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“True,” John chuckled. “I mean, his bullshit reaches the gossip halls of the maternity ward.”
“Those poor children,” Elena teased her husband. “Born into a world where they are forced to hear nonsense about this sexy man.”
“Poor children?” Collin scoffed, sitting back in his chair pretending to be appalled as the rest of us laughed in response.
“You heard me, lover,” she said, smiling at him with a glint in her eye, lending everyone the idea that John and I weren’t the only two having difficulty keeping our thoughts and hands to ourselves.
“Oh, hell yeah. I heard you,” Collin played back. “I’m hearing a lot more than?—”
“Save it for the house, you two. You can give Jenkins something to worry about,” Jake laughed. “If he’s worried about us, he won’t have time to report to Mommy Aster about her son falling in love with a woman…”
Jake trailed off, seemingly stopping himself in his tracks. That was enough to prove that the butler was up to no good on behalf of John’s family. The guys had obviously discussed this just like I did with the girls this morning. It was beginning to seem like a bigger deal than I initially thought.
“What is it?” I finally said since everyone seemed to be at a sudden loss for words.
“It’s nothing,” John said. “Just fucking embarrassing that my mom sent a full staff to babysit me and my friends when she’s never done anything like this before.”
“So, this has never happened?” Jim asked.
“No, never,” John said, shaking his head. “If I knew things would go down like this, I would’ve refused the staff. If my mom had taken issue with that, I would’ve spared us all the discomfort of staying in a home without privacy or respect.”
“It’s probably nothing,” Ashley spoke up. “Let’s just enjoy our time here. I assume Mr. Jenkins will report that John has great friends, and we’ll all be invited back again.”
“Hey, why don’t you assholes own anything up here?” John asked playfully, maneuvering the subject onto something more comfortable while we waited for the food.
“Meh,” Collin said. “While I enjoy skiing, ski trips, and adventures, I just don’t need to add expensive real estate to my resume to make me feel important,” he chuckled. “Unlike Jimbo, who just secured a whole-ass island?—”
“Shut the hell up,” Jim laughed into his beer. “It’s nothing,” he looked at all of us, who seemed shocked about this breaking news. “I just got us a place for the kids to go to that is reminiscent of the island where we were married.”
“So, you bought an island?” Jake questioned and looked at Collin. “How the fuck did you know about my brother’s ridiculous purchase, and I didn’t?”
“I didn’t,” Collin laughed. “I was just fucking around! I didn’t think he’d actually have bought an island.”
“Oh, God,” Avery said with a laugh. “Now our big secret’s out, and these guys will all be bombarding us on vacations to our cute place.”
“Cute place?” I said with a laugh, unable to resist how funny it was to downplay the purchase of a private island.
“Right?” Jake said in response to me. “Seems you wealthy snobs have a lot of explaining to do. Cute-fucking-place my ass. You bought a mother fucking island like the bastard you are, older brother, and I deserve some answers.”
“Food is here,” Jim said with a confident smile, “and I would rather enjoy food than discuss business with you buffoons.”
The banter played well into the entire afternoon, and I enjoyed myself more with each passing hour. If hanging around the one-percenters club was always like this, I’d highly recommend everyone do it because they were normal, just like the rest of us.
Once lunch was finished, we all ventured toward the lifts that would bring us up to the top and have us leisurely skiing down the mountain. I should’ve known by the competitive talking at lunch that skiing down the hill wouldn’t be what I expected.
“All right,” I heard Collin say after everyone disembarked the ski lift. I situated myself in my skis, enjoying the fresh hot wax applied to give them a smooth glide over snow, which grew slushy under the sunshine. “We’ve taken this run a couple of times. Now, you ladies are all pretty good at skiing, yes?”
Collin glanced at me while asking that question because I was new to the group and hadn’t gone skiing with them before. Elena and Avery were sitting on the snow, locking their boots onto their snowboards since they’d both opted to snowboard while the rest of us challenged the slopes on our skis. (Mine were rented, of course, because this wasn’t my first choice as a fun winter sport). Who knew, if John and I worked out, maybe this would be something we did during the winter season. For now? I wasn’t trying to be like John on our camping trip, buying all new gear just to ski for a week in Aspen.
“Yeah, I’m an okay skier. The girls and I took this run to get my ski legs back before meeting you boys for lunch, so I’m good to go, but I’m not following you guys down some crazy black diamond trail or anything like that.”
“We got you, kid. Let’s head toward this run,” Jake said before he glanced at Ashley. “Are you doing okay, sweetheart?”
“If doing okay means I’m ready to kick your ass, then, yeah, baby. I’m doing better than okay,” she said, smacking his butt with her ski pole.
“You good?” John asked me with a smirk.
“You trying to act all cute like Jake?”
