LITMIR.BIZ

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the slopes, made the right noises and a vague commitment to watch the next race if he had the opportunity, then hung up feeling worse than he had before.

      The conversation had left him keenly aware of what he’d lost.

      It didn’t help that the one person who would have understood, his father, had been dead for almost two and a half years.

      Shaking off his black mood, he paced to the door of the main house where he and his brothers had grown up and where his mother still lived.

      It still gave him a pang to know that when he walked into the kitchen that had been the hub of the household growing up, his father wouldn’t be there.

      His mother loved to decorate for Christmas, and the evidence of that love was everywhere. Tiny lights were strung across the windows, and decorations sparkled through the glass. A festive wreath hung on the door, as it had every year for as long as he could remember. As a child he’d sat on the kitchen floor waxing his skis while his mother had worked magic from the tangle of forest greenery spread over the kitchen table. She’d snipped, weaved and pulled it all together into a wreath.

      Tyler pushed open the door. Sleigh bells jangled, announcing his arrival, and he blinked as he saw the number of people already seated around the table. Those numbers had increased over the past year. First Jess had joined them, then Kayla and finally Élise. She was often too busy running the successful restaurants at the resort to join them for family nights but tonight, perhaps because it was close to Christmas, she’d found the time.

      There were at least three different conversations going on around the table and Maple, Jackson and Kayla’s miniature poodle, greeted Tyler ecstatically, leaping up and down on the spot as if she had springs in her paws.

      Tyler stooped to make a fuss of her and then hung up his coat.

      His mother was busy at the stove while Jess was seated at the large scrubbed table, listening, rapt, while his grandfather, Walter, told a story about how he’d once met a moose when he was skiing. It was a story Tyler had heard a hundred times but it was new to Jess.

      “And did it move, Gramps, or did you have to ski around it?”

      “It stood there and glared at me, and I glared right back. I’m telling you, that animal was as big as a house.”

      Jess laughed, and Tyler noticed how her eyes sparkled as she listened to her great-grandfather. She soaked up every story about Snow Crystal, every morsel of information, as if trying to fill in the gaps and make up for the parts she’d missed by living so far away.

      His mood lifted slightly.

      If he’d still been skiing the World Cup circuit, he wouldn’t have been here when Jess had needed him.

      “You’re exaggerating, Walter.” Alice, his grandmother, slipped her glasses into her purse. “He always exaggerates. Ignore him, Jess.”

      “I am not exaggerating! Were you there?” Walter grunted. “This was in the days before ski runs and grooming machines. There were no chair lifts.”

      Jess leaned closer, her long hair sliding forward over her shoulder. “How did you get to the top of the slopes, Gramps?”

      “We walked! We attached skins to our skis, and we walked. We didn’t need machines to haul us to the top like you wimps do today. We used muscle.”

      Tyler saw his mother lift a large blue casserole out of the oven. “Let me get that for you. Apparently, I need to build muscle.” He crossed the room in a couple of strides, but she shook her head and placed the casserole in the center of the large table.

      “I lift heavier things than that in the restaurant every day, and if you build any more muscle, I’ll be sewing up your jeans even more frequently than I do already.”

      Kayla reached for her wine. “What happens to your jeans?”

      “Occupational hazard of being a downhill skier. I have muscles like Thor.” Tyler pulled out a chair and winked at her. “Starting to think you’ve picked the wrong brother?”

      “No.” Kayla looked him in the eye. “Muscles or not, I’d kill you.”

      “Only if I hadn’t killed you first.” The normality of the exchange lifted his dark mood, and Tyler took a beer from his brother. “Thanks.”

      “What took you so long?” His mother removed the lid, and delicious smells of cooking mingled with the scent of cinnamon and pine. “I was about to send out a search party! The others said you’d gone on ahead and then you never appeared.” She handed him a stack of plates, and soon the food and the conversation were flowing and the question of where he’d been vanished in the chaos.

      “I just spoke to Chas.” He didn’t mention the twenty minutes he’d stood in the forest, watching the snow fall and trying to pull himself together. He didn’t mention the sick feeling that came from knowing that the Ski World Cup was underway. He should have been traveling the world, skiing in a different country every week in his pursuit of the coveted crystal ball that came with winning what many believed to be the most prestigious title of all.

      He felt as if he’d been forced off a moving train and was watching while it carried on without him, leaving him stranded on a deserted platform.

      Except it wasn’t deserted.

      He had the business to think of. Responsibility. His family. Jess.

      His grandfather’s eyes brightened. “Chas is still the best tech on the circuit.”

      “Yeah.” Tyler sat down and moved a bowl of pinecones out of the way so he could reach the food.

      The house was always the same at Christmas. Vases were filled with branches of forest greenery, candles flickered on shelves next to handmade decorations. It was a home. Lived in and loved.

      Boots lay abandoned near the doorway, magazines stacked in an untidy heap on the table under the window. Since his mother had started working in the restaurant with Élise, she’d been spending less and less time in the house, something that Tyler and both his brothers had greeted with relief.

      Over the past year, she’d regained some of her old energy and enthusiasm for life.

      It also hadn’t escaped his notice that Tom Anderson, who owned a farm a couple of miles away, was a more frequent visitor than his role as a local supplier to the restaurant warranted.

      Tyler wondered if he was the only one who had noticed Tom’s visits were becoming increasingly regular.

      Jackson was seated across from him, his arm across the back of Kayla’s chair. “So where’s Chas right now?”

      “Italy. Val Gardena.”

      “Molto bene.” His older brother grinned. “You must be missing all the—er—pizza.”

      Tyler ignored the innuendo and pushed the bowl of fluffy mashed potatoes toward his grandfather. “The food is pretty good here.”

      “So what were you talking about for over an hour?”

      “I wasn’t talking to Chas the whole time. I encountered a moose the size of a house.”

      “Seriously?” Kayla put her glass down. “Because if that’s the truth, I want to know exactly where so I don’t walk that way.”

      “The moose would be more scared of you than you would be of him.” Jackson reached across the table for the salt. “You’ve lived here a year. You know that.”

      “I do not know that. The only moose I feel safe with is the chocolate variety Élise serves in the restaurant.”

      Jess giggled. “That’s a different spelling. Was there really a moose?”

      “Sure.” Tyler never missed an opportunity to tease Kayla. “It was hoping for an encounter with a city-loving Brit so I gave it directions to Kayla’s barn. It should be snuggled up waiting for

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