Of course, he had saved the boy, he told himself, hoping he’d looked pretty damn heroic doing so, leaping off his horse as it bucked and flailed and catching the kid in a tuck and roll right before he hit the ground. A slight shiver rolled across Gunnar’s shoulders at the memory of that bear, how fierce the creature had looked and how quickly it appeared, barreling toward their little riding party in a rush of grumbly roars and glinting teeth. At least the horses’ terror seemed to panic the bear, or at least made it rethink its plan and flee. Thank heaven for small—very small—favors.
But now, after the drama had passed and the horses had fled, even the kiss Katy offered as reward wasn’t going to lighten his mood. Gunnar sighed heavily. His leg hurt like crazy, and they were stranded in the woods. A lovely day, indeed.
“The brats. We specifically train our horses not to desert their riders,” she muttered as she gently probed his knee. “That’s why I chose them for our trail ride today.”
“You actually set up scenarios where a bear comes charging out of the woods at your horses so you can teach them to . . . what, go hide behind a tree until the coast is clear?” Gunnar arched a brow. “What I’m really interested in knowing is how you train the bear.”
She stopped probing, and if she’d scowled like that when all hell had broken lose, they’d be halfway to Inglenook by now and the bear would have a wrenched knee. “It doesn’t feel like anything’s broken,” she said, gesturing at his leg as she stood up.
Hell, he could have told her that. But he’d been hoping she would . . . do something to make it all better like she had his ribs two days ago, or better still, like she had Tux last week. Because he really wasn’t looking forward to what he estimated was going to be a five-mile hike with a bum knee.
“I guess we might as well make ourselves comfortable until help arrives,” she continued as she scanned the area. “Shiloh can gather some dry branches and I’ll get a fire going before we lose the sun behind the mountain.”
“Since there doesn’t seem to be any cell phone service out here, can I assume you have a satellite phone in your pocket?”
She gave him a strange look, then rolled her eyes and picked up a nearby branch.
“Then may I ask how you plan to contact the help we’re going to comfortably wait for?”
She apparently found that question more humorous than his first one. “Those bratty horses will do it for us.” She arched a brow, outright mimicking him. “You think that when three riderless horses show up at Inglenook, someone’s just going to take off their saddles and put them in their stalls?” She snorted. “Trust me; these woods will be crawling with men mounted on anything from horses to ATVs to boats scanning the shoreline within an hour. And both of Nova Mare’s helicopters will be airborne within minutes of being called.”
“Sorry to burst your bubble, but I heard one of the barn hands say those horses have been at Inglenook a sum total of six days, so they’ve probably not been this far out on the trails before. Who knows how far away whatever barn they know to run back to might be?”
Katy blinked at him, then hung her head. “Crap. That means it’ll be after dark before anyone realizes we’re missing.” She hugged herself and glanced toward Shiloh. “I’m just sorry for putting Margo through the horror of spending all night wondering if her son’s hurt.”
“This isn’t your fault, Katy,” Gunnar drawled, deciding to borrow a line from Robert MacBain’s book on parenting. “In fact, I say we blame the bear.”
He saw her jaw slacken, and his grin widened when she spun on her heel and strode off.
Gunnar tucked his hands behind his head as he leaned back against the tree and watched her put Shiloh to work gathering dead branches, then closed his eyes on a sigh. Other than having a wrenched knee and Margo having to worry about her son, he kind of liked the idea of being stuck in the woods with Katy. Because it still got pretty chilly at night, and the best way he knew for two unprepared people to stay warm was to snuggle.
Okay, two and a half people. But even with the kid snuggled between them—which he didn’t doubt Katy would insist on—Gunnar figured his arms were still long enough to make respectable contact.
He snapped open his eyes two minutes later when Katy dropped to her knees beside his leg. “Give me your knife and T-shirt,” she ordered, holding out her hand.
“Why?” he asked, even as he reached down and unsheathed his multi-tool.
“Because we can’t just sit here doing nothing all night.” She snatched the tool out of his hand, then used it to gesture at him. “I need that shirt you’re wearing under your fleece.”
