Home Ice by Catherine Gayle Page A

it.
    “You’re not scared?”
    “I’m fine as long as I only look up, not down.”
    “Do your girls know you’re scared of heights?” I asked.
    “They know. It’s too hard to hide it when they want to go on roller coasters and sky trams and God only knows what else.”
    “So what would they think if they could see you now?”
    She waited a moment but then laughed. “They’d think you’d brainwashed me.”
    I took my cell phone out of my pocket and nudged her to turn so we were facing the other direction. “I think we need to send them a selfie so they can see you facing your fears.”
    “Oh, please don’t make me look that way,” she said, stiffening.
    “Look up, not down. I’ve got you.” I tightened my other arm around her, drawing her closer to me.
    She waited a beat, but then she nodded resolutely.
    I got us in position and held my phone out so it would catch us, the falls in the background, and at least a bit of the bridge. “Are you smiling?”
    “I’m squeezing my eyes closed.”
    I laughed. “That’s not what you want them to see, is it?”
    “Maybe not, but it’s as good as I can do.”
    There was something else she could do that I was sure would work much better. I put a finger under her chin and tilted her head up toward me, and I kissed her. When I broke it off, she said, “Oh,” and blinked up at me a few times. That was when I snapped the shot.
    “Give me Zoe’s phone number, and I’ll let her see how kissy-faced you’re getting with Beefy.”
    “Only if you swear not to mention Beefy at all.”
    I pecked her on the lips again. “Done.” Right now, I would promise her almost anything. I put the number in as she rattled off the digits and hit Send.
    “There aren’t many people in the world I’d do that for, you know,” Paige said.
    I spun her around in my arms so I could see her eyes. “Do what?”
    “Get up here. Face my fears. You bring things out of me that I didn’t know were there.”
    She and her girls did the same for me. Well, not exactly. I knew this side of me existed, thanks to Linnea. But until Paige and her family had come into my life, no one but Linnea could bring out that side of me, and I’d been happy to keep it that way.
    I kissed her on the forehead and took her hand. “Should we keep going up, or are you ready to go down?”
    “Up,” she said at the same moment as my phone dinged with a reply.
     
    Mom and Beefy, sitting in a tree. K I S S I N G.
     
    And then my phone went crazy with more replies.
     
    OMG. Beefy.
     
    No. B E R G Y. Not Beefy.
     
    I am so sorry.
     
    I hate my phone. Stupid autocorrect.
     
    I’m going to go crawl under a rock now. Please forget I ever existed. Tell Mom I love her.
     
    I burst out laughing so hard and so loud it echoed through the valley.

    MATTIAS SPENT THE night at my house again. We hadn’t exactly had a huge conversation about it or anything. It felt right, so we let it happen.
    I was already getting used to waking up in his arms, and it had only been two nights. This could only spell trouble for me, but I didn’t know how to stop it. For that matter, I wasn’t sure I needed to stop it anymore. He cared about my girls—enough that he was going to all sorts of trouble to keep a promise to Sophie—and they seemed to like him. This weekend, we were doing things with just the two of us, but all of our plans for the future were things that would include my daughters, and he was the one making the suggestions.
    He wasn’t asking me for things I wouldn’t be able to give him. He didn’t expect me to drop everything and be with him, and he wouldn’t drop everything to be with me, either. We both had our own lives, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t find a way to share parts of them with each other. Did it?
    Oh, and then there was the small matter that—despite the fact that we’d now had sex several times—he could still make my panties melt with nothing more than a grin. If anything, that had only