That Old Emerald Mountain Magic Read online

  The three of them thought about it for a little while, and then Tyler said, “We should serve breakfast. We’re never able to stretch the budget enough to do Christmas dinner and a hot morning meal, but I always feel bad sending them away hungry in the morning and telling them they have to wait til dinnertime.”

  “Great,” Carmen said. “That sounds nice.”

  “That won’t cost a thousand dollars, though,” Tyler said. “More like a couple hundred.”

  “Then use the rest throughout the year,” Carmen said. “Stock the food pantry when supplies are low.”

  He extended his hand to Carmen and she shook it, color rising into her cheeks, and she was happy when the moment had passed and she found herself alone outside with Joy. Her heart felt full and she was excited for the brighter holiday the shelter visitors would have now, but she was also eager to get the spotlight off of herself. She kissed Joy and then said, “What should we do now?”

  “You don’t need to go back to the cabin?” Joy asked, looking at Carmen with doe eyes that signaled desire. “Won’t they miss you?”

  “Maybe a little,” Carmen said, wrinkling her nose as she smiled at Joy. “But I’d like to stay with you a bit longer. Can we go back to your apartment?”

  “Of course,” Joy said, taking her hand and pulling her eagerly toward her parked car.

  This time they made it all the way into Joy’s bedroom.

  They stripped each other naked, losing articles of clothing every step of the way down the short hallway, and collapsed into bed together, a tangle of limbs and desire. Joy’s bed was soft and warm, the flannel sheets easy to sink into, and Carmen took her time exploring Joy’s body this time.

  She memorized the curve of her lips, the taste of peppermint on her skin, the softness of her curves and the muscles just beneath, earned from years on the slopes. She ran her fingers up and down over every inch of Joy’s body, reading her and learning the different sounds of her pleasure as she kissed here, licked there, paused over her breasts and her thighs and her lips.

  Carmen lay between Joy’s thighs for almost half an hour, lazily tasting and touching her and teasing her closer and further from release. She wanted to enjoy this moment for as long as possible, freeze it in her mind and keep it there forever. If she only had five more days on the mountain, she’d make every moment that she had with Joy count.

  December 21

  Eighteen

  Carmen

  Carmen jerked awake, squinting at the sun which was streaming through Joy’s bedroom window and intensified by the reflection of the white snow outside. Joy was lying beside her, her smooth skin inviting Carmen to run her hand along it, and she realized that she’d nodded off last night with her arms around Joy.

  “Shit,” she said, sitting up. She’d only meant to close her eyes for a minute – her eyelids had been so heavy – and now it was morning. “Oh, shit.”

  “What’s wrong?” Joy asked. She rolled over and rubbed the sleep from her eyes, revealing the perfect porcelain of her breasts, her nipples hard from the draft of the window. “Is it morning already?”

  “Yeah,” Carmen said, getting out of bed. Her panties and bra were on the floor near the bed, and the rest of her clothes were strewn throughout the apartment like breadcrumbs toward the door. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep. My parents are probably wondering where the hell I am.”

  She hopped into her panties and Joy got out of bed, throwing on a robe and then going into the hallway to help Carmen gather up her clothes. When Joy put them all on the bed for her, Carmen went straight for her jacket, pulling her phone out of her pocket. There were three missed calls from Mom and one from Dad, and she realized with irritation that her phone had been set to silent the whole time so she never heard it ring.

  Carmen called her mom’s phone while she pulled her dress up over her hips and Joy went to her closet to get dressed.

  “Oh good, you’re not dead,” Mom said with a sarcastic edge in her voice when she answered. “I was worried.”

  “I’m sorry,” Carmen said. “I lost track of time and fell asleep.”

  “Fell asleep where?” her mom asked, and Carmen’s neck went hot with embarrassment. She was twenty-two years old and yet sometimes she still felt like a teenager when it came to dealing with her parents.