“Why?”
She opened the serrated blade. “To make a bandage for your knee.”
He grabbed her hand as the knife descended toward his ankle. “Why?”
She sat back on her heels and took a calming breath. “Because Shiloh apparently watches a lot of nature shows, and he’s not real keen on spending the night in a forest he knows for certain has bears. The kid’s truly scared,” she continued with a sad smile. “He’s a house hermit, and before he moved here, the biggest patch of woods he’d been in was half an acre of scrub brush on an abandoned lot down the street from his house.”
“So, you’re expecting us to walk out of here?”
“We’ve still got about four hours of daylight and it can’t be more than . . . what, two or three miles to Inglenook?”
“Try five.” Dammit, he wanted to snuggle, not hike five miles up and down a mountain on a bum knee. If he rode out of here on an ATV, he’d be back in business in two days, tops. But if he had to hike out, his knee would be the size of a football tomorrow morning and he’d be laid up for a week.
She looked down at his knee, which already was swollen enough to show through his jeans, then looked up and—Christ, was that a gleam in her eyes?
“Man up, Wolfe. I’m sure you’ve been on much longer marches with significantly worse injuries when you were a . . . in your former life.” She pulled her hand from under his, gestured at his chest with the knife, then grabbed the hem of his pant leg and pierced it with the blade. “If you’re shy, I won’t peek while you strip.”
For the love of God, what freaking former life?
Gunnar unsnapped the buttons on his fleece and pulled it off over his head, grateful he hadn’t tied it to his saddle when they’d stopped to let the horses drink. Because the only thing worse than hiking five miles with a bum knee would have been doing it half naked in Maine in the mountains in June.
Katy stopped slicing the pant leg, sat back on her heels, and looked around. “Shiloh,” she called when she spotted the kid a few yards off the trail across from them. “Forget the firewood and try to find a fairly straight, stout branch that’s about as long as Mr. Wolfe is tall.” She glanced down and turned the multi-tool over in her hand, then looked in Shiloh’s direction again. “If you can’t find any you think would work as a hiking stick, then look around for a young tree about as thick as your wrist and I’ll cut it down.”
“We’re gonna walk home?” Shiloh shouted, dropping his armful of branches and running to them. “So we won’t have to sleep in the woods?”
“That we are,” Katy said cheerily.
Gunnar saw the light leave Shiloh’s eyes when the kid glanced at him then back at Katy. “But I thought Mr. Wolfe hurt his leg and can’t walk. We . . . we can’t just leave him out here all by himself with a bear around. It’ll be dark before anyone can come get him.”
“That’s what the hiking stick is for, Shiloh. Mr. Wolfe is coming with us. It might take a bit longer, but we should still be home before dark.”
Gunnar pulled off his T-shirt to cover his sigh, only to stop with it halfway over his head when he heard Katy say, again quite cheerily, “See that, Shiloh. You start spending more time outdoors, and when you grow up, you’ll have a big broad chest just like Mr. Wolfe.”<
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“So much for not peeking,” Gunnar muttered from inside his shirt.
“Sorry,” that still-cheery voice said. “I forgot.”
He finished pulling off his shirt to see young Shiloh staring at his chest, the kid’s eyes widened in . . . hell, he couldn’t tell if the boy was impressed or horrified.
“Am I gonna have hair all over me like that, too?”
Nope, definitely not impressed. Gunnar drove his arms into both sleeves of his fleece, only to freeze with it halfway over his head when he heard, “If you’re lucky you will,” at the same time he felt the knife blade slicing his jeans precariously far up his thigh. “Because I happen to know that girls like boys with hair on their chests,” she continued, giving Gunnar a wink when he finally popped his head out of the neck opening.
Lovely. Now the kid looked like he was about to puke. “You might not think what girls like is all that important right now,” Gunnar said dryly as he snapped the snaps on his fleece, “but trust me, Mr. Fox, you will in a few years.”
“So, how’s that hiking stick coming along?” Katy asked.
