It was obvious to both Skip and Poppy the next day that Archie and Clio were completely miserable, with themselves and each other. It was a palpable thing at the breakfast table, though the table in question was loaded with delicious coffee and pastries of every kind, and the most amazing fresh fruit that must have cost a fortune in the dead of winter like this.

Poppy and her husband looked at each other across the table, brows drawn in concern, as the young couple who had radiated love and happiness the day before merely sat and picked at their food, barely answering when spoken to and hardly looking up from their beautiful plates.

When Clio, who was a vegetarian like Archie, mindlessly put a bite of sausage in her mouth, Poppy knew that something was really wrong. She watched as Clio gagged and quickly spit the sausage out into her napkin, apologizing to everyone in a soft voice.

"Clio, Archie, what on earth is the matter?" Poppy asked, putting a hand on her brother's arm. "You've both been acting seriously off since you woke up."

"Please tell us," Skip added. "Pops and I won't be able to enjoy our day if we don't know what's wrong, will we? We might even ski off into a tree or something. Now come on, you wouldn't want to be responsible for that, would you? We've only just gotten married, you realize that, right?" He looked from Archie to Clio and back again, hoping for at least a smile in recognition of his joke, but got nothing.

He sighed and sat back, wiping his mouth, and looked at his wife with a small shrug. I tried, it said.

"You are intending to come out to the slopes still, I hope?" Poppy asked. "That hasn't gone by the wayside, has it?"

Clio looked over at Archie to see what his intentions were.

Archie nodded. "If you still want to, that is," he added.

"Sure I do," Clio assured him with a nod of her own.

"Smashing," Skip declared, pushing his seat back. "Let's get ready, and rendezvous in the living room in thirty minutes, shall we? I'll call the car for then as well."

When they got back in their bedroom, Archie turned to Clio.

"Come on, now, darling, we can't be all awkward like this all day, can we? Let's just put last night behind us and have fun today, hm?" He put his arms around her in a tight hug, and was relieved to feel her arms come around him.

"I'm sorry I couldn't, erm, perform, I don't know what happened," he began.

"No, no, you don't have to apologize!" Clio said firmly, shaking her head and stepping back so she could look at him. "You're right, it happens to all men at one point or another, and it's not a big deal, it could be caused by alcohol, fatigue, or even minor anxiety from not having seen me for a few days, who the fuck knows?"

At his look, she looked sheepish, and added, "I was reading a little about it, and I texted my mom. She said it's even happened to my dad--"

"You texted your mum?"

Clio nodded. "Don't worry, she won't tell anyone. Not that there's any reason to be embarrassed or anything--there's nothing wrong with it, is what I'm trying to say--"

Archie covered Clio's mouth with his hand. "You amaze me, Cliona Rose," he chuckled as he shook his head. "Texted your mum," he repeated as he began to change his clothes.

"So we'll 'cover it with the mantle of oblivion,' to quote Anne of Green Gables," Clio continued with a laugh, "and just get on with our day, right?"

"Sure, whatever the fuck that means," Archie answered, zipping up his ski pants and looking around for the hat Clio's sisters had knitted him.

"Archie?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you, Archie."

Suddenly Archie felt wetness in his eyes, and it was hard to take a deep breath. He pulled Clio into his arms and kissed her, gently, smoothing her hair back from her face.

"Oh lord, I love you, too, Clio, so much, so much, you don't even know." He lost himself in the feel of her lips, the smell of her hair; everything about her was so much more than he'd ever experienced before with any other woman.

"You'd better hurry up and finish getting dressed, woman, so we don't have to 'rendezvous' out there with you topless," he teased. "Though you do look quite fetching in just your bra and pink ski pants, I must admit."

"Really? Are you fetched?" Clio asked with a grin.

"I'm very, very fetched," Archie responded, kissing the tip of her nose. "Now hurry up and put something on, please."

"Okay."

So they rode out to the resort with Poppy and Skip, and Clio got some basic lessons in skiing from Archie, which involved how to get on and off the lift without face planting, and how to slide down gentle slopes without letting the skis get out of control. He tried to teach her how to stop, but this was a bit harder, and it was lunch time and she still hadn't mastered this feat.

"Archie Francis, you'd better stop laughing at me!"

"I can't help it, you look like an out of control flamingo!"

"You take that back right now!"

But Archie was laughing so hard he'd sat down, hard, in the loosely packed snow, unable to breathe as he pointed at her, arms flailing as she tried to stop.

