by Cora Seton
Curtis watched Byron meet up with Hope and Raina, who had exited their tent. If it was true, what was Fulsom’s game? Did he think he’d get more publicity for flattening Base Camp and letting Montague build an amusement park over the beautiful sustainable community they’d worked so hard to create?
Maybe. Fulsom was definitely a sucker for drama. The bigger, the bolder, the more jaw-dropping the better.
He’d sacrifice all of them if it got him the attention he wanted for his pet causes.
Byron was right; Fulsom was on their side, but only to a point. Their little community was a drop of water in the bucket of his ambitions. If he could generate public outrage by letting Montague destroy everything they’d built, he’d be ahead in the long run. He could turn that outrage political—point it toward elections and real policy change.
Hell, maybe they should let him do it.
Everything within Curtis rebelled against the idea.
He wasn’t giving up Base Camp for anything. He was building something—not tearing it down.
Byron was right about something else, too. He and his friends weren’t giving Fulsom what he’d asked for. They were hiding. Keeping their actions—and their emotions—away from the prying eyes of the video cameras and the American public.
He’d wanted to keep his pursuit of Hope a secret. After all, he’d struck out three times on his way to the altar so far. If he was about to strike out again, he didn’t want anyone to know.
Or did he?
Had every step he’d taken so far been wrong?
Blake stormed up to him, breaking into his thoughts. “Byron said the snowmobile is fucked. Now what? I told you to take me to Bozeman last night.”
“If I had, we’d be stranded somewhere on our own, and Byron and the women would be back here,” Curtis told him.
“Whatever.”
Curtis came to a decision. “Get that video camera out,” he called to Byron.
“Why?”
“Get it out. Record this. You want drama? Here’s some drama.” He waited until Byron had moved closer again and done what he asked. “Listen up,” he called out. Hope and Raina joined them. “We’ve got a leak in the gas tank. That means we can’t use the snowmobile anymore, and we’ll proceed on foot. Hope, Raina, we’ll be on skis. Byron and Blake, you’ll walk. I’ll pull the sled. We need to make time while we’ve got light, so we’ll eat on the road. Let’s get packed up. Oh, and Hope?”
“Yes?” She’d made a move toward the tent but stopped when he said her name.
“I’m going to marry you in a few days. Thought I’d better give you a head’s up.”
Byron straightened and grinned, filming everything. Hope’s mouth dropped open, and she looked from Curtis to Raina to Byron and back again. “You’re… what?”
“Marrying you. As soon as we get Raina taken care of. Consider yourself warned.”
Curtis turned back to the snowmobile to strip it of supplies. Blake sidled up next to him.
“Does that kind of thing work?” Blake asked. “Just telling them like that?”
“We’ll see.”
“What did he just say?” Hope asked Raina in a low voice. She had to be hallucinating. It was the cold. The snow. The sleepless night.
Okay, she’d slept—a lot, actually—in Curtis’s arms last night, but that didn’t make his statement any easier to swallow.
“He said he’s marrying you. Right after my wedding. Which isn’t that great, actually, because I’ll be on my honeymoon. We’d better have a double wedding, don’t you think?”
“Raina, quit fooling around.”
“I’m not fooling around.”
“Curtis is. Don’t encourage him. I don’t like to be made fun of.”
Raina heaved a big sigh. “You never listen to me, do you? I told you to watch the show. If you had, you’d know exactly what’s going on here, and you wouldn’t be acting like this.”
“Like I don’t like people trying to make me look dumb? What is going on?” Hope followed Raina as she went to collect the kittens from the tent.
Raina ignored her, unzipped the tent, stepped inside and gathered the small, furry creatures. “Everyone is accounted for.” She began to load them into the basket.
“Good.” Hope followed her inside awkwardly and zipped up the tent again behind them. It wasn’t exactly private, but it was better than being outside with the men.
