Page 44 of Mountain Challenge

“Are you making fun of me? As I lie here, injured, with my ass hanging out of an open dress?”

Isla laughed. “I see you’re going to milk this for all it’s worth.”

“Only if I have to. Tell me what I did wrong, Isla. Please.”

Isla sighed a heavy sigh. “I saw you kiss Yvette,” she said, her voice only faintly more than a whisper.

“Yvette?” Ry asked, sure that he’d entered a parallel universe. The only Yvette he knew was Alex’s girlfriend, and he’d never kissed her. Not that there was anything wrong with Yvette—she was a beautiful woman. But she was Alex’s girlfriend, and—well, that’s just not something Ry did. “I’ve never kissed …”

And then the images of that morning replayed in his mind, like a grainy home video.Was that really only hours ago?He saw himself outside the restaurant, tray in hand, running into Yvette—saw the way she’d leaned over him in an uncharacteristic display of affection, which wasn’t affection at all, but rather her whispering in his ear about the surprise party she was planning for Alex. He could see what it might have looked like to Isla. Except … except was that the kind of man she thought he was?

“I know,” Isla said. A wave of sadness crossed her features, and Ry could see the effort she made to dispel it. “I feel stupid, believe me. But I can explain.” She straightened her shoulders, as if readying herself for battle.

“You don’t have to explain.”

“I don’t?”

“Not unless you want to.” He wanted to know. Of course he did, because that was the only way of ensuring he wouldn’t end up hurting her again without meaning to. But he didn’t want to cause her pain, certainly not now, when he couldn’t even takeher in his arms. Just holding her hand was taking so much of his strength.

“I’m sorry I have baggage.”

“We all have baggage.” He took a deep breath. The meds were kicking in again. He could feel he had little time left before he started snoring. “When I get out of here, we need to talk.”

“About what happened?”

He shook his head—shit, he really had to stop doing that. “About where things are going between us.”

She seemed surprised at that. “You still think … you still think they’re going somewhere?”

He found himself struggling to keep his eyes open. But he had to tell her this, at least. “Believe me, baby.We’regoing somewhere.”

21

Ry

“Great, just like that, Ry. One more time,” Marie said, not realizing—or caring—how annoying her boundless positivity could be. A moment after the thought crossed his mind, Ry ducked his head in shame. Marie was a great physiotherapist, and in their first few sessions together had already helped him regain a substantial range of motion in his shoulder.

“I can keep going,” he said.

Marie shook her head quickly. “No more today. Too much is just as bad as not enough.”

“Confucius?”

“Even better, that one’s mine,” she laughed. “You need to take it slowly. Ice the shoulder, rest, and tomorrow we’ll bring in some new exercises.” Her tone was cajoling now as she tried to bribe him with the thought of the new exercises. “I know it’shard, dear, but you need to be patient. Hang on tight, and we’ll get your shoulder fixed in no time.”

Frustration bit into him, but he swallowed it down and thanked Marie before heading to the shower. It wasn’t Marie’s fault that his life was crumbling. She was helping with his shoulder, but there were other things she couldn’t help with.

Ry looked down at his watch. Three weeks and four days since his surgery and, though his shoulder was doing better every day, his case was going nowhere. Sure, the investigators had arrived and conducted dozens of interviews. But since then, not a peep, and the more time that went by, the less Ry trusted the team from Lyon to unravel this mess.

He’d been to thegendarmerieonly once, the day Isla went to meet the teenage vandal. Ry had wanted to be there to give him the stink eye and make sure he knew there was someone—lots of someones, in this case—in Isla’s corner, in case he got the urge to hurt her again. But he didn’t think that would be happening. From the look on the boy’s face when Isla had accepted his apology, he’d more than learned his lesson.

He looked at his phone and saw he had no messages. Shit, but he missed the office. He missed his team, he missed the exercise, he missed—he missed hislife.

He picked up his backpack, resisting the urge to sling it over his shoulder. That was something he definitely couldn’t do yet. He walked outside, expecting to hail a cab since Hugo had dropped him off this morning on his way to work. Instead, a familiar figure waved him over. The blue streaks in her hair had turned dark red overnight. Whatever the color, he found Isla’s hair sexy as hell.

The only good thing about the last weeks was how much time they’d been able to spend together. Not just having sex, either. Or not all of it having sex—though the sex had been amazing. She hadn’t shared the whole truth about what she called herbaggage, so he still didn’t know why his encounter with Yvette that day on the slopes had freaked her out so badly, but one didn’t need to be Freud to realize somebody had hurt her in the past. Hurt her badly, and made it difficult for her to trust again.

And that was something they could work on, even if she didn’t feel comfortable sharing everything about her past with him. So they’d finally talked about things he usually didn’t talk about, because his relationships never went that far. Things like exclusivity—and yes, for the first time in his life, he found he wanted exclusivity. He had no interest in touching any other woman, nor did he want to imagine Isla in another man’s arms.

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