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flirting with her, a louder, more sensible part of Grace insisted that his job was to work with wealthy resort guests, and he was expected to be amenable and charming to all of them. Right? Right.
    Plant pole, slide. Plant pole, slide.
    It wasn’t his fault that he was an exceptionally good-looking man—the sort of man who made a sensible woman’s mind wander. A little short, maybe, but his body was a tight package of muscle, obviously no stranger to hard work and lots of exercise. His eyes were utterly captivating and when he smiled, those laugh lines testified to decades of good humor.
    Though she’d checked out his ring finger covertly several times, there wasn’t a ring, indentation or a tan line, and she wondered about Roger’s mother. Surely there had been a Mrs. Bradshaw at some point? But not for some time, Grace guessed. It had taken her over a year to part with her own wedding ring, and another to lose the tan line and indentation. If he’d ever worn one, she guessed it was at least two or three years ago.
    And a man like that almost certainly has a girlfriend , she told herself, suddenly thrusting her poles a little too deep into the snow and having to yank them back out. He fairly reeked of virility—a man like that wasn’t spending his nights alone. Oh, no. He’d have some local woman in his bed…a masseuse who worked in the hotel spa perhaps, or the concierge at the reception desk. Grace had noticed an attractive woman about her age when she checked in—it was completely possible she was Mr. Bradshaw’s paramour.
    Her eyes narrowed and she compensated for her envy of this charmed concierge by increasing her pace. Plant, slide, plant, slide, plant slide.
    “It’s none…of your business…with whom…Mr. Bradshaw…spends his time,” she panted.
    She was here for some exercise and to enjoy the bounty of nature, and anyway, she’d be gone the day after tomorrow. The upshot of the situation, she tried to convince herself, was that meeting Mr. Bradshaw had proven that Grace wasn’t too old to feel the sharp pang of desire, but her renewed spirits were short-lived as her mind settled on a troubling thought. Her throat tightened a little when she thought about her fifty-six year old body. She had always been fit, which meant she wasn’t in bad shape for her age, but almost six decades of wear and tear had left stretch marks, wrinkles, sun spots and the odd varicose vein. The only man who’d ever looked upon her small breasts and soft belly had been Harold, and truth be told, there hadn’t been a lot of looking—mostly just fumbles in the dark, under the covers, without much looking at all.
    Grace bit her lip as she wondered, just for a moment, what it would be like to be with Mr. Bradshaw—to be clasped against his muscular body, to feel the heat of his skin pressing into hers. He would look at her. He would insist. She felt it in her bones. He’d want to see everything. Her breathing hitched and her cheeks flamed. She certainly wasn’t ready for anything like that. Was she? No, she wasn’t. Absolutely not. Absolutely, positively not.
    A drop of sweat plunked from her forehead to her lip and she paused her skis, licking the saltiness away with her tongue, and looking ahead. So consumed with her thoughts, she wasn’t completely sure where she was now, but at some point she’d left the marked trail. Looking to her right, she saw the mountain she’d stared at this morning from her hotel window, and to her left was a vast, snow-covered field. Or lake. She couldn’t be sure, but it was flat and covered in snow.
    Buzz buzz. Buzz buzz.
    The phone in her pocket was buzzing and her heart hammered, wondering if it was Mr. Bradshaw checking up on her. She pulled off a glove with her teeth and grabbed the phone from her pocket, her breath catching to see the name “The White Deer Inn” pop up in the Caller ID box.
    “Hello,” she said breathlessly.
    “Ah! Mrs. Holden?”
    Her face fell when she