Excerpt of Love on the Lifts by Rachel Hawthorne

Chapter One

"A totally hot ski instructor," Leah suddenly announced excitedly. "That's what you need to take your mind completely off Brad Connor."

"How can a ski instructor be hot?" I asked. "His classroom is a snow-covered hill. He's gotta be cold."

Allie rolled her eyes and Leah gave me a sharp look that said she was seriously contemplating throwing the snow she'd just scooped up at me.

"That is so lame, Kate."

Okay, so it was lame, but I was also extremely cold, with visions of curling up in front of a roaring fire dancing through my head. And obviously, the chill seeping through the knitted cap I'd pulled down over my ears was causing periodic brain freezes. Even stuffing my shoulder-length, obnoxiously naturally curly red hair under the cap didn't seem to provide any extra insulation against the frigid air that surrounded us.

And it was unbelievably cold. After all, we were in a ski resort town with white peaked mountains all around us.

Leah, Allie, and I had flown in earlier that afternoon. My aunt had met us at the airport and driven us to Snow Angel Valley where she'd made arrangements for us to stay in a condo by ourselves. It was totally awesome. Three bedrooms, a sunken living room, a redwood deck. But more importantly, it was ours for the duration of our visit. Just ours. No parents, no chaperones. We were totally on our own, with the freedom to do exactly what we wanted.

Once we'd settled into our respective bedrooms, Allie had announced that she wanted to build a snowman. But now that we were actually doing it, the activity seemed as lame as my joke. I mean, really, we were seniors, and a snowman is something you care about if you're, like, two years old -- or if you've never been around snow.

Leah and Allie had never been around snow.

I saw it at least once a year, usually over winter break when I came to visit Aunt Sue while my parents took their annual gotta-get-away-from-it-all cruise down to the Bahamas. Aunt Sue lived in Snow Angel Valley, owned a bookstore-slash-hot chocolate café, and rented condos to the tourists more than she did to the locals. This winter break, remarkably, one of her condos wasn't being rented.

So she'd offered to let me stay in it instead of staying with her in her apartment over the bookstore. She owns all these nice condos, but she lives in an apartment. Go figure. She calls herself a minimalist, preferring a simple life to one "cluttered with materialistic objects that serve no purpose other than to provide a place for dust to gather." Her words, not mine.

But you gotta love someone who sees dusting and scrubbing as a poor use of one's time.

"I've never seen a headstone inscribed ‘May she rest in peace. She kept a clean house.'"

Again, her words, not mine. Not that Aunt Sue is a slob or anything. She's not. She simply doesn't believe in spending time doing things that aren't important to her.

She is absolutely, without question, one of the coolest people I know. Especially since she told me that I could bring along a couple of my friends to share the condo with me.

So I did. Leah Locke and Allie Anderson. And I'm Kate Kennedy. We call ourselves the alphabet trio because somehow we all ended up with our first and last names starting with the same letter. Alliteration. Of course, we have a lot more in common than our alliterating names.

We attend the same high school, live in the same neighborhood, have the same best friends (each other), and are presently boyfriendless.

Although I have to admit that I've been crushing on my brother's college roommate Brad Connor ever since Mom, Dad, and I went to the university to visit Sam during family weekend. That's when I met Brad. And oh my gosh, is he a hunk. Tall, dark, and handsome doesn't even begin to describe him. He has a killer smile --

"Why are we making our snowman round?" Leah asked, interrupting my nostalgic musings about Brad.

Beneath Leah's red cap, she has cropped hair that was brown until she dyed it as black as a raven's wing. It gives her a sort of goth look that gets her a lot of stares when we go out. Or maybe it's her stunningly beautiful violet eyes. Or her pierced eyebrow. Or her braided leather choker. She has this really dark, mysterious aura going on that doesn't really fit with her bubbly personality. She even designed this mosaic that she plans to have tattooed on her neck the day she turns eighteen. Me, I don't want needles anywhere near my jugular.

"Because that's the way snowmen are supposed to be," Allie said.

Allie, on the other hand, is the girl-next-door. She'd stuffed her blonde hair beneath her pink knitted cap. Her pink coat had fur around the cuffs and collar. She's Barbie-doll petite, which sometimes irritates Leah, since she only has to look at chocolate in order to absorb the calories. Fortunately for me, since I'm a chocoholic, I was born with a high metabolism that burns calories quickly. That sometimes irritates Leah, too.

"How would you know how snowmen are supposed to be?" Leah asked.

"I've seen pictures," Allie retorted.

The part of Texas where we live had never been visited by a single snowflake, which was the reason they were so totally into building this snow guy.

Leah picked up a twig. "Let's be creative. Let's make him buff, give him some abs, some guns -- "

"Guns? Are you going to make him a cowboy -- " I began.

"No." Leah held her arm up at a right angle, closing her hand into a fist. "Guns. Muscled arms. That's what my brother calls them."

Her younger brother is on the football team and into working out. Not that he needed to work out. He was huge.