Shiloh eyed Gunnar another couple of seconds, then turned away. “I’m gonna find myself one, too. And I think I’ll have you whittle a point at the end of mine—no, on both of them,” he mumbled as he headed a short distance down the path. “So me and Mr. Wolfe will be armed if that bear comes back.”
“Does Margo know what a bad influence you are on her son?” Gunnar asked as Shiloh, still mumbling to himself, gave a sapling a little shake before moving to another one.
Katy glanced over her shoulder at the kid and smiled. “From what little I’ve spoken with Margo this last week, I got the impression part of the reason she left Arizona and, as Shiloh would say, ‘dragged her son clear across the country almost all the way to Canada,’ was to expose him to more outdoorsy, manly men.”
“They don’t have manly men in Arizona?”
“Not like we have here, according to Margo. She told me that after spending a few hours looking around town before her interview with Olivia, she was willing to do whatever it took to get that job.” The hint of a gleam popped into those vivid gray eyes. “She also told me Shiloh wasn’t the only reason she wanted to move to the land of handsome giants.” She picked up the T-shirt. “Margo’s been divorced for three years, and I get the impression she’s lonely.”
“So, Shiloh hasn’t been around very many men since he was four?”
Katy looked up in surprise. “He’ll be nine next month. And I think he used to visit his father . . . occasionally.”
It was Gunnar’s turn to be surprised. “Nine? Wait, how old is your nephew, Angus?”
“He just turned eight.”
“But he’s nearly half a foot taller and has to weigh twice what Shiloh does.”
She snorted. “That’s because Angus is a Highlander and Shiloh is . . .” She shrugged. “I’m guessing his mother’s people aren’t a brawny lot.” She started cutting the T-shirt into wide strips. “I don’t know what Shiloh’s father looks like or how tall he is.”
Gunnar took advantage of her being busy to do his own examination of his now exposed knee, gently poking and prodding and trying not to wince.
“It’s going to be uncomfortable.” She stopped shredding the T-shirt long enough to shoot him a crooked smile. “Okay, it’s going to hurt like hell, but walking on it shouldn’t do any more damage.”
“Is that a professional diagnosis or a guess?”
She arched a brow. “Would you prefer to get a second opinion from Gretchen?”
“No offense,” he muttered when she set down the knife and gently lifted his knee. “But the only patient I’ve seen you work on seems to have mysteriously vanished. Or haven’t you noticed Tux is missing?” He grinned when she looked up. “Maybe you should bring along your barn cats when you’re training your horses not to run away.”
Instead of the cute, sexy scowl he’d been going for, Katy merely rolled her eyes again. “Tux is a teenager. He didn’t want to come to Spellbound Falls to live with Angus’ fun aunt; he was looking for a new crop of girl cats to chase that he wasn’t somehow related to.” She started wrapping the material around his knee. “He’ll turn up in a day or two and scoff down two pounds of food, sleep for five days, and be chasing girls again next week.”
But then she sat back on her heels, her expression suddenly guarded. “What were you implying when you said Tux mysteriously vanished after I worked on him? Do you think he spends most of his time at your cabin because . . . I scare him?”
“Nah,” Gunnar drawled. “He just likes that I dig out beer and popcorn when he comes over. So, am I going to live?” he asked, gesturing at his leg.
She studied him for several heartbeats, clearly trying to decide if she believed him or not, then turned her attention back to his knee without answering. Finally getting it trussed up to her satisfaction, she just as silently grabbed his multi-tool and got up and walked a couple of yards down the trail.
Gunnar decided not to broach the subject of Tux’s miraculous recovery again—at least not in the foreseeable future.
Ten short minutes later, and with all three of them heavily armed with pointy sticks, the ill-fated riding expedition turned hiking adventure was headed down the trail—which was uphill at the moment. Shiloh had insisted Katy also needed a sharpened stick, rushing to assure her it was only for backup in case one of theirs broke, because he and Mr. Wolfe would protect her if any more bears crossed their path. Or moose or bobcats or coyotes or raccoons—the latter being quite vicious, he’d explained to Gunnar, if they happened to be rabid.
