Читать книгу Caught on Camera - Meg Maguire - Страница 8
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ОглавлениеKATE SCANNED THE TREES, one thought on her mind—food. Food being a very loose term. Roots, seeds, rodents, carrion…nearly anything would do in this desolate wasteland. In every direction, miles and miles of slushy spring snow, acres of scrubby pines, but lunch…?
“Fat frigging chance,” she muttered. Then she saw it—a little clump of twigs in the crook of an old tree, a bird’s nest. “Come on, eggs.” Kate searched for handholds. She dug her boots into the knobby bark, locked her thighs around the trunk. Inch by slow, slippery inch, she made her clumsy ascent, mumbling a drum solo to herself. “Buh, buh-buhbuh-buh…” At moments like this, she always got the show’s theme song stuck in her head.
Each episode opened with a flurry of bongos and a glimpse of misty green wilderness. Every few beats a new image flashed onto the screen—a man wading hip-deep through a rushing river, scaling a sheer cliff face, striking a flint. Words burst onto the screen—Dom Tyler: Survive This! The title disappeared to make way for a second bout of montage overlaid with credits that went ignored by most viewers in favor of the handsome man with his dirty blond hair and fascinating eyes, arms like a boxer and smile like a natural-born con man.
Kate knew the show’s opening by heart. Heck, she’d filmed half the footage herself. And she knew Dom Tyler by heart, too. Those arms and that smile belonged to her boss, her best friend. And it was his fault she was halfway up a tree in the desolate wilds of Saskatchewan just now, wrecking her jeans with sap.
Wincing at the bark digging into her thighs, she took a deep breath and hauled herself onto a thick branch, ten feet off the ground. Bingo—eggs.
“Woo hoo!” She pumped her fist in the air. Glancing toward the campsite, she bellowed, “Ty! I’ve found your lunch!”
A faint noise of acknowledgment drifted through the otherwise silent landscape. Balancing on the limb, Kate slid the video camera strapped across her back forward and shouldered it. She aimed the viewfinder at the three illfated eggs nestled in the wreath of twigs and hit the record button.
“Songbird eggs,” she murmured into the mic. “Need a confirm on the species. Early spring is one of the best times of year to find bird eggs if you get lost in the Canadian wilderness—double-check that fact. They can be cooked, or eaten raw if fire is scarce, and they’re a great source of protein.”
The show was an hour long, forty-two minutes after commercials. Forty-two minutes of Dom Tyler explaining how to stay alive in some of the world’s harshest environments—a different location each episode. Though his looks likely distracted most viewers from actually retaining any of the lessons.
For nearly every shot that made it to air, just off camera stood Kate, armed with the stern poise of a lion tamer and a hastily acquired vocabulary to rival David Attenborough’s. She researched and wrote nearly half of the show’s narration. It was Dom Tyler’s name in the title and face on the screen, but she was the one behind him, cracking the whip, keeping the show and its host on track.
She let the camera roll a few more seconds before shouldering it and fumbling back down the trunk, hopping the last few feet to the soggy ground.
“Ty?” Ty, because he winced whenever anyone called him Dominic. Kate headed toward the fire they’d set up by the river, shouting to him as she picked pine needles from the front of her jacket. “We’re going to need to get you up there. I want some climbing and hand shots. I made some notes you can record in postproduction.”
She rounded the bend at the edge of the woods and discovered why Ty wasn’t shouting back. Sitting splay-legged on a fallen tree, he had one of the other cameras perched on his broad shoulder, its lens trained on Kate, red light blinking. As she neared, she heard him narrating for his own amusement, a raised whisper in the Australian accent that earned them at least a quarter of their ratings.
“…the natural habitat of the Kate Somersby. We can see from her stance that this approach is one of postured aggression, though the look in the female’s eyes suggests that mating may be on her mind. Let’s wait and see what she’s after.” Ty abandoned the voice-over as Kate pushed her boot against the front of his vest, toppling him harmlessly backward into the wet snow.
She crossed her arms over her chest and mustered her best fed-up assistant glare. It was day two of their three-day exile in this snowy wasteland, and cold was not her strong suit. “Some of us have been scaling trees, Ty. Earning our saddle sores.”
“That’s one way to get your rocks off.”
