Nobody's Business (Nobody Romances) by Gina Ardito Read Free Book Online

slid away to the farthest
corner of the couch. "Dude. No. You are totally delusional. I'm talking about your rendezvous with your longtime sweetheart."

    With an easy grin, Doug picked up his beer. "What longtime sweetheart?"
    "Brooklyn."
    "Brooklyn Raine?" Doug laughed. "Oh, right. I'm delusional."
He tilted the bottle toward his mouth.
    "No, seriously. I ran into her in the lodge. She said she
worked with you today."
    The beer collided with a gasp of surprise in his throat, and
Doug choked. "Brooklyn Raine?" he repeated on a rasp.
    "Yeah. You met her, didn't you? She said you were"-Ace
pitched his voice higher-"`struggling, but he'll eventually
get the hang of it.'"
    Doug's mind scrambled to catch up to the conversation.
When had Brooklyn Raine worked with him? He must have
misunderstood. Either that, or the single beer had already gone
to his head. "Let me get this straight. You ran into Brooklyn
Raine. Here."
    Surely he would have recognized her. But the only people
he'd worked with today were Kerri-Sue ...
    And the Coyote.
    His stomach pitched as realization swirled his insides.
    "Yes, Brooklyn Raine. Yes, here." Ace cocked his head,
peered at him through narrowed eyes. "Are you okay?"
    Doug swallowed hard. "You mean the coyote Kerri-Sue
claimed was a nice, friendly innkeeper named Lyn was Brooklyn Raine?"
    Of course she was. Crazy as it might sound, the idea actually made sense when he considered the big picture.
    "Coyote?" Ace sat up and slid his feet to the floor. "What
coyote? What happened on the slopes today?"
    Briefly, Doug explained about his run-in with the mystery
skier named Lyn, leaving out, of course, that she'd shoved him
back to the ground. His ego couldn't take another blow today.
    Ace grinned. "Yep. That definitely would have been Brooklyn. She's the driving force behind the whole Ski-Hab program, though only the insiders know it."

    "Which explains why Kerri-Sue took direction from her,"
Doug concluded. "But what I don't understand is why KerriSue denied knowing who Brooklyn was in the first place."
    Ace's face blanked. "Huh?"
    "Remember? This morning? When you went into your diatribe about snowboarders getting no respect?"
    "Oh, right." Ace took a long sip of beer, swallowed. "They're
all like that around here. The town makes sure no one knows
who Lyn is ... or, technically, I guess, was. You ask anybody
in this whole state, they've never heard of Brooklyn Raine.
Lyn Hill, on the other hand, is the sweet little lady who runs
Snowed Inn, a quaint bed-and-breakfast on the outskirts of
town. Which reminds me. I probably should have warned you.
Lyn has no clue about how you came to be injured or what you
used to do before . . ." He gestured to Doug's right shoulder.
"You know."
    "Before I lost my arm." Doug stared out the window at the
lavender twilight sky and the dark mountains carved with silver slopes. Up behind a copse of trees, the headlights of a SnoCat gleamed, the machine packing down powder for tomorrow's
skiers.
    Brooklyn Raine was Lyn Hill. Inn proprietor and driving
force behind Ski-Hab. The Spidey-sense that had tingled all
day intensified to an electric jolt.
    "Tell me about Brooklyn Raine or Lyn Hill, or whatever
she calls herself these days. Why does everyone protect her?
And how did she get involved in Ski-Hab?"
    "The reason everyone around here protects her is because
Lyn wants to permanently put her celebrity behind her. She
hasn't been in the spotlight in years. She despises the press
and won't talk to any reporters."
    The thought erupted from Doug's lips before his brain fully
considered it. "I bet she'd talk to me."
    Ace leaned forward, slamming his empty beer bottle on the
coffee table. "Dude. Are you listening to me? If Lyn finds out
you're a reporter, she'll not only refuse to talk to you, she'll
bounce you out of Ski-Hab so fast, your butt will look like raw
burger meat."

    He brushed off the threat easily. The man who'd finagled
interviews