In countless sports, Eve had watched Taylor conquer the odds and win. She hoped her sister had one more chance with Stryke. One small, life-altering opportunity that would bring them together again.
She didn’t, however, share her thoughts with Sloan McCaffrey. He looked like the type who’d turn a deaf ear to anything he didn’t want to hear.
Standing near the front windows, she went ahead and closed, then latched the indoor cottage-style blue shutters before turning to Sloan and saying, “Taylor’s adventures are hard-core. You don’t travel to be seen or to show off. What you do on the trip is for you and nobody else.”
She straightened the burgundy leather chairs, then went on to neatly stack the magazines on street luging, mountain biking, and kite surfing. She flicked off the main overhead lights, discouraging anyone else from entering. Six sconces cast Sloan’s shadow and her own on the brick wall.
Their enormous silhouettes flickered and wavered.
And touched.
Eve sidestepped, so there’d be less touching.
Her white gauze skirt swirled about her legs as she crossed to the counter. Leaning on the glass top, she asked, “What are you good at, McCaffrey? So I can spin you in a positive light.”
“No need to spin.” He was anything but humble. “I’m healthy and athletic. And don’t break easily. My adventure needs to be scheduled in the winter. Off-season from the Rogues.”
A Rogue. She should have guessed he played ball. The man had the strut and inflated ego of a jock. His good looks and rippling muscles had gotten him through life.
Eve was not impressed.
Drilling her fingers on the counter, she suggested, “How about rafting? Taylor takes an expedition down the Brahmaputra in November.”
His forehead took on two crease lines.
“India.” She gave him a geography lesson. “Thick jungle, wild elephants, and tribal people.”
“Headhunters?” asked Sloan.
“Not for forty years.”
A third crease deepened as he took it all in.
“Then there’s the river,” she continued. “You’ll learn paddling commands, safety, and self-rescue, in case you’re thrown overboard. You can expect legendary drops, thirty-foot standing waves, rapids, and a short stretch of class-six water.”
He shook his head. “Not my adventure.”
She contained her smile. “There’s cross-country skiing on top of the world. You could test your endurance in Longyearbyen.”
The creases in his forehead dug deeper this time.
“Norway,” she informed him. “You need to be fit enough to draw a sled packed with eighty pounds of equipment. You’ll ski eight to ten hours a day. Over the course of a week, you’ll cover roughly ninety miles. You’ll need to put up with temps forty degrees below zero.”
“Taylor finds this fun?”
“She pushes herself mentally and physically.”
“How would I prepare?”
“Hold a ten-pound frozen sea bass, then smash the backside of your fingers until you can no longer hold the frozen carcass. This prepares you for numbness and shows what little finger dexterity you will have. You can also strip down to your underwear in front of an open refrigerator. Place ten to twelve ice cubes around your testicles, and poor a gallon of cold water over your head, while repeating, ‘I’m a thrill seeker. 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.”