“I need you up there.” She stared down at her professional partner of the past two and a half years, blatantly appraising all six feet three inches of him, from his boot-clad feet up to his unruly golden-brown hair and sideburns, and that evil, evil eyebrow. His chin and jaw were peppered with several days’ blond stubble. By the time they got back to L.A. he’d probably have a full-on beard. It wouldn’t do a thing to disguise his movie-star good looks, just as his clothes couldn’t trick their viewers into forgetting what was hidden beneath, once they’d caught a glimpse.
Kate knew what lay beneath the thermal shirt Ty currently wore under his vest, too. She knew it with more familiarity than she’d known the body of any former lover, despite the fact that she and Ty had never so much as kissed. That disappointed certain parts of her, relieved others. She loved her job too much to risk it over something as stupid as hormones. And she loved Ty, too—as a friend. She wouldn’t risk losing him, either…though the thought of such a mistake had certainly kept her warm on a few cold nights.
She gave Ty’s hovering foot a soft kick. “C’mon, up you get. Eggs.”
Ty groaned. “God, eggs.”
“Tell me about it.” She grabbed the hand he stuck out and yanked him up to sitting. “I’ve got a few of my own that’ll be going to waste in a few years, if I keep running around the globe with the likes of you.”
“So you keep telling me…but don’t pretend you don’t love this.” He wiped wet snow off the backs of his arms, zipped the camera into its sturdy bag and set it aside.
Kate sat down beside him on a log. He was right, of course. For all its ridiculous moments, she adored this job. And not just the job—but their partnership. Plus she was an unapologetic control freak and this gig allowed her to do what she did best on a grand scale, and get paid for it. At twenty-eight, thoughts of settling into a normal life could wait a few more years, or as long as the network continued to renew their contract.
Ty took her handheld camera and reviewed the footage, frowning. “Why is it you never find us wild rib-eye?”
“Why is it you never find us anything, period?” she asked, though it was a mean exaggeration. Ty more than pulled his weight, but today he was noticeably unfocused. Kate wasn’t surprised. He was running on very little food and even less sleep.
He handed the camera back and stared at her with the unearthly blue-green eyes that earned them another quarter of their ratings. “What?”
“Nothing.” His tone suggested otherwise. “Take me to your eggs.”
“Terrifying choice of words, Ty.” They stood and she tossed him the wool hat he’d been wearing in the previous scene. He tugged it on and followed her back to the tree. “Third limb.”
He squinted upward. “I see it.”
She trained the camera on Ty as he demonstrated how to loop a length of climbing rope around the trunk to make the task easier. Kate frowned at her ruined jeans and savaged thighs. In three minutes he was up and back again with the eggs in his vest pocket.
“What d’you fancy?” he asked, his perpetually mischievous eyebrow cocked at her. “Raw or boiled?”
“It’s your lunch, Ty. I’m having an energy bar.”
“What’ll look better?” he asked.
“You cooked that goose, yesterday. Better do an ‘if you can’t build a fire’ scenario.”
“You’re the boss.”
She pursed her lips, skeptical. “Care to put that in writing?”
Ty merely smirked, a dimple forming beside one corner of his mouth. Technically speaking, of course, he was the boss. It wasn’t just his name on the show, either—in addition to being the host and narrator of the wildly popular reality program, he was also its creator. He’d dreamed it up, pitched it, got himself the contract and come to the table with much of his survival experience already hard-earned from a stint in his twenties as a globe-trekking rock climber.
“How are we getting to tomorrow’s location?” Ty asked as he set up a tripod for the raw-egg-eating shot.
“Do you even look at the itineraries I write up for you?”
He angled the lens, fiddled with the settings. “Don’t need to, Katie. I’ve got you.”
“May God have mercy on the woman you trick into marrying you one day, Ty.” Not that you’re the marrying kind, she added to herself. She pulled her copy of the meticulous memorandum from the back pocket of her filthy jeans. “We’re meeting the dogsled folks tomorrow morning at five. The trip should take about three hours, then we’re doing an ice-fishing spot if the lake up there’s still frozen. Snowmobile team’s picking us up at sundown.”
“Beautiful. And after tomorrow?”
Kate smiled at the thought. “You know.”
Ty met her eyes above the camera. “Tell me anyhow, Katie. I love to hear you say it.”
“After tomorrow, we’re done for another season.”
Ty sighed, loud and dramatic. “And so our next destination will be…?”
“I don’t know about you, but mine’ll be my bed.” She could practically feel her cool sheets and soft pillows now.
