Indiscretions - Elizabeth Adler [49]
How long has it been since I went skiing? he wondered, recalling the sheer physical exhilaration of the sport, the easy camaraderie of the skiers, and the cheerful charm of those mountain resorts, ringed into intimacy by their snow-capped peaks. Three, or maybe it was four, years?
Whichever, it was too long!
Finding a spare corner, unlittered with skis, he sipped his coffee, eavesdropping on the chatter of “lethal moguls” and “black runs,” of who wore the tightest ski pants and was a rotten skier and why Verbier had the best young crowd, the best skiing, and the best-looking chalet girls. These skiers are my age, he thought, shocked by the realization that he had automatically thought of himself as older. I’m twenty-five and, like my father, I spend half my life in transit. It’s not just skiing—when did I last take a real holiday? I’m so wrapped up in the McBain enterprises that I leave no time for my personal life—a few days here, a few days there, and that’s all!”
His father’s yacht, the 150-foot Fiesta, was right now moored in Carlisle Bay in Barbados with a complete crew and no passengers. Fitz was in New York and might manage to get down for a week later in the season, and Morgan had spent five days on the Fiesta last year in its usual Mediterranean summer ports, drifting from St. Tropez to Sardinia. And that was it! He only visited the hotel they owned in the Bahamas to check the management, or discuss structural extensions and alterations. He was so committed to becoming indispensable in his father’s organization and overcoming his personal hang-up of being “the boss’s son” that he never allowed himself time off merely to relax. His days were more often spent on a desert building site in Kuwait or at a refinery in Galveston than lying on a beach—or gliding down a snowy mountain.
If he wasn’t careful, decided Morgan, setting down his coffee cup, he would become like his father, too driven by his interests in the McBain Corporation to enjoy the rest of life’s pleasures.
He smiled back at the girl in the kingfisher-blue ski jacket and jeans. She had burnished red hair and a turned-up nose with a scatter of freckles, and a very inviting smile.
“You look like a skier,” she said, assessing Morgan’s blond, broad-shouldered good looks, “but you’re not dressed like one.”
Morgan grinned. “Learned the trade on the slopes of Vail and the powder at Park City, Utah.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing until you’ve skied in Switzerland,” she countered, “but I’ll bet you’re a black-run man?”
“Off-piste. I’m the adventurous sort.”
“I’ll bet you are—adventurous, I mean.” She gathered together her skis and her boot bag, surveying him carefully. He wasn’t that much older than she, but he gave an impression of maturity, of knowing his place in the world and being totally confident in it. It was an attractive quality and he was an attractive man.
“Sure you don’t want to get rid of that business suit and come with me?”
A ripple of sexual attraction threaded between them. She was very cute and he’d bet she skied well too.
“Where are you heading?”
“Verbier. It’s where all the Brits go.”
All the Brits … he wondered if Venetia went to Verbier? Funny, he always thought of Venetia as English and yet she was as American as he. Well, nearly.
“Maybe next time. Thanks for the offer anyway.”
“Not at all. Pity, though, it could have been fun.” She tucked her burnished red hair behind her ears and hefted the skis onto her shoulder.
Morgan watched as she walked across to join her group of friends. There were a dozen of them and they looked very together. An athletic-looking young man put his arm around