“Oh shi—”

“Careful,” a deep voice rang out from beside me.

A strong hand caught my arm, preventing me from falling on the icy snow. I didn’t need to look up to know who the voice belonged to. Even if my ears hadn’t given it away, the shiver that ran through my body when he made contact already told me who it was beside me.

“I knew you’d come.” He was so damn cocksure I almost wanted to turn right around, get back on the bus, and return to Palo Alto just to prove him wrong.

“That bus isn’t leaving until we do, princess,” he stated as if reading my mind.

I finally looked up into Robert’s smirking eyes. “You don’t know what I’m thinking.”

“Oh, I’m sure you don’t have a problem letting me know what you’re thinking. How was the drive over?”

Robert hadn’t been on the same bus as me. He and a few of his friends, including Jackass, or Jack, as was his real name, had come over a day earlier.

“It was fine. I mostly read.”

He nodded. “Good. So you got all your studying out of the way. The next week you won’t be thinking about anything school related.”

I frowned. “You can’t tell me what to do.” I knew I sounded ridiculous but I felt like I needed to prove he wasn’t the one in charge here.

Robert just laughed.

“Hey, Rick,” he called to someone behind me. “Make sure you get all of the stuff and bring it up to the rooms. Let’s get inside. Are you hungry?”

I glanced over my shoulder to see a couple of guys unloading the equipment we’d brought.

“Are they your servants? They just do whatever you tell them to?”

Robert didn’t even seem perturbed by the question. He shrugged. “Not quite, but they’re freshman. Only allowed on this trip with us because they’ll be doing the grunt work while he have fun.”

“That’s not right,” I stated, still looking back at the guys while being led into the large registration cabin by Robert.

“Life’s not fair, princess.”

I made a sound deep in my throat. “Don’t I know that.”

“I’m rooming with Kimmy,” I stated, glancing down at the room assignment along with the key I’d been given. I didn’t know Kimmy all that well but from our handful of interactions over the past fours years she seemed nice enough.

“Room 338. You’re one floor below me.”

Oddly, that brought me a modicum of relief. Why, I wasn’t quite sure, however.

“Did you bring your own skis or do you need to rent a pair?” Robert asked after we’d all settled into our rooms and then had a hearty lunch in the resort’s huge dining area.

I grunted. “I’m not skiing,” I insisted.

“How can you come on a ski trip and not ski?”

“You practically forced me into this trip.”

Robert gave me a look. “You and I both know I didn’t force you to do anything you didn’t want to do. If you didn’t want to be here you wouldn’t.”