A Little Too Late (Madigan Mountain #1)(12)

Ava isn’t quite as free with public affection as Reed is, but it’s such a good kiss that she forgets herself and clings to his broad shoulders until one of his teammates whistles at them just to be a dick.

“Bold move, Madigan!” the guy taunts. “Takes balls to get horny in a spandex racing suit.”

Reed laughs, and Ava blushes. “He’s right, and I’ve got to go,” he says.

“No crashing,” Ava reminds him before giving him a shove in the direction of the lift.

He walks off grinning, and Ava catches herself watching him go. Even after three months, she still walks around in a state of disbelief that Reed Madigan picked her.

He’s her first serious boyfriend. But she knows instinctively that their sudden, intense connection is a rare and beautiful thing. To Ava—an only child from a volatile household—Reed’s unabashed affection is like a drug. She’s a little obsessed, and it’s hard to hide it. Although she’s careful not to be the one who always texts first.

He’s generous with his time and affection, though. Last weekend he came home from a meet in New York State when she was already falling asleep on her neurobiology homework. Can I come over? his text said.

There’s no privacy here, she’d warned him. Winnie is home.

I don’t care. I’ll behave myself if I can sleep in your bed. I miss you.

He’d arrived in flannel pants to cuddle her all night long. And she lay there wondering how on Earth she got so lucky.

Ava flexes her fingers around her handwarmers and waits for his name to be called. Reed Madigan of Penny Ridge, Colorado. At first, he’s just a dark speck against the snow at the top of the mountain. She holds her breath while he makes the first turn, but then the trail disappears behind the trees for an agonizing sixty seconds.

She hadn’t known how scary it is to love someone.

It’s even worse when that person insists on skiing at seventy miles an hour down a sheet of ice.

Ava fixes her eyes on the part of the course where Reed should be reappearing. The seconds drag on, and she’s in agony. Did something happen? Shouldn’t he be here by now?

She’s short on oxygen when he suddenly bursts from behind the trees, taking that tricky last turn in a crouch so fast and tight that it seems impossible. No wonder he wins so many races.

Two heartbeats later he’s tucking through the final gates and over the finish line to loud applause. The clock stops on a time that puts him in first place.

Reed sprays snow on the crowd as he comes to a curving stop. He rips off his helmet and does a fist pump at the clock. Then he turns around and skis toward Ava.

“Pizza later?” He waggles his eyebrows to imply that the word has more than one meaning.

She laughs until he can take off his skis and kiss her again.





CHAPTER 7




DAMN, I’M BROODY





REED

What a surprise—room twenty-five is a dank little cave, and it smells like weed.

But I’m so overwhelmed that I sleep for ten hours, anyway, waking up at eight a.m. underneath the Star Wars comforter I’d removed from the upstairs linen closet of my childhood home. The cheap bedsprings squeak as I swing my legs over the side and sit up.

And to think I’m staying at a luxury resort which is somehow worth eighty-two million dollars.

Eighty. Two. That’s a ridiculous valuation. I sat through dinner with Dad and Melody last night, trying to simultaneously rationalize that price and pay attention to the conversation.

And then I came up here and fell asleep thinking about it.

Something doesn’t add up. The hotel just isn’t big enough to support that price. And we only own the land under the hotels. The mountain itself—and the ski trails—are on a ninety-nine-year lease from the State of Colorado.

Today I’ll have to get to the bottom of this. But first, a shower.

I get up and cross the freezing-cold floor to the world’s grossest little eighty-two-million-dollar bathroom.





My brother Weston is silent for a long beat after I tell him what I’ve learned. He isn’t a fan of mine, but I’d insisted that I needed to speak with him.

And now either I’ve lost the connection or I’ve stunned him.

“Could you repeat that?” he says over a crackling phone line. “Because I swear you just said eighty million dollars.”

“I did say that. In fact, I said eighty-two.”

He curses. “And you’re actually there? In Colorado?”

“Yeah, man. I’m looking at the peak right now. The ski patrol is doing a training clinic.”

“They better be the best ski patrol on Earth for that kind of scratch.”

“Exactly.” I stand there, phone to my ear, hiking boots in the snow, wondering where Weston is right now. He’s a warrant officer in the army, and his whereabouts are sometimes a state secret. I’ve learned not to ask.

Of course, all the Madigan boys are champions of not asking each other’s secrets. After my mother’s death, we all closed in on ourselves, manned up, and dealt in the best ways we knew how. For me, that meant all A’s at school and then throwing myself head first into the high-stakes world of venture capital.

To Weston, that meant learning to fly dangerous machines and shoot stuff.