Читать книгу Breaking Her No-Dating Rule - Amalie Berlin - Страница 8

“I KNOW THAT you want to manage this situation yourself, but you do have to relax at some point. Let me and the universe carry the load for a few days.”

The fact that most of the resort had been abandoned at the first hint of the approaching storm gave Ellory Star more confidence than she might’ve otherwise had in what would be an intense situation at best. Only a handful of staff remained—enough to keep the resort running—and a handful of guests trying to get in as much time on the powder as they could before the clouds rolled in. But it wasn’t like Mira was leaving the premises. She’d be around for catastrophe, her safety net.

“Enjoy your post-coital vacation, spend time with Mr. Forever, Number Five. I promise not to refer to him any more in any way that highlights the fact that I totally won the New Year’s resolution war this year.” Ellory leaned over the bar in Jack’s suite, where she and Mira were chatting, tidied a stack of napkins emblazoned with the lodge logo, and pretended not to be feeling smug about how totally right she was.

Mira—her sister by everything except genetics and actual family ties—was the concierge doctor for the ski lodge where Ellory was now living and working, and her best friend since they’d set eyes on one another as toddlers, when Ellory’s mother had brought her to work at the lodge Mira’s family owned. She was the brilliant one, and rational, dependable, smart, and a lot of other good-sounding words that everybody would use to describe Mira and only Mira would ever use to label her.

“You haven’t won until you figure out your quest. Your project. The thing you’re working on.”

A project Ellory hadn’t explained. “I should’ve just bet you I could go without a man longer than you could keep serial dating. Though I haven’t seen any contenders for sexy fun since I’ve been home. So the resolution is safe.”

But that wouldn’t have served the point of her making the resolution to begin with. Besides, her inability to articulate exactly what was wrong was part of the problem she needed to figure out. She skated through life, largely flying on instinct and ignoring anything that hurt her to the point that she wasn’t even sure what hurt her any more. For the past year she’d been running from some pain she couldn’t name—because ignoring the reasons for pain didn’t mean she didn’t feel it. It just meant she felt it blindly.

Her quest had led her home, and left her with the understanding that she had something to work on. Banishing men from her life kept her from sublimating with sex, kept her from distracting herself. She’d spent a decade distracting herself with a string of different boyfriends, and she wasn’t any closer to finding enlightenment … or just plain old happiness … than she had been when she’d left home, determined to give her life meaning.

Before things got too deep, before Mira picked up on the melancholy lurking in Ellory’s soul, she shifted the subject back to one she knew Mira couldn’t resist. “So, I’m going to have to come up with a new nickname for Jack. I could make some ‘playing doctor’ references, but that’s too obvious.”

Jack’s timely arrival through the suite door was her cue. “Hey, Loooove Doctor,” she called, and then shook her head. “Nah, that’s not it. I’ll keep working on it. Somewhere else now that we’ve got everything hashed out.” She winked at Mira and brushed past Mr. Mira on the way to the door.

Before she stepped out she turned to say something, and interrupted kissing. “Man, I was going to say that I was totally wrong about the resolution—that it just wasn’t that Jack was lucky to be the fifth dude but that I believed he was the one … and would have been if he’d been number twenty-five or number five. Now I just want to give you a safe-sex talk!”

When they both laughed at her she smiled and cooed at them both while closing the door, “Oh, Number Five, you’ll always be number one to me!”

The door clicked before she could get pelted with bar paraphernalia for her pretend Mira-sex-talk.

The universe did like her. Occasionally.