“Sounds good. I’ll see you there.”
Kate waited until Ty glanced at her before she fixed him with a look she hoped conveyed her grumpy exhaustion. “While we’re on the topic, may I make a suggestion or two, for next season’s locales?”
“Mmm?”
“I’m thinking Maui. Saint John’s? Fiji? Please? This snow is killing me.”
“You’re from New England,” he said, eyes swiveling back to the camera’s screen.
“And I hated snow growing up, too. Come on, Ty…lost at sea? Even that’s got to be better than this.”
He shook his head. “No open ocean stuff.”
“Why are you so weird about—”
“I get seasick,” Ty interrupted. “Quiet on the set.”
He switched the camera on and went to work. Kate fell silent, smirking to herself. Only Dom Tyler could make swallowing the contents of raw songbird eggs erotic. Unlikely as it seemed, this shot was pure gold when it came to capturing the viewers’ attention. And with the snowy locale, this episode needed all the help it could get. Even though it was technically spring, winter still felt very much like the order of the day here in Saskatchewan. Winter meant snow and ice, gusting winds and cruel cold. And layers. Layers made the chance that the viewers would get a glimpse of Ty’s bare torso seem less likely. And that meant fewer pairs of anticipating eyes glued to the screen—the top half of Ty’s body secured them the largest chunk of their enviable viewership. They were by far the best-performing show on their nature-and travel-based network, and survival had very little to do with it.
“The viewers are going to love that,” Kate said when he finished recording.
“Our viewers are kinky, then…present company included.” He smiled at her, dismantling the tripod.
Kate bit back a smile of her own. “I’m immune to your charms, thank you very much. And if the viewers had to spend as much time with you as I do, they’d feel the same way.”
Ty faked offense, raising his eyebrows. “Now don’t tell me this isn’t what you were expecting when you moved to L.A. I mean, tell me this isn’t Hollywood glitz and glamour at its best.” He waved an arm around, indicating the dreary landscape, the minimalist campsite and the two of them. He hadn’t bathed since they’d left Los Angeles three days earlier, the antithesis of glamour. Kate wasn’t looking much better.
“I never thought being a personal assistant would be glamorous.”
“Of course not.” He grinned at her, looking skeptical. “Your coffee table’s only covered in celebrity mags because you couldn’t find any coasters, I’m sure.”
Kate pushed the slushy snow around with her foot. “Being a PA—the kind I thought I’d be,” she corrected, “is pretty slummy. I assumed I’d be fetching twelve-dollar lattes, and wiping poodle crap off somebody’s stilettos. Holding some celebutante’s hair back while she puked discreetly in the alley behind the poshest club in Hollywood. That sort of thing.”
“Very classy,” Ty said. “But I know there’s more. Don’t think I can’t see you salivating when the swag turns up.”
True. They’d been making this show for three seasons now and Ty was beginning to qualify as a bona fide TV celebrity. Kate had nearly hyperventilated the first time a designer offered Ty a suit to wear to an awards ceremony. He’d ultimately blown the event off in favor of a Lakers game and she’d grudgingly returned the goods.
“This isn’t exactly what I’d pictured…more frostbite, fewer flashbulbs. And you aren’t exactly the boss I’d pictured, either,” she admitted, squinting at him as they walked back to the fire. “I’d imagined a starlet with a dietpill habit, not some nature-boy with an adrenaline addiction. And this isn’t the skill set I thought I’d be gaining.”
Ty dragged a frame pack over and extracted a length of rope from the front pocket, tossing it to Kate. “Bowline,” he ordered in his best drill sergeant’s voice.
Kate made a perfect bowline knot in seconds flat. One of a hundred talents she’d learned from Ty and from books since landing this crazy job.
“Double figure eight.”
She tied a beauty.
“I bet Reese Witherspoon’s PA can’t do that,” Ty said smugly.
“No, and I bet she can’t treat a snakebite or diagnose dengue fever.” Kate made a loose slipknot and tossed it around his neck. “Now that I think about it, Ty, this gig’s not really teaching me any of the skills I’ll need if I’m going to run a powerful Hollywood agency someday. I thought I’d be reading Variety in first class, not manuals about ice-cave exploration in the back of a Cessna.”
He shrugged. “Funny what choices the universe makes for you.”
