Читать книгу Caught on Camera - Meg Maguire - Страница 10

“THERE! THAT’S IT!”

Ty looked to where Kate was pointing, spotting the sign for Grenier’s Sled Supply and Excursions up ahead on the winding, pine-lined road. He turned them into the drive, their rented truck bucking in the deep, slush-filled potholes. Unseen dogs barked hysterically.

Kate the Guerilla PA was out the door before Ty even brought them to a complete stop. She strode toward the gruff lumberjack of a man who’d emerged from the converted farmhouse. The two met halfway in a long handshake, and Ty watched Kate launch into her spiel, whipping out waiver forms and other legal inevitabilities from her laptop bag. There were papers to be signed regarding their safety, the equipment’s safety, the price of the rentals versus the negotiated cost of flashing the business’s sign and giving them a name drop in the show. Thank goodness for Kate. That sort of stuff bored Ty to tears.

He gathered the two packs and the camera gear from the back of the truck and joined the conversation, glancing between them. “All right?”

Kate did the introductions. “Ty, this is Jim Grenier. Jim, this is Dom Tyler.”

“Of course. Me and my wife love your show, Mr. Tyler.” Jim Grenier seemed to be telling the truth, or a decent facsimile of it.

“Cheers. And ‘Ty’ is fine, by the way.” He accepted the older man’s hand and shook it with a manly curtness. This was what men wanted from Ty—what his on-screen persona promised. No nonsense, a man’s man. Ty always delivered it, too, knowing men were by far his harshest critics…particularly specimens like this one, real frontiersmen, rare in this day and age. Ty scanned Grenier, his rugged clothes and boots, weather-beaten face and full beard. Ty’s duty was to acquiesce, to demonstrate his enthusiasm and gratitude for the knowledge on offer, but never to come off as a softie. Plenty of these guys were dying for a chance to knock a hotshot television survival host down a few pegs. Ty thought this fellow seemed okay, though. Skeptical, but amused. It beat open contempt, at any rate. Plus Ty felt he should get a pass on this one—what did an Aussie know about dogsledding?

“Let’s go meet the team,” Jim said, and he led them back to a paddock filled with barking dogs. All huskies, some white Siberian, some gray and more wolfish-looking, some tethered and others roaming free. All of them sized Ty and Kate up with ethereal blue or pale brown eyes.

The next few hours were spent getting a crash course in the sport. They’d both done their homework but it was a tough skill to pick up and run with—the dogs snarled and snapped, prone to infighting and distraction. After a few hours, though, Ty and Kate were confident. Kate excelled at shouting and rushing the dogs when they began to jump on one another. She played a very convincing alpha female, even though a few of these dogs weighed a good seventy-plus pounds, most of it muscle. Kate was slender, healthy and fit but not jacked, yet when her mind was set on something she turned as ferocious and unrelenting as a junkyard dog herself.

“You’re a little too good at that,” Ty said as she reasserted order following a scuffle.

“You forget I had six older brothers.”

Ty smirked at her. “And just how many of your brothers are dead again, Kate?”

Her lips pursed into an irritated frown. “None,” she admitted.

“And yet you still talk about your family in the past tense.”

“Yeah, well being out here with you makes Dorchester, Massachusetts, feel like a lifetime ago, Ty.”

He wanted to pry, but held his tongue. Kate only ever spoke about her past in vague or elusive terms. She didn’t act as if she was hiding anything, just turned weary and contemptuous when the topic came up, as though she were being asked to recite the multiplication table or some other mundane bit of information. But because he knew she was stuck with him, both physically and professionally, Ty didn’t mind salting the wound. If she didn’t deck him first, one day she’d slip and finally give him some insight into why she was the way she was. He might even return the favor.

