hadn’t been enough. Not for this weather.

      The youth finally reached the gondola and slipped inside, shedding snow as he shut the door behind him. Small for one of Hare’s chairlift workers, thought Cole absently. Hare usually employed them bigger. Brains aside, brute force was always an asset on the mountain and everyone who’d ever worked a mountain knew it.

      Hare’s sidekick—hell, he was just a kid—settled in beside the box. Feet body width apart, knees slightly bent, he leaned against the wall and window in much the same way as Cole had done. Snowboarder, if the stance was anything to go by. Hardcore, given the mismatched clothes. No fancy be-labelled outfit, no swagger at all, just a quiet competence that drew the eye and held it. This one would be all about the thrill that came of mastering a peak, and the next one and the one after that. Nothing to prove to anyone but himself.

      Cole envied him.

      His next few months would be all about proving to bankers and shareholders that he was every bit as good as the old man when it came to managing the family holdings. As if he hadn’t been raised from the cradle to just this position—learning the Rees businesses from the ground up at his father’s command. No quarter asked for and none at all given.

      James Rees had been told he was dying two years ago. He’d been handing Rees management over to Cole ever since. Teaching by example. What to do. What not to do. And how to recover. Making Cole admire him in so many ways. Making Cole care about the businesses under his control and the people employed within them.

      Always two steps ahead of any game, James Rees. Except when it came to thinking that his high-born wife and his stunningly sensual mistress could coexist peacefully in this town.

      When it came to that, James Rees had been a fool.

      Cole knew what his father had seen in Rachel Tanner—he hadn’t been blind as a boy and he wasn’t blind now. A simmering sensuality that hit a man hard. Unapologetic awareness of a man’s deepest desires. Full knowledge of how to satisfy those desires—a knowledge that Cole’s puritan, well-mannered mother had wholly lacked.

      James Rees had wanted. James Rees had taken. He might have even got away with it if he’d left it at that. If he’d only done it once. Or twice.

      Instead he’d had to have it all and to hell with the pain it had caused those around him.

      The gondola moved off smoothly while still within the protection of the station walls and roof. And then the wind hit, and snow peppered the windows, and the ride got considerably rougher. It was an automatic response for both Cole СКАЧАТЬ