LITMIR.BIZ

       PROLOGUE

      ZACH hadn’t been sure which he wanted most, the woman or the mountain.

      The woman had been watching him last night, sitting at a corner table in the inn’s lounge and giving him long, slow looks from under her lashes. There’d been no mistaking the message, but after a minute Zach knew it was no contest.

      She was beautiful, but the world was full of beautiful women. The mountain was the challenge, all seven thousand, snow-covered feet of it. It would come first.

      So he’d smiled back, told the bartender to send her a drink and lifted his glass to her before finishing the last of his brandy. Then he’d strolled toward the door, pausing beside her table.

      “Here for the weekend?” he’d asked and when she’d nodded in assent, he’d smiled. “Alone?”

      Her tongue had slicked across her lips. “No,” she’d murmured, “but that won’t stop you, will it?”

      Zach had felt his body tighten in anticipation.

      “Tomorrow evening,” he’d said softly, and then he’d gone to his room, taken a long, cold shower and turned his thoughts to the next day.

      Now, as he undid his bindings and stepped out of his skis, he knew he’d made the right choice. His hands were numb with the cold that had managed to seep through his Gore-Tex gloves, his lungs cried out for more oxygen, and every muscle in his body ached.

      He felt terrific.

      A smile eased across his face, softening the hard, handsome angles and chiseled features.

      He could see the copter approaching, skimming up the windswept Himalayan valley like a prehistoric bird, and he pumped a fist high into the air as it began its descent.

      The Valley of the Gods had turned out to be perfect, exactly as Elise had promised. Zach grinned, remembering the conversation with his travel agent the week before.

      He’d phoned her from the chartered jet, halfway between a dull breakfast meeting at the Boston Club and a duller luncheon appointment at Windows on the World atop the towering World Trade Center in New York.

      “I want to get away for a couple of days,” he’d said without preamble. His administrative assistant had shoved a stack of papers under his nose. Zach had switched the phone to his other ear while he scrawled his initials on the pages. “Got any suggestions?”

      Elise, who’d been dealing with Zach long enough to know exactly what the question meant, had instantly offered several in the British accent she still cultivated after better than forty years in the States.

      What did he think of rock climbing in Yosemite? Rafting in Idaho? Sky diving in British Columbia?

      “No,” Zach had said to each idea, “no, no. I want— I want…Just keep on going,” he’d said in exasperation.

      Elise had rattled off more proposals while the jet banked over Manhattan’s narrow canyons. Zach had listened, frowning as he gazed out the window, picturing himself in an hour’s time seated at a table with half a dozen men twenty years his senior who’d pretend they’d really choose grilled tuna and braised radicchio over the rare steaks and butter-dripping baked potatoes their highpriced cardiologists had made them swear off forever, who’d talk stocks and bonds and investments with the appetite and passion most men reserved for women.

      Something had knotted in Zach’s flat belly.

      “Helicopter skiing,” he’d said into the phone, cutting short Elise’s description of

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