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him, moving off to the side so the next passengers could leave the lift. She waited to see which trail he went on. Expert. Super. Not.
    Then again, he’d ski down it quickly and be gone. She could even take some shots of him and see if he did a great job or was just an egomaniac and crashed and burned, nearly killing himself on the way down.
    Smiling darkly with that thought in mind, she skied toward the black-diamond slope. When she reached it, she made sure she was out of any skier’s way. She pulled her camera out and took a picture of the man. He’d stopped halfway down the trail, resting his skis on top of a mogul. Not such a hotshot after all.
    He turned and looked up. Not expecting to be caught photographing him, she quickly raised her camera to take a picture of the pines separating this trail from the intermediate one.
    She heard a skier coming from behind her, the swoosh of skis against snow. Elizabeth’s skis crunched into the semipacked powder as she inched over just a little more to get out of the way. Trees blocked her from moving over any farther.
    The skier—had to be a man, as hefty as he was—slammed into her, knocking her down the steep incline.
    Heart in her throat, she cried out. She lost her camera on impact. Fell. With her ski poles looped around her wrists, she threw her gloved hands out, trying to stop herself. The shove made her topple onto her side, crashing into the first of the moguls that didn’t slow her fall.
    Elizabeth continued to tumble down the slope. She feared smashing her head against the compacted snow and breaking limbs—her own, not the trees’. Briefly, she fretted about her camera, finding it, concerned it might be ruined. Even the worry about a spinal injury flashed through her mind as she continued the downward plunge.
    She did not see her life flashing before her eyes. All she saw were snow and intermittent flashes of blue sky and more snow. Elizabeth felt panicked, unable to stop her forward roll.
    She still held on to one pole, having lost the other and both skis. Slamming against one mogul after another, she finally hit one hard enough to stop her. She didn’t remember losing consciousness. Her breath had been knocked out of her, though, and her wrist and back hurt.
    â€œMiss, are you all right?” someone hollered down to her from the top of the trail, sounding far away. A youthful male voice.
    She didn’t know how far she’d rolled until she stopped. She thought she’d tumbled all the way to the bottom of the mountain where she couldn’t roll any farther. But no such luck. She was still way up on the very steep incline amid all the bumps, staring up at the blue, blue sky.
    Unable to catch her breath, she tried to calm her racing heart.
    She wished she could have gotten up quickly on her own, somehow managed to make it the rest of the way down the slope, and none would be the wiser.
    Now she was afraid that whoever had discovered her would make a big deal of this.
    â€œMinx, you can’t go down this way,” the kid hollered.
    â€œI’ve been skiing since I was three. I’ll get her camera. You guys go see to her.”
    Her camera. Elizabeth tried to turn her head, but her back hurt.
    â€œCome on, Anthony. You know Minx never listens to us. If she breaks her neck, we can say we told her so.”
    â€œHa, ha, very funny,” Minx said.
    The ground vibrated slightly beneath Elizabeth as the boys’ skis swished on the snow, then one stopped way above her, and the other came into view.
    â€œI’m just getting her skis to warn others of danger down the slope, Cody.” Anthony quickly joined Cody, yanked a cell phone out of a bag, and called ski patrol.
    They were as tall as grown men, so she figured they were older teens.
    Elizabeth closed her eyes, knowing full well Tom would soon get word of this.
    â€œI’m okay,” she said, even though she felt terribly winded. She