Why would Curtis joke about marrying her? It was in pretty poor taste. She remembered Byron filming the whole thing. Was this some kind of act for the show? If it was, she was glad she hadn’t watched Base Camp. Choosing a spouse was serious business, and it took time. She’d scheduled in a whole year for it when she was thirty-five.
“What is going on?” she asked again.
“You’re going to have to ask Curtis.”
Hope surveyed her friend. Normally Raina wasn’t this tight-lipped, and her reticence now set warning bells ringing. “This is all a stupid gag, right?”
Raina stopped what she was doing. “You know what, Hope? I think this is probably the most serious thing that’s ever happened to you—since high school, anyway.”
She bent to unzip the sleeping bags, leaving Hope stunned. That was a cheap shot, and Raina knew it. What had happened in high school—
She wasn’t going to think about it. Wasn’t going to let her mind go there. She was long past the time when nightmares had haunted her—
She took one of the sleeping bags and began to roll it up tightly, pushing back all thoughts of the past.
“I’m sorry,” Raina said contritely when she looked up. “I shouldn’t have—”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s the thing, isn’t it? You never do.”
“The past is past. I’m focusing on my future. I’m sticking to the plan.”
“Right,” Raina said sadly. “The plan.”
Hope refused to say anymore, and fifteen minutes later they’d cleaned out the contents of the tent. Raina lugged their gear over to Curtis, and Hope began to strike the tent, needing to keep busy as her thoughts tangled in her mind.
Most serious thing—
Marry Curtis—
The past was the past—
Watch the show—
She decided the only sane way to handle the situation was to pretend everyone else she was traveling with had lost their minds. She wrestled her emotions under control, and as she stuffed the tent into its sack, Curtis approached her.
“Have you done this before?” he asked. “Breaking down a campsite? You’re a natural at it.”
“Of course I’ve been camping before. All my life. I’m an outdoorswoman. I want to be a park ranger, remember?”
Curtis passed the tent off to Byron. “Put that with the rest of the things on the sled. I’ll get it packed up in a minute.”
“Sure thing, boss.” But he was still filming them.
“Do you mind?” Hope asked him.
“Let him take his videos. That’s his job.”
“Shouldn’t we get going? Like you said, we need to make use of the light.” Her voice wobbled, and she knew she was close to losing control.
He stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Hope, I wasn’t making fun of you.”
“Yes, you were.”
“I’m dead serious about what I said.”
Hope cocked her head and looked up at the man. This close up, he was imposing. His expression serious, his hazel eyes focused on her. He seemed to be trying to read her thoughts in her face.
“You can’t be.”
“Haven’t you ever just known about something? Just felt it was right?” he demanded.
“Nope.” Not since she’d been a child. Not since Yellowstone. On that trip she’d thought she’d known everything. Her encounter with the bison had been magical. Then there was the night she’d stood under Yellowstone’s starry skies, listened to the wolves howl and thought she’d found her home.
She’d learned later that lif
e wasn’t so simple. Impulses could be dangerous. Deviating from your plans could be deadly—
And yet her impulse to return to Yellowstone had always remained strong. She couldn’t forget its magic no matter how hard life got. The bubbling hot springs, the magical geysers. The bison she’d seen from the car—
The wolves howling in the dark.
That night she’d known it was her destiny to work outside, to be a steward of nature—to give her life to connecting people and the natural world.
It had been just like Curtis said—an instant knowing—and longing—that pierced her through and through. Was he saying—?
Did he feel like that—about her?
She stared back at him, unable to make her suddenly dry throat produce any coherent words.
“Yes, you have,” Curtis said. “I can see it in your face. You know exactly what I mean—so you know exactly how I feel about you and our future together.”