By midmorning they had the gear loaded onto the sled and Ty mounted one camera at the front for some good action shots. Overcast sky and freezing temperatures aside, the grueling work had found them ditching their jackets before long and Ty was down to his undershirt. They were invited inside, and Ty sat in the Greniers’ kitchen and watched Kate eat a woodsman’s breakfast with Jim. She shoveled waffles into her mouth with one hand and waved a Dictaphone back and forth, asking syrup-muffled questions and recording Jim’s answers between bites of sausage. It was all potential voice-over filler for the episode. As usual, Ty wasn’t eating. The rumbling in his stomach alone told him this was day three. The goose from day one was a distant memory and he didn’t bother counting the eggs. He eyed Kate’s coffee with longing.

“I think that’ll do it,” she said with a gracious smile at their host, clicking the recorder off. “We’ll see you tonight around eight. Ty, I’m just going to go check the truck.” She nodded to them both before heading outside.

Ty stood and gave the older man’s hand a final shake. “Thanks for all your help, Jim. I hope we’ll do you proud out there.”

“Well, best of luck. Your wife seems extremely capable. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

Ty laughed. “We’re not a couple,” he said, enjoying the look of surprise on Jim’s face. “You’ve seen my show. You really think I can keep up with that?” He thrust a thumb in the direction of Kate’s departure.

“Well, she’s certainly…energetic.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Ty said, careful to keep his tone free of innuendo. He tendered his thanks one last time and stepped back into the cold, damp air. Wife, he thought with a grin. People made that mistake a lot, despite the fact that neither of them wore a ring. But it was no wonder that they must seem that way. In Ty’s opinion, making this show was just a years-long honeymoon, one lacking substantially in the consummation department. Other than that frustrating exception, if this was a marriage, he couldn’t find a reason to complain. If anything, his bachelor eyes strayed only when he mustered a concerted effort.

He made his way around the house to where one of Jim Grenier’s staff was hitching the eight-dog team to their waiting sled. He pointed Ty and Kate off in the direction of the trail they’d be following. It formed a fifty-mile loop through the woods, and the team had made the journey hundreds of times. Even if Ty got them lost, the dogs would bring them home as though on autopilot.

Kate pulled a furry Inuit cap over her head and fixed Ty with an adventure-hungry eye that sparkled even under cloud cover. “Ready?”

“Always.”

She climbed aboard behind him and bracketed her arms around his sides, grabbing hold of the bar at the front of the sled. “God, I hope I don’t puke on you, Ty. I can’t believe how many waffles I ate.”

Ty smiled and shook his head. “You unholy bitch.” He gave the shout to the dogs and they were off.

THE FIRST HALF HOUR of the trip flashed by in a snowy blur, fun and exhilarating. The following hour was bearable, though Kate was growing cold, fast. She flexed her fingers inside her gloves, willing her blood to move.

Ty turned his head to catch her eye. “You hanging in there?”

“Bit chilly.”

“Never let yourself sweat in a cold climate,” he lectured in an annoying, matronly tone. It was a lesson he’d imparted on the show at least a dozen times now. Of course it was exactly what Kate had done during the sled prep, leaving herself clammy and shivering now. Her wool sweater wasn’t cutting it. Ty had managed to fumble into his jacket a little earlier, but hers was stashed way up front, pinned somewhere between their frame packs.

She squeezed herself close so Ty’s body would block the wind. Plus she always liked his smell on day three. Must have been a positive pheromone match, since musky, unshaven, disheveled men were not Kate’s usual taste. Ty wasn’t to her typical taste in many respects, but damn if he didn’t feel plain old good right now—big and sturdy and strong. Crazy-strong. Kate remembered with a shudder all the nerve-racking climbing videos she’d tracked down when she was first courting Ty for the job. No ropes, no axe, no harness—just climbing shoes, insanely strong fingers and arms, and a complete lack of common sense. She squeezed him tighter, thinking about it.

“All right back there?” he asked.

“Yup. Just trying to hang on.”

He bellowed a mushing order to the dogs and the sled charged ever faster through the woods.

