Read Online Strike Zone by Kate Angell - Free Book Online

Greatest adventure of my life.’ ”
    One corner of his mouth curved slowly. “I’ve had ice cubes on my testicles. Cubes were in a hot female mouth and melted quickly.”
    “At the North Pole, you’ll be lucky if your balls don’t freeze and fall off.”
    “I’d like to keep my boys.”
    “Perhaps paragliding, then? Taylor glides competitively. Paragliders are fitted with radar equipment to track their global positioning.”
    “Radar equipment?” Sloan didn’t sound enthusiastic.
    “Your glider needs to be tracked in case of an unexpected thunderstorm. Not too long ago, a male glider got caught up in severe wind currents and was lifted thirty-two thousand feet. He was flying with the jumbo jets. He lost consciousness and control of the glider.”
    “Holy shit . . .”
    “When the storm subsided, he came to, and eventually landed safely.”
    “I don’t do lightning and thunder,” stated Sloan.
    “How about snowboarding, waterfall ice climbing, downhill?” she suggested.
    “Put me on a mountain. I can downhill.” He looked pointedly at her pale green T-shirt and read the inscription. “I want to ‘Huck It.’ ”
    She wanted his eyes off her breasts. Crossing her arms over her chest, she asked, “Do you know what hucking even is?”
    He innocently lifted one arrogant brow. “Thought it was a misspelling.”
    Why was she wasting her time with this muscle-bound clown? “Hucking is when a skier throws himself off the mountain edge and catches big air. The skier—”
    “—hopes to land a jump, especially on a soft-snow day,” he finished for her. He scanned the shadowed posters and pictures on the redbrick walls, all remote yet famed locales to make a man’s blood run cold.
    He eventually read the challenge of La Grave. “ ‘Belong to the longer, faster, deeper crowd.’ ” He made the words sound more sexual than adventuresome.
    Eve’s heart tripped. And her body flushed. She hated the fact that she’d reacted to this macho jerk. “La Meije isn’t for the vast majority of skiers,” she said, recovering quickly. “It’s an untamed, ungroomed, code-red terrain.”
    His gray gaze went wide. “Mountain sounds big, bad, and really, really scary.”
    “You’d be a total yard sale.”
    “I have no plans of wiping out and leaving my equipment spread out in a trail of mass destruction.”
    “Then you’d better pack humility and responsibility,” she warned him. “It’s no place for egos. La Meije has a way of making a man feel very small and very mortal. Get cocky on the mountain and Mother Nature will slap you silly.”
    “I can handle Mother Nature,” he bragged. “I’ve got the gear for downhill.”
    “Owning gear and knowing how to use it are two completely different things.”
    “I’ve skills,” he affirmed. “Chances are good I’ll beat Taylor down the mountain.”
    “Hitting the base as a human snowball doesn’t count.”
    “Real funny, Eve.”
    She’d thought so. Smiling to herself, she reached for the thick brown leather notebook that held Taylor’s travel itinerary. Flipping through the months, Eve noted that her sister had scheduled a trip to La Grave for mid December. Three of the four client slots were already filled.
    “There’s only one slot available,” she told him. “The adventure runs five days, right before Christmas. If you’re interested . . .”
    He scratched his stubbled jaw. “I’m thinking.”
    “If you have to think , you don’t want the thrill.” She took a step back from the counter. “Why not just ask Taylor out? Dinner and a movie could save on broken bones. La Meije is treacherous.”
    “Your sister likes action.”
    “Taylor’s not on the go every second of every day. She exhales, just like everyone else.”
    “After we race down the mountain, we’ll exhale together at the hotel, in my suite.”
    Wishful thinking on his part. Taylor never got involved with her clients. Her adventures were all business. Eve tapped her gold-link