‘You better believe we are!’ Ari said. ‘Kit pulled it out of the bag today. He executed a Switch Backside 1260 – to perfection.’

‘A Switch Backside 1260?’ Clover echoed. ‘They’re pretty out there, aren’t they? Didn’t Shaun White do one at X Games?’

Ari and Kit both looked over in surprise.

‘How do you know what Shaun White did at X Games?’ Kit asked, pinning her with an intent look.

‘Research,’ she said simply.

‘You research snowboarding jumps?’

‘I try to understand the world I’ve stepped into,’ she shrugged.

‘The world you’ve stepped into,’ he echoed quietly, mocking her; his sardonic gaze drifting over to Ari, and back to her again. For a moment he didn’t say anything. ‘Guess you must’ve been pretty bummed then, when you heard I’d moved into this. All that time you spent watching Cory, learning about goofy-foot and frontside riding.’ A sneer curled his lip. ‘And now you’ve gotta start all over again.’

Clover felt her heart beat faster as Cory’s name fell from his lips. It felt like a slander, a deliberate taunt. Did he see the shock of it upon her? He was watching closely, no problem with eye contact. He was an apex predator and he used it as a weapon, like boxers going nose to nose before a fight. He seemed barely to move and yet with every breath, Clover felt like she was being squeezed, tighter and tighter.

Beau giggled beside him, breaking the deadlock. ‘Goofy-foot,’ he slurred.

‘More than anything, I was intrigued,’ Clover said simply, answering a question they both knew had been rhetorical, refusing to be baited. She would counter his heat with coolness – she would be water upon his flames, mist upon his steam. ‘It’s a big move, switching sports. It can’t have been an easy decision to take.’

‘Who said I took it? Perhaps it was forced on me.’

Blame blazed from his eyes. He held her responsible for his Faustian fall. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said evenly.

‘Oh. You don’t?’

‘No. I don’t think you’re the kind of man who ever does something he doesn’t want to do.’

‘You don’t know me.’ He seemed bemused by the very suggestion.

‘Don’t I?’ She didn’t elaborate. Her assuredness lay in her brevity, but her heart was pounding away, deep in her chest. This was the longest conversation they had had in the five days she and her team had been here. It was the most he had looked at her – and she didn’t like it.

The curl on his lip grew as, for the first time, it seemed to occur to him that she had made studying him her business. ‘If you think you know me from what you read in those pissy interviews my sponsors made me do – or from Cory’s trash-talking me – you don’t.’