Ty’s daredevil tendencies hadn’t changed a jot since he’d landed the show, and neither had his reputation. People with too much time on their hands argued incessantly on message boards about whether he was the real deal or not, but Kate knew the truth. Ty would do anything as long as it was technically survivable. It went beyond adrenaline to something Kate couldn’t understand, some cosmic game of chicken he lived and breathed. Ty drove safely, but he never wore a seat belt. He walked alarmingly close to construction sites, as though daring a stray wrench to fall and clock him on the head. He frequented the shadiest bars in L.A. and rushed in to break up other men’s fights. Kate bet he picked the most dented cans at the supermarket, just to see if he’d come down with botulism. The world’s oddest, dullest game of Russian roulette.

The only time Ty ever showed hesitation was when there were kids around. Take him to the beach for a so-called relaxing afternoon and he turned into a sheep dog, alert and aware of everything going on around him, as if the theme from Jaws was playing on his own private frequency. Kate, on the other hand, was made to adhere to every precaution available during filming and travel.

Ty craned his head around as Kate rested hers between his shoulders. “Are you falling asleep on me?”

“No, just hiding in your slipstream.”

“We can pull over if you need a break. You need to pee? You drank enough blooming coffee back there.”

“Nah. The ice fishing site can’t be more than another hour. I can hold it. Beats stopping these guys and risking another fight. I can’t wait till we can ditch them at the lake. Although all this footage will be badass.”

“Delicious, hot, fresh-brewed coffee,” Ty murmured, ignoring her shoptalk.

“I know, Hercules. Just a few more hours. What’s on your menu?” Kate asked, referring to his dinner once filming wrapped and he could break his fast.

“Depends on if I get my fish, I suppose. But I suspect there will be potatoes involved. And dessert,” he added. “And beer.”

“I’m just going to have a salad,” Kate replied, cruel as always. “I’ve been eating far too much on this trip.”

“Ooh, she thinks she’s so clever.”

Kate glanced at the strip of gray between the trees lining the trail. “The sky’s getting dark, isn’t it?”

“I suppose…. ’S’all right, though,” Ty said. “It’s always good to add a little extra misery to the show.”

“The viewers do love watching you suffer,” she agreed. They frequently got letters and emails complaining when certain episodes didn’t strike the audience as miserable enough to be believable. They seemed to like watching strikingly good-looking people like Ty struggle.

“Not just the viewers, Kate. I see you behind that tripod, smiling under your stupid golf umbrella with your flasks of hot-bloody-chocolate.”

“It’s tea today,” she corrected in a languid voice. “You want a sip?” She grabbed the thermos from a compartment near her feet and waved it in his periphery.

He laughed. “God, piss off.”

Kate wrapped her arms around his waist so she could unscrew the cap without falling off the sled, and managed to take a long drink. “Oh man, that’s good. Who knew you could find decent chai in Saskatch—”

A shocking crack split the air in tandem with an almighty lurch. Kate lost track of reality as gravity flipped and she was suddenly suspended in the air. She heard a harsh grunt, the sound of Ty’s wind being knocked out, and she felt herself gasp as she collided with the trunk of a tree. Then, blackness.

BLOODY HELL.

Lying immobile in the snow, Ty watched the overturned sled being dragged away at full tilt by the dog team until they disappeared around the next bend. Half the supplies he and Kate had put on board had come loose and were strewn across the trail for several yards. It took him nearly an entire minute to catch his breath and get control of his limbs, but he was relieved to find that nothing felt broken. He fumbled to his feet in the four-inch-deep slush and looked around.

“Katie?” He hiked back a little ways along the trail, shouting her name. Apprehension mounted when she didn’t shout back. There was a fallen limb in the middle of the path, and Ty felt sure that it had been buried in the snow before the sled had struck it and driven it up into the air, throwing them off. Thank God it hadn’t impaled either of them. Still, where was Kate?

He didn’t spot her until he doubled back. His blood ran cold when he caught sight of her gray sweater and jeans at the woods’ edge. She lay crumpled beneath a tree, motionless. Ty was used to chemical rushes—he was practically addicted to them—but the panic surging through his body stopped him dead in his tracks. Fear wrung the air from his lungs but Ty commanded his muscles to work, broke through the paralysis and into a sprint.