  “Umm,” she stalled, trying to build up the courage to either tell the truth or lie. There was only one place she could be, though, and surely her mother knew that, so she just repeated, “I’m sorry, Mom. I’ll be back soon.”

  They hung up and Carmen looked to Joy with a frown and said, “Well, that was embarrassing.”

  Joy went over and kissed Carmen’s forehead. “Come on, I’ll drop you off at the cabin. I’ve got to get to work soon anyway.”

  Then she produced the cheap ear muffs that Carmen had been wearing yesterday, which had rolled almost into the kitchen last night in their haste to undress. She unfolded them and put them on Carmen’s head.

  They went out to Joy’s car, shivering as they waited for the engine to warm up, and Joy asked, “So what’s on the Castillo itinerary today?”

  “I have no idea,” she answered with a laugh. “I lost track somewhere around dog sledding. I think today’s the day we finally hit the ski slopes? Or maybe that’s supposed to be tomorrow and today is activities at the lodge.”

  “Santa’s coming down from the North Pole for photographs today,” Joy supplied. “I know your sisters said they’re too old for Santa, but if the schedule allows, you should check it out. We turn the whole lobby into a winter wonderland and it’s a lot of fun. You might even get to see me dressed like an elf if I can’t sucker one of my subordinates into doing it.”

  “That I need to see,” Carmen said, laughing.

  Joy dropped her off in front of the cabin, then backtracked up the road to the lodge to begin her shift. When Carmen opened the door, the first thing she saw was her sisters sitting in the living room, sharing a breakfast of room service pancakes near the Christmas tree. The second thing she saw was her parents standing in the kitchen, her father’s arms crossed over his chest.

  “You slept over at that girl’s apartment?” he asked, and Carmen immediately went red in the cheeks and neck. His tone wasn’t exactly angry – mostly just disapproving – and that seemed to make it even worse. She was old enough now to make her own decisions, and she’d clearly made the wrong one by choosing Joy over her family.

  “I didn’t mean to,” she explained. “I just fell asleep.”

  “We were worried,” Mom said, her lips pursed and her voice low enough that the twins wouldn’t catch the content of her words if they were listening. They were definitely listening, even if they were doing a pretty good job of pretending to be focused on their pancakes. “You could have at least called.”

  “Like I said, it was an accident,” Carmen said. “I’m sorry that I worried you.”

  “Whatever happened to a family vacation?” Mom asked, and Carmen had to keep herself from snorting at this. It had been Mom who put up the biggest fight when Dad announced that they’d be coming to Emerald Mountain this year instead of Cancun, and now she was turning it back on Carmen. She said, “We’ve barely seen you since we arrived. You keep running off to be with some resort employee you just met.”

  “It’s one thing to have a little fun with a fling on vacation,” Dad said, keeping his voice low. “It’s another to just not come home at night.”

  Carmen meant to say that she knew and she felt guilty for all the times she had chosen Joy over her family so far this week, but instead she said, “It’s not a fling.”

  The words surprised even her, but she didn’t like how flippant it had sounded when her dad used that word. No mere fling would consume so much of Carmen’s mind, or fill her with a deep longing to be with Joy at every hour of the day. But could it really be any more than that with the knowledge that she’d be going back to New York the day after Christmas, half a country’s distance away from h
ere?

  “Whatever it is, you need to be more responsible,” Dad said. “We need to know where you are and you need to answer your phone. We were worried.”

  “I’m sorry,” Carmen said.

  Dad put his arm around her shoulder and accepted the apology, then offered to order her a stack of pancakes from room service. “They’re lemon-ricotta and they’re really good.”

  Carmen accepted this offer, and while she waited for her breakfast to be delivered, they went into the living room and sat down on the couch across from the twins. Carmen asked, “So what’s on the itinerary today, Dad?”

  “Your mom wanted to check out the resort spa,” he said. “So she and the twins are going to go over the menu and book some services after breakfast. You could probably get a massage of some sort to help loosen things up if your ankle is still bothering you.”