“Yeah. My cosmic dart didn’t land quite where I’d expected,” Kate added, referring to Ty’s new preferred method of choosing their shoot locations—tossing a dart blindly at a world map until it hit an appropriately forbidding destination. He had a penchant for leaving decisions up to chance, an aversion to caution that bordered on superstition.
He slid a long hunting knife from the sheath on his belt and slapped the handle into Kate’s palm. He pointed to a spruce tree a few yards away and stepped back.
Kate took aim and threw. The knife whipped through the air and the blade found its target, thwacking into the trunk, dead center.
Ty groaned and clapped a hand over his heart as if he were fighting an arousal-induced heart attack. “Goddamn, woman.”
Kate smiled to herself, and hoped the cold breeze would banish the prideful flush warming her cheeks.
Ty slipped the rope from his head and put it away. “And to think, when I met you you’d never even had poison ivy before.”
“That’s not true.”
“Well, you had a manicure. You can’t deny that. What have I done to you?”
“Nothing I didn’t ask for,” Kate said, rising to the flirtation. True, this show was most definitely not the job she’d envisioned when she’d started looking for work as an assistant, fresh off the plane from the East Coast. She’d been desperate and had no experience, and Ty had simply been the first person who’d succumbed to her strong-arming and hired her. Unlikely or not, it had evolved into Kate’s dream job. The travel and new experiences comprised a part of that, but secretly, the real appeal was Ty himself. Kate looked him over again, eyeballing the man who’d easily become her best friend these past couple years. The closest friend she’d ever had…though she’d never told him as much. She took a seat on the log, stretching her achy legs out in front of her.
“You may not be grooming me for a gig as an agent,” Kate said, “but I’ll settle for executive producer.”
“You’re practically that already.” Ty jogged to the tree and retrieved his knife, slid it into its sheath as he trudged back. “I know you thought you’d be choosing my thousand-dollar wristwatches instead of pulling leeches off me, but no one can deny you’re still an ace at running my life.”
Kate smiled with indulgence. “And that’s exactly what I wanted.”
“Control freak.”
“Death wish,” she shot back. “And like it or not, you’ll be in GQ before you know it. The glamour will follow,” she murmured, dreamy, holding her hands out as if envisioning their future rendezvous with stylists and PR agencies.
“So you say.”
“Plus this gig is a fantastic workout.” She flexed her arm. Her figure had certainly benefited from two-plus years of this demanding lifestyle. “And my passport’s got an enviable collection of stamps.”
“Good to know there are some positive side effects to putting up with me,” he said. “And you’re always up to the challenge.”
“I survived three nights in Death Valley, Ty. I think I can handle the likes of you.”
Kate wrapped up their banter with an emphatic slap of her hands on her thighs and stood, refocusing on the task at hand. She grabbed a half-frozen protein bar out of her pack, gnawing on it while Ty stowed the tripod.
“How do we get your shirt off in this episode?” she asked, chewing.
“I’m thinking sweat, hypothermia danger, drying clothes by the fire?”
She frowned. “We do that in like, every single snow scenario.”
“Yeah, and it’s the most legit rationale.” He let slip a hint of rare irritation. “But I’m listening. What’s your brilliant idea this time?”
“You want to fall in an icy river?”
He finished tidying the campsite and stared at her, arms locked over his chest. “I don’t, but I’ll bet it’s top of your list.”
“Use your shirt to rig a makeshift fishing net?”
“Better.” He took a couple steps closer.
“Torn off by a cougar in a fight to the death?”
He stopped right in front of her. “You’re way too young to qualify as a cougar, Katie.”
“Cute,” she drawled disapprovingly, but The Shift had already happened. That’s how Kate described it to herself, this change as Ty went into his shameless playboy shtick. To him this flirtation was a game, a distraction she was certain he only orchestrated to get on her nerves. But its effects ran deeper than she’d ever let him know. Ten thousand women probably had school-girl crushes on Dom Tyler, and Kate didn’t need him knowing she was among them. Still, when he got that gleam in his eye and lowered his voice to that devious hush, he was more than just Kate’s friend and boss. He was the man who set her on fire off camera, no flint or tinder required.
“We need at least another couple hours of footage today,” she said, easing the zipper of his vest halfway down his front. “So get that look out of your eye.” She jerked the zipper back up to his stubbly chin and gave his cheek a couple of light slaps.
“Taskmaster.”
She sighed. “Somebody has to be.”
