Ain't She Sweet (A Green Mountain Romance, Band 6) - Softcover

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With more than 4 million books sold, Marie Force is the New York Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling, award-winning author of more than 40 contemporary romances, including the Green Mountain Romance series and the Fatal series. Her self-published Gansett Island series has sold 2 million e-books since Maid for Love was released in 2011. She also writes the erotic romance Quantum series under the name M.S. Force.

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Chapter 1

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.
—Ray Bradbury

This might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, Charley Abbott thought as she jogged up a steep incline covered with snow and ice. But God forbid she back down from a direct challenge from her sworn nemesis. Said nemesis was trudging along next to her, smoothly navigating the hazardous trail and barely breathing hard when she was about to die from the exertion and the cold. Not to mention her face was numb, and she suspected her numb face was covered in frozen snot. But since backing down was not an option, she kept plugging along, uphill, in the snow, determined to see this through to the finish even if it killed her.

The way he’d looked her in the eye and said, “If it’s too much for you, I’ll go alone. One week off from training won’t derail you.” Feeling like a bull that’d had a red flag waved in front of its face, Charley had picked up that gauntlet and run with it, straight up an icy hill with no end in sight. Surely her lungs would explode or her legs would fall off before they reached the peak. And then there was the matter of getting back down . . . One thing at a time, Charley.

Whose freaking idea had it been to train for a marathon anyway? As she ran through the frigid tundra that had kept every other member of their running club home today—except for him, of course—she couldn’t remember a single reason why she’d wanted to run a marathon in the first place. A stupid, ridiculous, painful goal. But Charley didn’t do easy, so naturally she’d picked a challenge that required her to run in weather like this.

Next to her, Tyler Westcott made it look easy. That was just another thing to hate about the man who drove her crazy with his insistence that she should go out with him when she had zero interest in him. Sure, he was good looking and fit, and he had a decent job or so it seemed from the top-of-the-line Range Rover he drove, the stylish clothes he wore and the way in which he carried himself. Too bad none of that impressed the woman who’d already dated her way through Butler, Vermont, and found every man she met lacking in some way or another.

Why Tyler thought he would be different was beyond her, as was the top of this hill. With her eyes now officially frozen open, Charley decided enough was enough. Even if it meant having to look less than capable to him, she was calling a stop to this workout from hell.

As she opened her mouth to speak, the ground fell out from under her. She screamed as she fell down a steep embankment, smashing against trees and rocks and other obstacles before landing with her right leg wrenched under her at an awkward and painful angle. Her chest heaved from the effort to draw air into her lungs, and everything hurt.

From far off in the distance, she heard Tyler calling her name, but since she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t reply either.

“Charley, oh my God! Say something or do something to let me know you’re alive.”

Weakly, she raised an arm in acknowledgment.

“Thank God. I’m going for help. I’ll be back as fast as I can. Do you hear me?”

She raised her arm again.

“You’re going to be fine. I promise. Hang in there until I get back.”

Charley waved her hand, hoping he’d get the message to just go already. She shivered so violently that her teeth chattered, but oddly she didn’t feel cold. Trying to remember what her paramedic brothers had taught her about shock and cold-weather survival, her mind wandered to worst-case scenarios. What if Tyler fell or hurt himself on the way back or he couldn’t find the place where she’d fallen? What would happen then? Was it already getting darker, or was something wrong with her eyesight, too?

The uncontrollable shivering and the pain coming from her knee were so intense they required almost all her attention. This was bad. No way around it, she was in big trouble here. And her life depended on a man she’d rejected so often it was a wonder he didn’t have a complex. The irony would be funny were it not for the awful pain coming from her knee.

Her stomach heaved, and she turned her head to vomit, noting a speck of blood in the snow. Did that mean she was bleeding inside?

Charley had no idea how long she lay in the snow, shaking and aching and vomiting repeatedly, aware enough to know she was drifting in and out of consciousness. The ever-present pain dragged her out of blissful unconsciousness.

It could’ve been hours or days for all she knew before she heard activity above her, and the sound of Tyler’s frantic voice as he screamed for her. “Charley! I’ve brought help. We’re coming down to you. Just hang on.”

She couldn’t manage to raise her arm to acknowledge him, which made her feel bad. In the deep recesses of her mind, she knew he had to be panic stricken, and she was sorry to have put him through such an ordeal. He might not be the man for her, but he was nice to be so concerned.

Then she heard her brothers Landon and Lucas above her, screaming orders and getting closer to her. She shifted her gaze up and saw them dangling on ropes, rappelling down the side of the steep hill. Above them, she could hear Tyler arguing with the person in charge of stopping him from coming down, too.

“Charley, honey,” Lucas said when he reached her. “Talk to me.”

“Hey,” she croaked.

“Where does it hurt?”

“Everywhere.”

“Can you move everything?”

She forced her fingers and toes to move. “Yeah.”

Landon came down on the other side of her. “That’s one hell of a drop, sis. Leave it to you to do it up in style.”

“Mmm, hurts.”

“I know. We’re going to give you something for that. Hang on.”

The next hour was a blur of pain and agony and movement and people. They strapped her to a backboard and then got her into a litter that they used to haul her back up the way she’d come. It had taken far less time to come down the mountain than it did to go back up.

Landon had given her a shot to take the edge off the pain, so she floated between awareness and darkness. Nothing seemed real, except for the anguish on Tyler’s face as he ran alongside her, holding her hand as the paramedics worked to get her down the mountain while the snow continued to fall.

She wanted to shake him off, to tell him she didn’t need him to hold her hand, but she couldn’t seem to make her limb cooperate with the message from her brain. So she endured attention from him that she’d never wanted. Then it occurred to her that he’d saved her life, and she ought to cut him some slack. She’d see to that after she stopped hurting so badly.

They bounced along the trail, every bump sending pain rocketing through her body. The worst of it was in her knee, which was now braced and iced, as if any part of her needed to be colder. Her teeth continued to clatter from the uncontrollable shivering that made her feel like she was connected to something electrical.

Mercifully, she blacked out for a big part of the trip down the mountain, coming to as her brothers and the other firefighters pulled Tyler away from her so they could load her into the ambulance. In the background, she could hear him yelling at someone, begging to be allowed to accompany her to the hospital.

“Let him in,” Landon said, apparently overruling the objections of others because he was her brother and...