“Kate!” He slid to a sloppy halt beside her still body. Ty could taste copper in his own mouth when he spotted the trickle of scarlet running across her pale skin from her mouth to disappear into her hair. He was transported in a single breath, ripped back in time twenty-five years and nine thousand miles to a warm summer day, a beach outside Sydney. He saw his little sister’s hollow expression, her vacant eyes as blue as the ocean. He felt his own life fracture and scatter all over again as he stared at Kate’s white face.

“Kate. Katie.” He yanked his gloves off and tossed them aside. Taking hold of her jaw, he searched for signs of life. He just about died of relief when he felt a pulse beating in her neck, strong and steady.

“Katie.” He smoothed her hair off her face and wiped the blood from her skin as best he could. He lost himself for a moment to overwhelming emotions—relief and fear and gut-wrenching guilt, a lifetime of stale grief made fresh. He lowered his face to her shoulder and concentrated on her breathing. Each exhalation calmed him, rooted him back in the present. Kate was alive, but she wasn’t necessarily safe. Not out here, not if she was hurt.

Just as Ty began conceiving a plan for how best to get her to the safety team, her eyes opened.

“Oh thank Christ!” he boomed into the sky.

“Ty…” She sounded groggy, but she was okay. She was okay.

“Bloody hell, Katie, you scared me.”

“Where are we?”

He looked around, needing a second to recall there was a world beyond the face of the woman he’d just nearly lost. “The dogsled trail.”

“Right… And the dogs?”

“A long ways away now.” He stroked her hair, still frantic. “How do you feel? Is anything broken?”

She frowned. “I’m not sure. Let me try and stand up.”

“Careful.” Ty thought he might pass out himself, she’d given him such a fright.

“Ow,” she said, making it to kneeling.

“What?”

“Just bumps, I think. Nothing major… Oh God!” She stood up in a flash.

Ty whipped his head around, scanning for bears and avalanches. “What?”

“The equipment—the cameras! Do we have any cameras?” She looked overwrought. Unbelievable.

“Jesus, I don’t know. The sled dumped about half our stuff. Worry about it in a minute—let’s make sure you’re okay.”

“I am. I feel fine.” She touched her lips and studied the blood on her fingers, made an irritated face and wiped it on her jeans.

Ty saw her arms shaking faintly beneath her sweater and he slipped his jacket off. “Here.”

She took it, still distracted. “Thanks. What a mess.” Her calculating eyes scanned the area, telling him she was already back in work mode.

“Are you sure you’re okay? Do you feel any bumps? You could be concussed.”

“I’m fine. Let’s just get ourselves assembled.” She trudged toward their jettisoned supplies.

Ty, however, didn’t want to regroup just yet. Sense had been knocked into him by the incident. It had whiplashed his brain, sending the fear that had been niggling at the back of his mind for a very long time crashing to the forefront, demanding his attention. This ridiculous project—this stupid TV show—had nearly killed his best friend.

Beneath the subsiding shock, primitive synapses burst to life in his chest. Possessive ones. Their energy jumbled with the fear and guilt, making Ty’s blood run fast and hot—faster and hotter than even he was comfortable with. He watched Kate’s body working, already recovered from its trauma, and an instinct rose inside him, sharp and insistent. It burned through the angst and replaced it with other urges—urges not just to protect and shield this woman, but to possess her, to take her. To tear away that lone wall that kept them from being everything to one another.

A SHORT DISTANCE AWAY, Kate took a deep breath and made an inventory of the items she could see. She pulled Ty’s proffered jacket on, glad for the warmth and for a reassuring layer of protection. She needed to turn her attention back to the show, because in truth, the accident had scared her witless. She’d grown plenty used to adrenaline rushes since she’d taken this job, but this was a thrill too far—the closest she’d ever flirted with a major injury in all the time they’d been doing this. Too close for comfort. Even Ty seemed disturbed, and that in itself was scary.

More than a mere mortal, however, Kate was first and foremost a professional. No way she was going to stand around wasting time now that the damage had already been done. One of the cameras had been pitched in the accident. Kate unzipped its padded case and breathed a sigh of relief to find it in one piece. The show would go on.