"Archie! Help me! Stop laughing and come here, you butt-munch!"

Her choice of pejorative only made him laugh harder and he tried, twice, to rise, only to fall back down, laughing harder than ever. He finally gained his feet, just as Clio got tangled up in a snow drift and fell down herself. She came up, sputtering, just as Archie skied over to her, angling smoothly to a stop and reaching out a hand to help her up.

She smacked at his chest. "That's for laughing at me!" She smacked him again. "That's for pointing!" Smack. "That's for letting me fall!" Smack smack. "And that's for taking your own sweet time getting here!" She finally put her arms around him.

"Am I forgiven?" Archie asked, hugging her back.

"I guess."

"Wonderful. Let's go grab some lunch, then, because I'm starving, what do you say?"

Clio nodded, glad to snap her skis off for a bit.

While they were eating, she said, "I'll take a break for a while after this. You should have a chance to do some real skiing, and not spend the whole time babysitting me, you know?"

"No, not at all," Archie replied gallantly. "I had days of what you call 'real skiing' before you arrived, remember? I'm enjoying showing you how, it's no end of entertaining, honest."

Clio looked at him with narrowed eyes, trying to see if there were any hidden meaning to his words.

Archie looked back at her guilelessly.

"Well, I'd like to see you do some real skiing, how's that?" Clio suggested. "I think it would be fun to watch you go whooshing by a few times, you know? Please?"

"Really?"

Clio nodded.

"Okay, sure," Archie agreed with a smile. "I'll even wave right as I go by this window, how's that?"

"Ace, as you like to say." Clio smiled back at him. She settled back in the comfortable chair where she was enjoying her cocoa, looking completely adorable to Archie.

He turned it a little so it faced the floor to ceiling window, gave her a kiss goodbye, and headed for the lift, where he made the day of a girl who was feeling very low because she was third wheeling with a bunch of friends.

To suddenly find herself on the lift with a guy hotter than any of her girlfriends were with was more than she could've hoped for, and to find out that it was Heath Spencer's brother--well, it was as if the sun had suddenly been hung in a higher place.

"Could I get a snap with you, do you think?" she asked shyly as they made their way up the sunny mountainside. "It's just that none of my bitchy friends will believe me if I don't, you see."

"Sure," Archie replied with a grin. "Maybe, though, you should rethink your choice of friends if the first adjective that comes to mind when describing them is bitchy, possibly?" He raised his eyebrows at her, and they both laughed as Archie took her phone and took a couple of selfies for her.

Then Archie was zooming down the mountain, taking care to slow down a little as he passed the lodge where he knew Clio was watching, even turning in her general direction. He headed for the lift once more and rode to the top, enjoying the feeling of whizzing down the mountain, the thrill of going faster than nature intended, the buzz of feeling like he was flying. Plus, he had to admit that he was sort of enjoying the cave-man feeling of showing off for his girl, of being good at a physical skill that she hadn't mastered, of being able to do something that she couldn't do, especially when she could do so many things so well.

He flew down the mountain once more, this time slowing way down next to where Clio was so he could smile and wave at her. He was annoyed to see that she wasn't even looking at him, but was staring at her phone. Archie saw, in the one second that he looked over at her, that her posture was one of shock, her shoulders hunched as if against an expected blow. At the last second, she looked up at him, and he could see a look of horror in her eyes, of disbelief as their eyes locked across space and time.

Then he was finished sailing by and the moment was over. He could no longer see Clio, but her face, the look on it, was etched in his brain, probably forever.

Archie quickly turned his head back to face forward, just in time, and narrowly avoided going skis first into a small pile of snow. He concentrated on finishing the run without crashing into anything, trying not to think about what could be on her phone that would make her look like that, hoping that it wasn't what he thought.

Please don't let it be what he thought.

He got to the bottom of the run, quickly snapped his skis off and headed for the lodge, wanting to get there quickly, but also not wanting to get there at all.

And, as he'd known she would be, Clio was long gone by the time he arrived.

Dammit.

He pulled his phone out and called for a car to take him back to the chalet.

Surely there was nowhere else she would go? She didn't know anyone else in Courchevel, and the village was full, every place of lodging packed with skiers for at least the next week.

Archie sat on the edge of his seat the entire trip through the town, unable to enjoy the picturesque beauty of Courchevel. His stomach was churning, and he rolled his window down, both for the fresh air, and as a cautionary measure, in case his stomach rejected the lunch he'd given it a scant two hours before.

Be there, Clio, please, just be there.