“Yeah. Fucking to save the rainforest.”
Great. Now I’m thinking about sex again. I sigh.
“I think I’ll go to bed.”
I blink over to Carson. “It’s nine o’clock.”
“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “Unless… you want to check out the hot tub?”
Oh, that’s a fine idea. (That is sarcasm.) I blow out a breath. “I guess we might not get a chance for the rest of the weekend.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Okay.” I shut down my computer and grab my swimsuit from my suitcase.
It’s probably playing with fire. Hmmm. That metaphor doesn’t really work in a hot tub. More like… tempting fate. Ooh, skating on thin ice, that’s a good one for Carson the hockey player. Pushing our luck. Throwing caution to the wind.
Courting disaster.
And yet, here I am in a bikini and a towel, and, somewhat bizarrely, a knit beanie on my head, walking along a paved path to the hot tub, goosebumps rising on my skin from the chilly air.
The hot tub is surrounded by tall evergreen trees and snow. Steam rises seductively from the illuminated water. There’s nobody else here. A few chairs are arranged on the stone deck around the pool, and we drop our towels there. I toe off my flip-flops and sprint to the tub to leap in.
I gasp at the heat of the water on my chilled skin.
Carson, dressed in board shorts, walks over to a control panel and turns on the jets. They rumble to life and the water churns around me. I watch him walk toward me, and I could weep with the beautiful perfection of his body. Damn him.
He lowers himself into the water on the opposite side of the tub. There’s even more steam now, and a little mist from the bubbling water, obscuring my view of him. That’s okay. I’d rather look at the stars. I tip my head back and gaze skyward.
It takes me a few minutes to get over seeing Carson’s chest and abs. Then I do appreciate the view of the cosmos: evergreen trees silhouetted black against the deep blue sky, stars sparkling and winking above us. My fretfulness about earlier events eases somewhat in the serenity as I let my arms float in the deliciously warm water and lazily shift my body in front of the jets to get maximum massage benefit.
“You must love having a hot tub at your place in Salmon Arm,” I say.
“Yeah. It’s great after a hard workout.”
“Do you still do that ice-bath thing?”
“Not so much. I didn’t really find it helped, and there’s not a lot of evidence to support it.”
“Huh. Interesting. I always thought that was torture.”
“It wasn’t really fun.”
After a short pause, I say, “I remember when I was pregnant, I was so mad because I couldn’t go in the hot tub.”
The air around us shifts. “Yeah. Women sacrifice a lot.”
“Thank you for knowing that. But honestly, nothing really felt like that big of a sacrifice, because it was all for our baby.”
Talking about this is touchy.
“It was all worth it for him,” I add. I still feel sad when I talk about Kane, but not as gut-wrenchingly as I used to.
“You were a good mother,” he says, his husky voice even raspier.
My heart bumps. “Thank you.”
“I remember that time you went out with friends and he wouldn’t take a bottle. And you came home right away and gave up your girls’ night. And you weren’t even mad about it.”