“Good news, boss.” She held it up to show Ty, but he didn’t respond.

Ty’s eyes seemed to be looking through her, his energy even more intense than usual. His boots sloshed as he walked to her. She watched him swallow deeply, expression fraught as though he were unraveling.

“Yeah, Ty?”

He swallowed again, his eyes darting back and forth between hers. Something fierce was brewing behind the deceptive blue-green calm.

“It’s okay. We’re both okay,” she began, but his face told her the words weren’t registering. His arms rose and encircled her, cautiously at first, then he pulled her tight against his chest. One broad hand cupped the back of her head, pressing her face into his neck, the other fisting the oversize coat.

“Dear God,” he said, his mouth pushed so hard into her hairline that it sounded as if his voice were coming from inside her skull. “I never imagined I’d come so close to losing you.”

“I’m fine, Ty.” She tried to pull away but his embrace was tight and needy, so she let him hold on. She’d never seen him like this, so rattled. It embarrassed her a little, intimidated her a lot…. His breaths came fast and shallow, and Kate returned the hug with her free arm, hoping to calm him. “It’s okay.” She rubbed his back, an upright version of what she did when his insomnia drove him into her bed.

Ty’s body loosened. His hands released their death grip and he let her go, stepping back a pace and staring at her. His eyes were round and unfocused. Kate caught the corner of his mouth twitching.

She zipped the camera back in its bag and set it aside, looked nervously up at Ty. “Are you okay?”

Shaking slightly, his hands cupped her shoulders, the way they had dozens of times before. She felt her eyes widen and she squirmed as his palms slid up to her neck.

“This so isn’t the time, Ty.”

He ignored her protest, thumbs pressing against her pulse points as the script dictated. Lips on her temple. Snow began to fall.

“Knock it off,” she said.

“What?”

“Your stupid flirting shtick.”

His mouth slid farther still, until she heard his soft voice right in her good ear. “I’m not playing right now.”

She faltered. “Don’t be a jerk.”

He shifted so their noses touched, right on cue. “Then tell me what you want me to be,” he whispered, his lips grazing hers. That wasn’t part of the script.

“What I want you to be?” she whispered back, flubbing her lines.

“Who am I to you?”

The Shift again, but this time it was different. Intense, and not a game. All she managed to say was, “Who are you?”

“Yeah.” She felt Ty’s smile more than she could see it from this close, heard it in his words. “What am I, Katie? Your boss? Your friend?”

“Both,” she mumbled. Her heart had lodged in her throat like a rubber ball, cutting off her oxygen.

“Could I ever be more?”

“Are you about to kiss me?” she asked, dumbstruck, heart pounding. She’d never been any good at playing coy.

“Are you about to let me?”

She trembled. “I dunno. Frigging find out.”

Ty’s thumbs slid up past her jaw and pressed hard into her cheeks, just as his lips parted and took her lower one between them.

A kiss. An actual, technical kiss.

Kate’s eyes closed and a deep shiver passed through her body when she heard and felt a soft moan escape from Ty’s throat. A hunk of snow fell from her collar down the back of her sweater, the wet chill balancing the heat of Ty’s mouth. He kissed her again. She kissed back. He angled his jaw and opened his mouth wider, his tongue timidly flirting with hers, then going deeper, bolder. Kate’s hands were dangling limply at her sides and she got control of them, pushed them through the ends of Ty’s jacket’s long sleeves. Once they were free, she ran them up his hard, bare arms and settled them in his hair, knocking his hat off. His mouth felt dangerous—demanding and hot and wet, and he tasted just as she’d always known he would. Kate forgot the accident and her professionalism in a flash of hormonal amnesia. She wanted more. She wanted to taste every inch of him, and to be sampled by his mouth in return, all over her body. How many nights had she lain mere inches from this mouth, listening as Ty whispered sleepy words in the dark of a tent or the back of a van? How many nights had she spent wondering if they’d ever take things too far? She’d imagined this moment a hundred times—a thousand times. And she’d been wrong. It was so much better than her imagination had ever dared to hope.