  “It’s basically back to normal, I think,” Carmen said, putting her leg out in front of her and rolling her ankle back and forth a few times. It was pain-free and there was no more swelling, so her collision with Joy had been a fairly lucky hit and the sprain hadn’t been bad. She asked, “Are you going to the spa?”

  “I don’t know,” Dad said. “Mom wants me to get a pedicure but we’re still in negotiations.”

  “I promise you’ll like it,” Mom said with a laugh.

  Carmen thought about Joy’s invitation to come to the winter wonderland in the lobby, and wondered if she could convince her sisters to give up their ‘too old for Santa’ insistence for a few minutes to check it out after their spa treatments.

  “Then later we’re all going into Denver for dinner,” Dad added. “I made reservations at Mizuna because your mom’s been dying to try the wild king salmon.”

  “They’re known for it,” Mom said. “Supposed to be out of this world.”

  “I don’t care about the salmon,” Maria said from her spot on the large ottoman. “I’m just waiting for tomorrow night.”

  “What’s on the schedule for tomorrow night?” Carmen asked.

  “We’re having a chef come to the cabin, remember?” Mom said. “She was very highly recommended.”

  “Sounds good,” Carmen said, and then she had an idea. “Hey, do you think I could invite Joy to join us if she’s free?”

  “Your girlfriend?” Maria asked in the same sing-song voice she’d used to tease Carmen the morning before when Joy’s name had come up.

  “Not exactly,” Carmen said. She turned back to her parents to make her case. “Her roommate’s out of town and her mom doesn’t live in the area. I think she’d really like to share a family meal, especially with it getting so close to Christmas. Besides, this way you could get to know her and I can spend time with everyone. We all win.”

  She said this last bit with a wink, but it seemed to work – especially the part about Joy not having many people in her life right now. Carmen knew that would play on her mother’s heartstrings, and in the end, it worked.

  “Bring her,” Mom said. “I’m sure Chef Julia won’t mind one more guest – I’ll just let her know.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” Carmen said, giving her a quick hug just as there was a knock on the door and her breakfast arrived.

  Carmen didn’t get a chance to see Joy again after their frantic morning together – Dad kept her busy with spa treatments and despite Joy’s lamentation she didn’t have to dress as an elf for Santa’s visit to the lobby, which Carmen succeeded in dragging her sisters to. They said they were too old and that the wonderland of cotton batting and glittery fake snow was ‘little kid stuff,’ but after a few minutes they lost themselves in the moment and Mom had a good time taking pictures of them exploring the life-sized gingerbread house, plucking candy canes off the enormous Christmas tree, and even waiting in line to see Santa Claus.

  In the evening they went into Denver for their dinner reservations, the hour-long limo ride both ways eating into Carmen’s free time, and by the time they got back to the cabin it was late and she was tired. She texted Joy a few times throughout the day, checking in with her, and just as she was crawling into bed that night, she called to invite Joy to dinner the next night.

  “I don’t know,” Joy hedged, and Carmen was surprised that she objected.

  “Do you have plans?” Carmen asked. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed you would be free.”

  “It’s not that,” Joy said. “I’ve just never done the whole ‘meet the parents’ thing before, and with your family in particular, I might be too intimidated to be any fun.”

  “Intimidated?” Carmen asked, surprised. “I know you only know them as resort visitors, but there’s nothing to be intimidated by.”

  “Really?” Joy asked with a snort. “You’re staying in one of the nicest accommodations the resort has to offer. The money you donated to Tyler will feed and shelter people for at least a couple of weeks and to you it amounts to nothing more than a stocking stuffer. Your family might have started out from humble beginnings, but your world is so different from mine. Yes, it’s intimidating.”