“We don’t have a future together.” She wasn’t sure if she was denying it because she was afraid he meant it or because she was afraid he didn’t, because in that moment she wanted a future with Curtis so badly she ached for it. “The man I’m going to marry is going to crave me.” She surprised herself with the vehemence of her reaction. She’d never really thought about this aspect of marriage before. It had always been hazy—something to think about in the distant future. The words kept spilling from her mouth now that she’d started, though. “He’s going to adore me. Worship me.” Because a man like that wouldn’t do what Liam had done in high school. “He’s not going to be some random SEAL I meet while driving across Montana.”
“Walking across Montana,” Blake corrected.
“Skiing, actually,” Byron said cheerfully.
“Whatever!”
To her astonishment, Curtis’s fierce expression transformed into a slow grin that lit up his eyes. “Is that all?”
All? Wasn’t it enough? No man she’d dated had felt anything like adoration for her, especially not Liam. She wasn’t sweet, petite, pretty little Raina, who transformed perfectly intelligent men into drooling idiots wherever she went. She was fierce, proud, Amazonian Hope, who met many men eye to eye at five foot ten and could chop wood, haul water and order around patients twice her size at her receptionist job at the physical therapist’s office. She was too practical for adoration. Too capable.
“Sweetie-pie, if it’s craving you want, I got it covered.” Curtis winked at her. “But you’ll have to wait until later to experience it. We’ve got a long road ahead of us.” He walked away.
Hope gaped after him. “That man is…” She searched for the right word.
“An ass?” Blake offered.
“A romantic?” Byron said.
“A hottie?” Raina suggested.
“Absolutely insane,” Hope snapped.
“Insanely after you,” Raina said and yelped when Hope swatted at her. “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.”
It took longer than Curtis would have liked to get the women into their cross-country skis and their supplies re-packed and distributed among the group to carry. Thank goodness for the old-fashioned skis and boots that had come with the ranch. A small metal bar at the toes of their boots clicked into the mechanism on the skis, which meant they wouldn’t have to change the bindings each time they switched skiers. That was the good news. The bad news was that while he had brought boots of several sizes to fit Hope and Raina, and an extra pair for himself that Blake could use, he didn’t have a third set of large boots that would fit Byron. Hope offered him the largest of the pairs Curtis had brought for her. Byron was just able to squeeze into them, but it was a tight fit. Far from ideal. Hope took the next size down.
“They work,” she proclaimed after lacing them up.
Curtis breathed a sigh of relief. “Wear your regular boots while you’re not skiing. You don’t need blisters.”
Each of them had a kitten tucked into their jacket in makeshift kitten carriers Raina had devised from their extra clothes. With a small, furry face peeking out from each of their necklines, it was hard to take any of them seriously.
But this was serious.
Curtis opened his mouth to say so, but Raina beat him to the punch.
“If anything happens to Minna, I will beat you down,” she told Blake.
“I told you I was allergic—”
“BEAT YOU DOWN!” Raina repeated balefully.
“Nothing’s going to happen to Minna.” Blake shook his head. “I should have stayed with my car.”
“You would be frozen by now,” Curtis told him. “Look, everyone. It’s time for us to focus. We’re in a precarious position, and we need to keep moving. I’m going to do what I did yesterday; get the women ahead, come back with the skis and collect you two. Walk in our tracks the best you can in the meantime. Got it?”
“Got it,” Byron said.
“Yeah,” Blake muttered.
It was a long morning. The powdery snow and deep accumulations made even skiing difficult, and they did more floundering than making forward progress. Walking was worse, though. Whoever wasn’t on skis made barely any progress at all while waiting for their next turn. It didn’t help to have a kitten sticking its pinprick claws into your chest most of the time. Curtis decided after an hour it could be a form of torture.
“Hey, you little furry beast,” he said to Reggie finally. “I’m saving you; don’t you know that?”
The kitten let out a little yowl and kneaded at his chest some more.
“I don’t know if I can go any farther,” Raina said after they’d each had two chances to ski and walk, and Curtis had gone back and forth between the men and women. Curtis had noticed her favoring her ankle. If he wasn’t mistaken, she’d injured it yesterday but had pushed through without complaint.
