The Inn at Tansy Falls: Gripping and heart-warming women's fiction full of family secrets by Cate Woods

Author:Cate Woods [Woods, Cate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781800190627
Publisher: Bookouture
Published: 2021-05-11T18:30:00+00:00

Eighteen

As it was a weekday near the end of the season there were only a few skiers and snowboarders milling around at the base of the mountain. Compared with its glamorous new neighbor, the resort’s current sports center looked more like a tumbledown shack, yet Nell was enchanted by its folksy charm. A pair of antique wooden skis hung crisscrossed over the entrance, while inside there was a closet-sized boutique offering handknitted ski hats and souvenirs, ticket windows selling mountain lift passes and the Maverick Café, outside of which was a sunlit terrace that looked out over the main ski trail. If she hadn’t been so full of ice cream she would have asked Brody if they could have stopped off to enjoy the sunshine and one of the café’s delicious-sounding cinnamon-cream hot chocolates.

Her hand shielding her eyes against the glare, Nell watched as skiers flew down the mountain toward where they were standing at the bottom, swishing to an elegant halt in a flurry of snow that sparkled like handfuls of glitter thrown in the air. Well, most of them looked elegant: some barreled past, arms flailing, as if they had been picked up and chucked down the mountain (which was exactly how Nell imagined she would have looked on skis).

It was quite an experience walking around the resort with Brody, because virtually everyone they passed seem to know him. Every few steps, somebody would stop to say hi—and he was charming to all, doling out smiles and high-fives like Tom Cruise at his latest premiere, and she felt a prickle of pride at being squired by a local celebrity.

They paused at the bottom of a gentle hill that even Nell felt she might be able to get down, watching as a line of preschoolers with bright helmets and pizza-wedge legs snaked down behind their ski instructor.

“How do you feel about getting on skis?” asked Brody. “I’d be very happy to give you a lesson.”

Before she could answer one of the kids fell facedown in the snow, while the rest of the class just wove around him like a procession of clockwork toys. After a moment he got up and bombed down to the bottom where the others were now waiting; he clearly had no idea how to stop and crashed into them, taking out half the line in a bowling strike.

“Maybe another time,” said Nell, grimacing. “I’m not sure I’m a mountain person.”

“Okay, but I think you’d enjoy it. I think you’d be a natural at skiing—you’re the right build for it.”

Nell wasn’t sure what he meant by that: plenty of padding around her lower half, in case she fell? She got the impression, though, that it was intended it as a compliment; after all, Brody’s default setting was “charming.”

They were now approaching the quad chair lift and Nell watched, horrified, as the waiting skiers were scooped up into the air by what looked like a bench on strings, their skis dangling beneath them as they rocked and juddered over the treetops.

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