Read Online After Midnight by Katherine Garbera - Free Book Online Page A

borrow his courage just by kissing him. She pulled her head back, took the sled from him and sat before she could think anymore about where she was and what she was about to do.
    She put her hands in the snow and shoved with all her might. She wanted to close her eyes as she flew down the mound, but kept them open. Wind whipped past her cheeks as she skidded across the flat snow-packed ground into the drift, and she started laughing.
    * * *
    C ARTER HAD ALWAYS been a gambling man. Reaching for things and willing to play the risks, but this was the first time he’d gambled on someone else.
    He’d felt as if he’d failed miserably as he’d stood at the bottom and saw Lindsey standing up there literally shaking with fear. It was more than fear or pride or even vulnerability. If he’d had to define it, he would have admitted she was lost. He never wanted to be responsible for that look he’d seen on her face again. So, heart hammering in his chest, he’d climbed up there with her, told her he believed in her. And then, just like that, she’d kissed him and thrown herself down that snow mound as though it was the gate to a Super G course. And when her laughter rang out around the clearing, he’d felt justified, and more than a little bit relieved, if he were being honest.
    The risk had paid off.
    They spent the next hour sliding down the snow mound. Each time he watched her carefully, and he noticed it wasn’t getting easier for her, but she had made up her mind that she would do it.
    And she did.
    He felt like a jumble of nerves. A mess. This wasn’t like him. He was the guy who felt nothing. Why did Lindsey change all that?
    And he was beginning to believe that his desire for more of her in his bed wasn’t the only thing he wanted.
    “Thank you for this.”
    “You’re welcome,” he said.
    She put the sled on the ground next to him. “Your turn.”
    He didn’t want another turn with anything but her. “Will you go with me?”
    “Go with you?” she asked. “Are you asking me to date you?”
    Not a bad idea, but they were too old to be dating like that. Weren’t they?
    “Maybe. But for now I want to take a run down with you.”
    She nodded.
    Picking up the sled, he led her back to the mound and then stood behind her as she climbed up. The woman had a first-class ass, and when she got to the top she glanced over her shoulder and caught him staring at her butt.
    “I think you just wanted another chance to ogle me.”
    “No denying that, gorgeous. I do like your body.”
    “I like yours, too,” she confessed. He climbed up after her and set the sled on the top of the mound. He sat on it and anchored himself in place by stomping his boot into the snow.
    “Come on,” he said.
    Lindsey carefully sat in front of him, scooting back until her buttocks were pressed firmly up against him. He wrapped one of his arms around her waist. She smelled of snow and the pine trees that surrounded the clearing.
    “Ready?”
    She put her hands together over his arm, holding him as she nodded. He lifted his boot from the place where it was anchoring them in the snow and pushed off with one hand. He leaned in close, holding her to him, and then pivoted his body so they slid sideways into the snow. He fell off the sled and pulled her with him, making sure she was on top of him.
    She rested her arms on his chest and looked down at him, and for the first time this morning he saw something close to happiness shining in her big brown eyes. She smiled, and he arched his eyebrow at her. “You must be messing with my mojo.”
    “I must be,” she said. “I’ve never seen you fall.”
    “I usually don’t,” he admitted. But he’d wanted her to see what would happen if she did. Wanted her to experience a fall and maybe in some way show her that this time it wouldn’t be as bad as it had been before.
    He was messed up. He knew it. He was trying to make her see him in a different light, but the truth was he was too flawed to