Judging by the rumbling in his stomach, lunch wasn’t a bad idea. He didn’t want anyone to cool down too much, though. That was dangerous, especially in their wet gear. Daisy had plopped herself down the minute they’d stopped, and he didn’t want her getting chilled, either.
“…never get anywhere working for other people,” Blake was saying to Byron as they took off their skis and boots. “I didn’t get rich being someone else’s lackey.”
“I’m not Renata’s lackey.”
“Really? Sure looks like you are—”
Curtis realized he was clenching his fists. Byron and Blake had been sniping at each other all morning, and it was grating on him. They all needed their energy—
“You’re the lackey,” Raina said to Blake. “You’re that Jaguar’s lackey. You probably work half your hours just to pay for it!”
Hope and Byron both laughed. Blake turned on Raina.
“You’re not even smart enough to be a lackey. The way everyone babies you—you need a sitter to get to your own wedding on time!”
“Okay, enough,” Curtis said, getting between them. “Blake, go cool off. We’ll eat in a minute. But first let’s get a fire going. Hope, help me collect some wood.” He didn’t think he could take a minute more in the company of either of the men right now.
“What about Raina?” Hope asked. “I don’t want to leave her here alone with these two.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m not the only one who needs babysitting around here,” Raina said complacently. “I’ll make sure these two don’t kill each other. Here, give me your kittens.”
“Keep moving,” Curtis told Raina and the men as he and Hope handed over their kittens. “You don’t want to get cold.” He held out a hand to Hope. “Let’s stick close. I don’t want to lose you.” Snow was still falling as if it never meant to stop.
He showed Hope what to look for, and together they foraged through the trees. It was hard going, even where the trees grew close together, their boughs creating a canopy overhead. Curtis’s muscles ached, and he imagined Hope’s did, too. Thank goodness she was the active sort, rather than some shrinking violet. He had to let go of her hand to dig out fallen wo
od, and as they ranged through the trees, the distance between them increased, although he always kept an eye on her. He wasn’t kidding about the possibility of getting lost in this storm.
When Hope shrieked and disappeared into a bank of snow, Curtis reached her in seconds, dropping the wood he’d gathered so far.
“Hope? What happened?”
She was up to her waist in the powder, thrashing around like she was caught in a trap.
“Water. There’s water under here. My foot is soaked.”
Curtis hauled her out of the snowbank and bit back an exclamation at her sodden foot. “Hell, grab that wood.” He kept a hold of her waist as she bent to pick up the pile he’d just dropped, then lifted her into his arms and staggered back to where they’d left the others, carrying both her and the firewood. He ignored their questions, put Hope down and began to rummage among the supplies in the sled.
“Get that boot off. Your sock, too.” Good thing she hadn’t been wearing her cross-country ski boots.
Raina helped Hope, whose teeth were chattering. When they’d managed it, he rubbed her bare foot with a sweater until it was dry and slid two new, dry socks onto it, one over the other. He pulled out another pair of snow boots from among the supplies. “See if these fit. I borrowed them from Sam back at Base Camp just in case,” he said, dropping to his knees beside her.
“You always have everything we need,” Hope managed through her shivers.
“That’s my job,” Curtis said and bent forward to kiss her. The moment she’d screamed, his heart had nearly stopped. Hope was becoming as important to him as breathing, and for one split second he’d been afraid he was going to lose her.
“What was that for?” Hope said when he pulled back.
He shrugged. “I just had to. Know what I mean?”
She nodded—and kissed him back.
She was kissing Curtis.
He’d kissed her, and she’d leaned forward and kissed him back.
Just like that. Because she needed to feel him again. Needed that connection. She craved being close to Curtis, and that was worrisome. She refused to think about the future, however, as Curtis’s hands came up to cup her face and he kissed her again. When Curtis finally broke away, his gaze raked her face, as if searching for her reaction. He was bracing himself. Ready for her anger.