“No. But I don’t need trash talk when I can do this!” Noah jumped onto his tray, scooted forward and felt the slip and slide of the tray on the hard crust of snow beneath him. His legs were too long. His heels kept digging into the snow in front of him stopping him short.

He pulled his feet up onto the tray and scooted forward again. It wasn’t the most graceful exit.

“We can’t let him win!” Sara yelled from behind him as he coasted down the hill at a less-than-respectable speed.

“I’ll give you a push,” Cat promised.

Then he heard Sara’s “Wheeeeeeee!” and a pink blur flew by him on his right.

“Geez, Sara, be careful.” he called after her.

Cat appeared on his left. She latched onto his arm, using her momentum to pull him faster toward the bottom.

Sara tipped over off the tray and lay on her back staring up at the cloudless blue sky.

“Sara! Are you okay?” Noah demanded as he and Cat came to a skidding halt next to her. He scrambled off the tray and landed on his knees next to his daughter.

She sat up, grinning, and hit him in the face with a lump of snow. “I win!”

Cat joined in on the fun and scooped a handful of snow down the neck of his jacket.

“No ganging up on me!” Noah yelped.

“Sorry, Mr. Manager. You don’t make the Snow Day rules,” Cat announced cheerfully.

It was self-defense, pure and simple, that had him tackling her to the ground. Sara howled with laughter when Cat came up spitting snow.

She laughed, a sound that went straight to his soul. Sitting there, her perfect ass in eight inches of snow that sparkled like diamonds under a blue-skied sunny day. And Noah felt his heart take a hit. A hard one.

He didn’t have time to dwell on it, though. Cat King was not one to back down from a challenge. She launched herself at him, and together they rolled the last few feet to the bottom of the hill. Kids laughed and yelled around them. The snow was blindingly brilliant and icy beneath them. But Noah had eyes only for Cat. Those mischievous hazel eyes, the gray and the green, sparkled with fun. Her lips were spread wide in a genuine grin, reserved for real life only.

He felt like a king, a god, a hero for making her smile like that.

“Dad!” Sara called. “Let’s do that again!”

“You heard the boss,” Noah said, tickling Cat through her winter layers. “Let’s do that again.”

“There are a couple of things I wouldn’t mind doing again with you,” Cat whispered.

Noah felt his temperature rise high enough to melt the snow beneath them.

“There might be a few things I wouldn’t mind experiencing for the first time with you,” he admitted breathlessly.

“Hmm,” Cat said.