Still mired deep in The Shift, Ty ran his hands up and over Kate’s shoulders, his calloused thumbs pressing the pulse points of her jugular, as they always did at this moment. A moment that been taunting Kate continually for the past two years and then some. God, two years…
His smirking mouth inched closer as he stooped to eclipse the considerable difference in their heights. The weather-roughened skin of his lips grazed her temple, her cheek, her jaw. His lips neared hers until their noses touched, and then he smiled. This was the point when he always smiled.
“Oh,” he said, pantomime realization furrowing his brow and dampening the growl in his voice.
“What?” Kate prompted, her refrain weary.
He sighed with theatrical regret. “Forgot I just ate those raw eggs.”
“Yes, of course.” She rolled her eyes.
Ty withdrew, just as he’d done in exactly this same fashion a hundred times before. “Can’t risk giving you salmonella.”
“No, obviously not.” But Kate wouldn’t mind giving him blue balls. Was there a female equivalent? If so, she’d had a clinically dangerous case for a long time now.
The first time he’d done that, when they’d been filming the first season’s final episode, she’d fallen for it. That mouth, sliding down past her good ear, those fingers on her throat—hook, line and sinker. Close enough to feel his breath heating her cheek, and then, “Katie?”
And then her breathless, “Yes?”
And then, “I’ve just remembered. We haven’t checked our shoes for scorpions. One of the leading causes of avoidable tragedy in the desert.”
Infuriating. Who flirted like that? Week after week after week? A stunning Australian sociopath with a risk predilection, apparently.
Before the show had come about, Ty had been a fringe celebrity in Australia and in certain sporting circles. He’d gone to school in Sydney for filmmaking then spent several years as a quasi-professional free climber. He was a bit of an anomaly—or a moron, as some asserted—as he’d climbed in remote areas, without a partner or any safety precautions. He’d taped himself as he was climbing, much like the show, one camera capturing the scene, the other recording from his own vantage point as he dangled from cliff faces. Kate had tracked down a bunch of those videos back when she’d been looking into this job. Watching them, she’d known some of what she was getting herself into, dangerwise. Attractionwise she’d been woefully unprepared. Her less professional feelings for Ty had trickled in slowly, grown as their friendship did and as their joint project gained success. Those feelings had eventually snowballed into a full-blown infatuation, but potent or not they were nothing compared to Kate’s fear of rejection. She’d been left by enough people already…her father when she was tiny, her fiancé at twenty-five. Plus her mother, who’d technically always been around, but had never really ever been there. History had taught Kate that whenever she let herself grow attached to somebody, they ditched her, and she’d left that pattern behind her, along with the rest of her crappy former life on the outskirts of Boston.
Here in the present, Ty flashed her a merciless smile, his eyes lit up in the cold northern sunlight. “God, that was a close one.”
She rolled her eyes again—like hell it was. This exchange was like clockwork in its methodology. Water torture. Drop by drop, month after month. No small wonder Kate sometimes felt as if she were drowning.
“You are so unprofessional,” she sighed. Silly as it was, this little routine always left Kate feeling vulnerable. She tugged reflexively on her bad ear. It still ached sometimes, even twenty-plus years after she’d recovered from the infection that had taken most of her hearing on that side. She kept her eyes trained on the ground, hoping once again that her face wasn’t coloring. Her good mood waned. In its wake she shivered, remembering how tired and cold she was.
“I’m going to get some panoramas,” she grumbled, meaning the sweeping scenery shots they used to fill the air between action sequences. The film editors spliced them in and the music guy added appropriately grand-or diresounding accompaniment for whatever the location was. She suspected most of their female viewers simply tolerated these scenes, impatient for the next shot of Ty.
Kate walked a short distance and began recording. In the finished product they tried to give the illusion that Ty did all the work himself, but anyone with half a brain knew the unsteady camera that was frequently filming him had a person behind it. A disclaimer flashed on the screen just after the show’s opening sequence, designed to render this masquerade acceptable. Do not attempt these survival scenarios. Dom Tyler has a trained crew assisting him. This program is for entertainment only.
Boots crunched on the snow behind Kate to give away her partner’s approach. Even if they hadn’t, she could sense him. Ty had an energy that made everything near him vibrate at the same frequency. Kate liked that about him. It gave her a contact high, a taste of the chaos she worked so hard to keep at bay in her own body and brain.
