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a lot of Tray’s.”
    He sighed, huffing softly, before looking up at her. “My real name is actually Tracy, which is just as bad as Sue.” He grinned. “You like Johnny Cash?”
    “I don’t know,” she answered honestly, her voice barely a murmur.
    The whole earth had tilted on its axis when he told her his name. Her lips had parted, her eyes had widened, and she’d quickly stared down at her lap to hide her discomposure. His name was Tracy… Tracy.
    His voice interrupted the wildness of her thoughts. “Never listened to him?”
    “I don’t believe so.”
    “That’s a shame. He’s one of the greats.”
    “Like Mozart?” she asked, raising her eyes to his.
    He beamed at her like she’d just made a terrific joke. “Exactly! Like Mozart! Ha. You’re a pip.”
    Never having been called a “pip” before, Grace found she liked it far more than she probably should, and bit the inside of her lip to keep from grinning. Still, she was fairly certain her eyes were twinkling because he winked at her again before pulling off one snow boot and then the other.
    “So, I’m Tracy Bradshaw, called Tray. And you are…?”
    Pip. No.
    Kate. No.
    “Grace.”
    “Grace,” he whispered reverently. He tilted his neck back and looked up at her face, his blue eyes filled with wonder as he searched her eyes. “Like Grace Kelley. That’s the prettiest name I ever heard. You know? I don’t think I’ve ever met a Grace in real-life before.”
    “Now you have,” she answered, and without giving them permission, her lips tilted up into a smile.
    His smile widened as his warm hand clamped around her socked ankle and guided her foot into the first ski boot. “Now I have.”

Chapter 3
     
    Tray had offered to send Roger with her, but Grace had declined the services of a tour guide, feeling an intense need to unscramble her head by taking deep gulps of fresh, mountain air and talking herself out an unsuitable attraction that had rocked her fifty-six year old body like a bolt of lightning.
    “I’d offer to take you myself,” Tray had said, his face pursing with regret, “but I have a meeting with the resort manager in an hour. I can assure you that no one knows the trails like Roger, here.”
    “I’ll be fine,” Grace had insisted, her heart leaping a little from his words.
    “I hope so.” He’d grimaced a little, opening the door of the rental shop and looking up at the sky. “I don’t like the way it’s looking, Grace. Too much cloud cover.”
    Grace had taken her phone out of her parka pocket and checked the weather. “It says it’s going to clear up by noon.”
    His eyes had darted to the phone. “Do me a favor and put my number in there? If anything happens…anything—you get stuck, you get tired, you name it—you call me and I’ll come get you or send Roger, okay?”
    She’d stared back at him, boiling down his entire message to: I want to give you my phone number. When she didn’t answer, he’d tugged the phone from her hands and programmed his number in himself, then handed it back to her, still warm from his hands. She’d clasped it against her chest, rather than dropping it back into her pocket. “Okay.”
    He scanned her body slowly, then, from the pom-pommed black angora hat on her head to her black parka and leather gloves, to her blue jeans, stuffed into cross country boots. “You look real good, Grace. Ready to go, I guess.”
    She squelched the slight whimper that threatened to break free from the back of her throat and grabbed the skis and poles Roger was holding out for her.
    “I’m off, then!” she’d chirped, turning her back to them and quickly exiting the shop.
    And now here she was…a couple of miles from the rec center, all alone, trying to make sense of what had just happened between her and Tracy Bradshaw. She planted her sticks and slid forward, again and again, a sheen of sweat covering her brow.
    While part of her was desperate to believe that Mr. Bradshaw had been