Figuring a pointy stick could be just as lethal as a garden rake in Katy’s hands, Gunnar didn’t have the heart to tell Shiloh that if that bear showed its ugly face again, they would be hiding behind the nearest tree while Miss MacBain kicked its sorry ass.
But the kid’s bravado had thankfully gotten Katy smiling again, as well as her shoulders shaking in silent laughter when Shiloh told her not to be afraid, that he’d be right behind her. She would be in the middle, he’d proclaimed, and Mr. Wolfe would be in front. Because, he’d informed Gunnar, in wolf packs the weakest wolves always took the lead and set the pace, so they wouldn’t fall behind without the others noticing—only to point out to Katy that he’d just made a joke because Mr. Wolfe was injured.
But the pace Gunnar set was apparently too slow, as Katy called a halt to the forced march less than an hour later. He immediately stopped, not about to argue when he saw the trail rose steeply up ahead.
“Okay, this isn’t working,” Katy said as she guided him over to the edge of the trail. “Sit,” she ordered, all but shoving him onto a low boulder. She dropped to her knees in front of his legs, the left one fully exposed since he’d cut off the flapping material from where she’d thankfully stopped slicing halfway up his thigh. “Your limp has been getting progressively worse,” she continued, partially unwrapping the bandage and pressing her finger to the engorged flesh above his kneecap, then watching its reaction. “You’re blowing up like a balloon.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, glancing back then leaning against the tree behind the boulder. “Wrenched knees have a tendency to do that when you ignore their screams.”
She lifted her gaze to his, her eyes distressed. “I’m sorry, I know it hurts. But I don’t know what else to do.” A hint of a smile suddenly lifted one side of her lovely mouth. “If you were ten pounds lighter, I could probably piggyback you out.”
He reached up and slowly unsnapped his fleece while holding eye contact, glad to have her smiling at him again. “I’m pretty sure I could shed ten pounds if I stripped off.”
She slapped a hand over his with a laugh. “But you’ll gain twenty pounds of blackflies piggybacking on you the minute they see your big, broad, naked—”
“I sure am thirsty,” Shiloh said, hopping up o
n the boulder beside Gunnar.
Katy pulled her hand away, plopped down on the ground with her back to them, and stretched her legs out in front of her, then slowly rolled her feet with a groan. “Riding boots are not designed for walking.” She glanced over her shoulder at Shiloh. “We could all use a drink. I’ll go see if I can find a nearby source of water in a minute.”
Gunnar would rather she found a nearby source of beer.
“We can’t drink out of a stream,” Shiloh said. “It could have bacteria in it that’ll give us diarrhea. Or it could have gra . . . giar . . .” He looked at Gunnar. “It could have a parasite that comes from beavers and other animals pooping in the water.” He looked at Katy again. “We can only drink from a spring, and then only from where it bubbles out of the ground.”
Gunnar wanted to know if there was a reason the kid always looked at him when he was explaining something.
“It’s giardia,” Katy said, rolling to her knees and standing up. “And I promise to find us a nice clean spring, hopefully close by.”
“Or,” Gunnar said, “you and Shiloh could find that spring on your way to Inglenook, while I have a little nap waiting for you to come back and get me—preferably on something that has four wheels and isn’t afraid of bears.”
“But you can’t stay here all by yourself,” Shiloh said in alarm. “It’s gonna get dark soon. Do you know how many predators come out at night to hunt?”
Okay, the kid really had to stop watching nature shows and spend more time actually in nature. Although Gunnar guessed having a real live bear charge out of the woods at them more or less reinforced those television-induced fears.
He noticed Katy wasn’t voicing an opinion, instead scanning the trail in both directions before plopping down on the ground again with a heavy sigh. “I’ve been half expecting we’d come across the horses by now.” Her gaze darted between Shiloh and Gunnar, until she suddenly threw back her shoulders. “Okay, Mr. Fox,” she said brightly, belying the worry Gunnar could still see in her eyes. “I think it’s time we call on some divine help. So why don’t you ask that big shiny angel of yours what we should do.”
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