Pretended that she was okay with this good-bye, as okay as he was. And when she realized that maybe he didn’t need her smothering him, that maybe he didn’t crave this last moment of togetherness and tried to pull away, he tightened his arms around her as if maybe, just maybe, he wanted it every bit as much as she did.
Chapter 26
The next morning, Cam was spared from too much thinking by having to gear up mentally for a tough few days on the mountain. He was stuffing supplies into his pack, but his mind kept wandering from the trip to the tight smile Katie had given him when he’d left her.
He hated knowing he’d hurt her. The worst part was that he hurt, too, more than he’d imagined possible.
Annie came into the kitchen and he glanced over, then did a double take at the unmistakable look of bliss on her face. Nick was right on her heels, practically in her back pocket. “Coffee, baby?” she purred to her husband.
Nick grinned dopily and nodded.
Cam shook his head. “Aw man. Why don’t you two just wear a sign?”
“Because I’ve got an apron.” Annie slipped one on and turned to face him: I’M MAGICALLY DELICIOUS.
Cam winced and closed his eyes. “Overshare.”
Nick kept grinning.
Annie patted Cam on the shoulder as she pushed him aside to start her coffee. “Hey, you’re not the only Wilder who likes hot sex, big guy.”
“Seriously.” He put his hands over his ears. “Stop it.”
Annie laughed.
And then leaned in and kissed Nick.
Nick, not a stupid man, grabbed her close, wrapped her in his arms, and kissed her back.
“Hey, hey, hey…” Now Cam had to slam his eyes shut too. “Get a room!” But they kept going at it. “I’ve stepped into the Twilight Zone, right? I’m on some alternate plane, the disgustingly happy plane.”
“It’s a new era.” Annie disengaged her lips from Nick’s to say, “You ought to try it, you might like it.”
“Try what, exactly?”
Annie reached for Cam’s hand, her eyes shining with love-for Nick, but also for Cam. “Being happy. Falling in love.” She paused. “Letting yourself be loved back.” She squeezed his hand gently. “It’s okay to let yourself be loved, Cam.”
She was speaking softly, earnestly, with an utter lack of sarcasm, and her words unexpectedly sneaked in past his defenses and leveled him flat. He’d heard these words before, from Katie. “Stop it,” he said again.
Instead, she wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him. “You deserve it, Cam. So much.”
“Okay, look.” He pulled free and picked up his gear. “I’m happy for you, happy for both of you, but Nick and I have to go.”
Nick grabbed his own pack, gave Annie one more disgustingly long kiss, and then they were off for their four- day trek directly into the storm from hell. Which pretty much matched the one in Cam’s heart.
For two days, Cam climbed mountains and slept in snow caves, his mind way too far from what he was doing, which was a bad, bad idea with his life and other lives on the line. Still, he managed to get them all safely to Desolation Peak by late afternoon on the second day, and ten minutes later, the storm that was still raging doubled in intensity, complete with 120-mile-an-hour winds, sideways snow, and utter whiteout conditions.
“We aren’t going anywhere until this baby is over,” Nick grumbled.
Cam looked out into the growing night, and for the first time ever on a trek, felt claustrophobic. Katie had one day left, and he was here, on a mountain, miles away.
Snowed in.
Helluva time to realize he wanted to do what Annie had said, and let himself be loved by the sweet, brave, amazing Katie Kramer.
She didn’t need him, she straight up didn’t need him. She wanted him just fine, but she didn’t need him, and Christ if he didn’t totally understand now-that’s what had always been missing for him. “No,” he agreed with Nick on a tight breath, disgusted with himself for not seeing it sooner. “We’re not going anywhere.”
Nick sighed, looking like maybe he was thinking of Annie.
And Cam got it. He really got what it was like to miss someone with all his heart, with his soul, with a yearning that defied description.
Katie woke up on the day she was supposed to leave, knowing that since she’d already had her good-bye with Cam, there was nothing good about the day at all.
Not one single redeeming quality.
Getting out of bed, she realized she had no power in her cabin, which was far too cold for a pansy ass like her, so she dressed to go to the lodge. “And if there’s a God,” she told Chuck, who’d slept in front of her fireplace for three nights running, “Annie will be there with hot coffee and possibly, hopefully, food.”
She opened her door and found four feet of fresh powder on the ground, and it was still coming down like Mother Nature on a tirade. Big, thick, dinner-plate-sized flakes floated through the air with an almost eerie silence, layering on top of each other as they hit the trees, the ground, coating everything.
White.
Okay, so maybe she wasn’t going home after all, at least not yet. T.J. was at the end of the path with a snowblower, clearing her a walkway to the lodge.
She stood on the step with Chuck sitting at her feet, both of them staring out into the winter wonderland with matching dazed expressions on their faces. Holy crap…
T.J. shut off the snowblower, and though he looked tense, he nodded up at her. Like Stone, he was bigger than Cam, broader, tougher, but that edgy expression and sharp green eyes were all Wilder. “You’re made of some stern stuff if you’ve survived out here all month.”
“I am,” she agreed. “Though I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“It’s a good one,” he admitted, still not smiling. “Power’s out up at the lodge, too, but maybe you could keep Annie company. She’s losing it.”
Some of his seriousness began to sink in. “Why? What’s the matter?”
T.J. looked down at the snowblower, then back into her face, and somehow she knew. “Oh, God. Is Nick hurt?” she breathed. They’d been gone two days. They’d left the heli at the base of Desolation, at the ranger station there, and when she’d closed up yesterday afternoon, walking away from her desk for the last time, they’d been only a few miles below the peak.
“No, not hurt,” T.J. said. “Not that we know of. We lost radio contact.”
She turned toward the direction of Desolation Wilderness, but the storm had visibility at zero and she couldn’t even see the mountains. “What does that mean exactly, you lost radio contact? They lost their radio?”
“Or they’re out of range.”
“Has that ever happened?”
“No.”
She’d thought her days of panic were over. She’d thought wrong.
“It’s okay,” he said, reading her mind. “We’re going out after them as soon as the storm lets up.”
She whirled back inside to grab her boots and jacket and Cam’s scarf, and then went running up to the lodge, where she found Annie pacing the kitchen with her cell phone in one hand, a Nextel radio in the other. “Damn fool idiot men,” she was muttering, whipping around when Katie walked in the door, a look of such hope on her face that it hurt to look at her.
“Just me,” Katie said in apology.
Annie nodded curtly. “Coffee?”
“You don’t have to be polite, Annie. Not today.”
“Thank God.” She sagged. “Because I blew my wad with that one question. I don’t have any more polite in me,