She kept her eyes on the camera. “What is it, Ty?”
“What are you going to have for dinner tonight when we get back to town?” he asked from just behind her right shoulder.
She shook her head. “Masochist.” Ty never ate what he couldn’t hunt or scavenge from the wild when they were in the middle of making an episode.
“You going to have a beer?” he asked.
She didn’t reply.
“You going to have six beers and finally make a pass at me?”
“Doubtful, Ty. I’d need about a fifth of whiskey and a handsome bribe for that to happen.”
“My PA could arrange that.”
“Oh, could she?” Kate turned to fix him with her best impression of an unamused assistant.
Ty commenced to sing, shamelessly. It was a song off an old cassette by the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo. Though neither Kate nor Ty spoke Spanish beyond the tourist level, she suspected a native speaker would find his rendition damn near fluent—they’d listened to that tape a hell of a lot.
“Doesn’t it take you back, Kate?” Ty asked, interrupting his own vocals. “What was your favorite Torture Tape?”
“As the driver, or the passenger?”
“Driver,” Ty said.
One of Kate’s very first assignments as Ty’s PA was to find them a vehicle big enough to transport the filming and camping gear and safe enough to get them from Honduras to Alaska—since their initial budget hadn’t allowed for air travel—and cheap enough to make Kate’s eyes roll at the ridiculousness of the task. When they were on the road in that ancient death trap, whoever got stuck driving was allowed to torture the passenger by playing the most obnoxious secondhand cassette they could find, ad nauseum.
Kate pondered the question before lowering her eye to the viewfinder once more. “I thought the soundtrack to The Little Mermaid was one of my better efforts.”
“That was pretty rough…although I prefer it over Mariah Carey. At least the way you sing it.”
Kate made herself sound more exasperated than she was. “Can I help you with something, Ty?”
“Don’t you miss the van? I do.”
She sighed. “I don’t know what I miss the most…the Naugahyde ripping the skin off the backs of my thighs in the Mexican heat, the leak above the passenger seat. The way it broke down every five thousand miles so we had to sleep in the back.”
“Don’t forget the mysterious latex smell,” Ty added.
“It’ll still be there when we get back to L.A. For now I’m actually enjoying having a vehicle with a working radio for a change.”
“Well, not me.” Ty fell silent a few moments as Kate resumed filming, then she felt him toying with her short ponytail. “You fancy a snowball fight?” he asked. “I’ll give you first throw.”
“Please go back to work, Ty. Get me twenty more minutes of commentary. We need to pack up in an hour, anyhow. Do your MacGyver challenge.”
He gave her ponytail a final flick before he left her, tromping back toward the campsite, belting out Los Lobos. She shook her head. It was like herding toddlers some days, though to be fair, once the work was done, she was just as bad. All the time she’d spent traveling with Ty had brought out facets of her personality she hadn’t even known were there. He saw her at her stinkiest and bitchiest and least lovable, and he still stuck around, totally unfazed. It was the closest thing to unconditional love she’d ever known.
A few minutes later Kate clicked the camera off and headed back to camp to find Ty crouching a few paces from a tripod, addressing the mic. She checked to make sure her shadow wasn’t about to creep into his shot then tiptoed around him to get to her pack. He was good. When the camera was on, Ty could ignore her presence like she wasn’t even there.
“…and ptarmigans and some larger rodents, although as you’ve noticed, I haven’t been so lucky. Let’s pretend I was, though, for the sake of storytelling—let me show you another way to make a fire. We’ve got some decent sun right now, so I want to try something with that disposable camera the crew included in my little arsenal.” He abandoned the shot to gather a few things, returning to show their future audience how to smash up a cheap point-and-click to get the lens out and use it to ignite the cardboard housing.
Kate walked over as he wrapped the segment. “Very nice. See how fun it is to do your job?”
“Thanks for the disposable.”
“That was an easy one,” she said. “Your MacGyver rating was only about a three.”
“You ought to be challenging me a bit more, then. Time to head to town?”
Kate consulted her waterproof watch. “Yeah. Let’s get packed up.”
The snowmobile team would arrive in short order to bring them back to the one-traffic-light-town they’d based the expedition in. They’d drop their stuff off at the motor court and go in search of dinner, and in just a few short hours the other Ty would come knocking. The thought made Kate shiver inside her more-than-adequately-warm coat.
