Page 18 of Snowed In with You

‘Of course,’ said Nate, his brows furrowed in confusion. ‘It’s January in the Alps. You’d be crazy not to have ice grips.’

‘Fucksake,’ muttered Lucy as Nate disappeared up the stairs. She hovered in the doorway, glancing at the clock on her phone and hoping Ulrich’s timekeeping wasn’t up to Swiss watch standards. Nate was back in less than a minute, and quickly followed her out into the snow.

‘We need to hurry,’ said Lucy, picking her way along the edge of the road.

‘Where’s the bus?’ asked Nate.

‘At the end of this road,’ said Lucy, squealing as she lost her footing and skittered backwards, her arms windmilling. ‘Christ, these boots are rubbish.’

‘Come on, get on my back,’ laughed Nate.

‘Your back?’

‘I’ll piggyback you, or we’ll never make it,’ he said, turning away from her and holding out his arms. She hesitated for a second, then yanked her coat up around her waist and jumped onto his back, wrapping her arms around his neck as he hooked his hands under her thighs.

‘Let’s go,’ said Nate, starting to run along the edge of the road through the village, the metal studs on his boots digging hard into the packed snow. Lucy let out a nervous shriek as he jogged faster, dodging around piles of snow and bollards and lamp posts and tourists. People grinned at them as they bobbed past, and Nate’s breath created plumes in the air as he kept going, holding her legs firmly around his waist so she didn’t jiggle up and down too much. She gripped tighter around his neck, trying not to strangle him as she started to giggle at the juvenile stupidity of it. It was the kind of thing Leo would have done, and today was all about being more Leo.

‘There’s the bus!’ shouted Lucy, as they reached the end of the road and crossed over to the bottom of the piste. Several people were still boarding, so Nate slowed down and gently lowered Lucy to the ground.

He turned to look at her, his cheeks pink and his expression triumphant. ‘We made it.’

‘Yes, we did,’ said Lucy, her feeling of childlike euphoria now battling her need for a wee after all that jigging about. Who was this complex, unfathomable man, who was afraid of the mountains and yet had the balls to risk a relationship with senior management? Who was moody and rude and left the party early, but clearly still had a playful side? If there was one thing Lucy was determined to get out of this unexpected lunch, it was to find out more about what made Nate Lambert tick.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Wouldn’t it be ironic if today was the day my parents lost their other child, thought Lucy as the piste bus tracked along the edge of a precipitous drop into the valley below. Awful for them, but at least they’d be able to do all their grieving on one day.

She’d thought that taking the window seat would be a generous gesture towards Nate, who looked entirely unsure about the whole business the minute he saw Ulrich and climbed aboard his rickety tank/bus hybrid, particularly as the blue skies and sunshine were quickly disappearing behind the heavy cloud cover that was moving in on a brisk wind. But within minutes of setting off, Lucy was vowing never to be the Good Person again – Ulrich drove like he’d previously only ever driven a bumper car at the fairground, with a complete disregard for skiers, pedestrians, trees and the possibility of plunging into the snowy abyss. Hanging off the edge of the mountain seemed to be the norm, as was turning corners on the banked-up edge of the piste so the bus listed sideways like it was on a rollercoaster.

As Ulrich responded to the rapidly diminishing visibility by putting on a pair of Top Gun aviator shades and lighting a cigarette with no hands on the wheel, Lucy started thinking about who might read the eulogy at her funeral. Jonno, ideally, but her mum would almost certainly pull rank and use it as an opportunity to talk about Leo instead. Would Anthony and Marco sit together? How would they even know she was dead? Maybe such a dramatic mountain crash ending would make the local news, so they’d find out that way.

Meanwhile, Nate kept his eyes closed throughout, sitting bolt upright with his hands gripping the seat in front, a visible sheen of sweat on his forehead. Eventually all the windows steamed up with the warmth of their combined bodies, obscuring the view and making the whole experience marginally less petrifying. She took deep, slow breaths, rubbed her sweaty palms on her non-absorbent coat, and prayed for it all to be over.

By the time they pulled up outside the bar fifteen minutes later, Lucy was actively trying to stop herself being sick and Nate was now wide-eyed, pale and clammy. It was also snowing heavily, but not in a delightful, winter-wonderland way where you stick your tongue out to catch snowflakes and shoot cute videos. At this altitude it was sideways shards of ice in a biting wind, leaving no time to fully appreciate the stone building and wooden terrace nestled in the trees at the side of the piste. The sign over the door said Die Guntherhütte, but Lucy wasn’t hanging about to admire it.

‘You can breathe now,’ said Lucy, as they bustled through the jumble of skis and poles on the racks outside into the steamy warmth of the bar and started to shed layers of clothing.

‘That was horrible,’ said Nate, his voice hollow with fear. ‘We’re not leaving for a long time, right?’

‘No,’ said Lucy with a smile. ‘I thought we could have some lunch, stay here for the afternoon, and get pissed enough that the trip back down won’t seem so bad.’

‘I am totally on board with this idea,’ said Nate, his mouth twitching into a feeble smile. The bar was already busy with an early lunchtime crowd eating pizzas and drinking tall glasses of beer, but the other passengers from the bus grabbed the last tables, leaving only the high stools at the bar. They bagged two, and Lucy left Nate in charge of swooping on the next available table whilst she went to the bathroom. The combined jiggling of the piggyback and the bus ride had left her bladder ready to burst, and it was hard not to let out an audible sigh of relief when she finally sat down on the loo. Even the freezing cold seat couldn’t spoil her moment of bliss, although her reflection in the mirror afterwards came close. She looked, by any standards, like she’d just rolled out of bed, which was fine earlier when she was out for a walk, but now she wished she’d made more effort.

‘What do you drink?’ asked Nate when she returned to the bar stools.

‘Right now I’d drink lighter fluid, just to forget,’ said Lucy, holding out her hands to see if the colour had returned to her knuckles. ‘But white wine is fine.’

Nate flagged down the man behind the bar, who came over with two lunch menus. ‘You came on the bus?’ he asked, and Lucy realised this was probably the eponymous Gunther, brother of psychotic Ulrich and potential future millionaire once he’d done a deal with Kristoff for this bar.

‘How can you tell?’ asked Nate.

‘It is the only way to get here if you are not on skis,’ said Gunther. ‘Which you are not dressed for. And also you look like you have both visited the gates of hell.’ He finished on a booming, manic laugh, and Lucy wondered if the whole family was, in fact, insane.

‘Two glasses of white wine,’ said Nate, giving Gunther a deadpan stare. ‘Large ones.’

‘No problem,’ said Gunther, leaving the menus and grabbing two wine glasses from the rack above his head. Lucy looked around the cosy bar, not much bigger than the average semi-detached house, clad in yellow pine with red curtains over the tiny windows. It was blissfully warm, with a huge wood-burning stove in one corner, draped in steaming hats and gloves. Packed out, you could maybe squeeze fifty people in here, and the atmosphere would be intimate and fun. She could totally see Kristoff buying it, filling it with mood lighting, stuffed animal heads and designer vodkas, and turning it into an exclusive Alpine hotspot for the rich and beautiful.

‘Here,’ said Nate, handing Lucy a huge glass of wine. She smiled her thank you and took a gulp, watching the sideways snow through the window for a moment and wondering if there was any chance the sun would come back out later so they could sit on the terrace. At the moment that looked unlikely, but maybe steamy warmth and good wine was better. A red-headed woman in her thirties sat at the end of the bar, giving directions to an older man setting up a keyboard on a stand in the opposite corner to the fire. He propped a guitar against the wall and unpacked a microphone. The sticker on the keyboard read Night Fever.