  Carmen felt embarrassed like she always did when people looked at her and saw her wealth. She’d foolishly hoped that Joy was able to look beyond it – Carmen thought that after working at the resort for so long and being surrounded by affluent travelers she might be desensitized to it, and she didn’t like knowing that Joy saw that part of her after all. Her bank account, the lifestyle that her parents had thrust upon her, was only one aspect of her life and she didn’t want that to be the thing that Joy focused on.

  There was one thing that might help, though.

  “I haven’t told you what my dad did to make his money,” she said. “You don’t have to come to dinner if you don’t want to, but I have a feeling you’ll think differently about us after I tell you. Do you want to know?”

  “Very badly,” Joy said with a laugh. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious.”

  “Most people are,” Carmen said. “You’re going to laugh.”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Have you heard of the app GoGet?” she asked.

  “That’s the one where you can get people to run your errands for you, right?” Joy asked.

  “Yeah,” Carmen said. “It’s like Uber, only instead of getting a ride, you hire someone to go out and get whatever you need and bring it to you.”

  “Are you telling me your dad invented GoGet?” Joy asked.

  “Yeah,” Carmen said. “He came up with the idea, hired some people to program the app, and it turned out to be his million-dollar idea. I’ve been working on developing a drone division since I graduated from college, so with any luck it’ll become a multimillion-dollar company within the next few years.”

  “Wow,” Joy said. “And this is supposed to help me stop being intimidated how?”

  “I’m about to tell you its origin story,” Carmen said. “Very few people know this, and I have to swear you to secrecy that you won’t share this information. My dad’s kind of embarrassed about how GoGet was born.”

  “Okay, you’ve piqued my interest,” Joy said. “I won’t tell a soul.”

  “It definitely didn’t start out as an app,” Carmen said. “My dad was always inventing things when I was a kid – he’d come home almost weekly with a new idea, so excited and so sure that it was going to be brilliant. They rarely were, and my mom started to get kind of irritated with him after a while. I think there are only so many times you can be a cheerleader for an idea that gets abandoned a week later when a new one takes over.

  “GoGet was one of his earliest ideas, from his twenties. He called it Beer Run back then, and the original idea was that he could call a friend who owed him a favor whenever the Massachusetts winters were too bitter or he was just too tired from a long day at work, and that friend had to go on a beer run or a whatever run and bring it over to the house for him. It was a clever way of exploiting his friends, but it wasn’t really an invention until apps came into wide use and the world was finally ready
for Beer Run to turn into GoGet.

  “By that time my dad had been laid off from his job at the factory, and my mom had reached the height of her annoyance at his inventions. She wanted him to quit wasting his time on them and focus on providing for his family, so he did. He buckled down, started looking at job boards and putting out resumes. He set his inventions aside, and other than GoGet, he hasn’t really picked the hobby back up again since.

  “So his efforts paid off and he got a call about a job not too long after he was laid off, but on the morning of the interview, he realized that his only pair of dress shoes were horribly scuffed and he was badly in need of shoe polish. He had to watch me while Mom was at work and he had no time to go to the store, so he decided to call in a favor and have one of his friends go on a run for shoe polish. It wasn’t until Dad was halfway through the job interview that the gears really started turning on the possibilities of using technology to bring Beer Run to the masses. He immediately started calling around to see who could program it for him, and it was midnight before he remembered to tell Mom that he’d gotten the job he applied for.”

  Joy laughed and said, “So your family fortune comes from your dad being too lazy to get his own beer when he was in his twenties. That’s great.”

  “And now you know why you shouldn’t be intimidated by any of us,” Carmen said. “So will you come to dinner?”

  “Yeah,” Joy said. “I’d love to.”

  “Just don’t tell my dad that I told you that story,” Carmen cautioned.

  “Sure,” Joy agreed. “It’s kind of sad that he doesn’t invent anymore, though. It sounds like he really had a zest for it.”

  “Yeah, he did,” Carmen said. “I think he’s just too busy these days. It’s a surprising amount of work being an app mogul.”

  December 22