Free The Last Lone Wolf by Maureen Child

at her was making him… want.
    Which just naturally brought to mind Sam’s warnings before they’d left the lodge that morning. Maybe the older man was right. Maybe Jericho was just being twitchy and not being fair to her.
    But, hell, it was his mountain.
    Who said he had to be fair?
     
    Jericho watched Daisy maneuver her way carefully across a rope bridge in the early morning light and found himself silently rooting for her. She was a surprise in many ways. Not only did she have spine, she seemed inherently incapable of quitting. She wasn’t afraid to try something—take a risk—if it meant getting herself closer to her goal.
    Plus her incessant good humor was starting to rub off on him. Hard to maintain a stern demeanor when you were faced down by a brilliant smile every time you turned around. Yeah, she wasn’t what he’d expected at all. And though his original opinion that she didn’t belong on the mountain still held, he had to give her credit for a hell of a lot more than he would have guessed.
    Frowning, he watched her take small steps and then slide her hands along the top rope of the bridge. He’d had several obstacle-course projects made and installed before he’d opened the camp. This was one of his personal favorites.
    A single, heavy rope was the base of the bridge withmore ropes angling up from the base in a V. Stretched between two tall pines, the bridge was only four feet off the ground, so anyone falling wasn’t going to die. Though the bruises gathered would be a painful reminder of failure. He’d seen plenty of men topple off that bridge, cursing their own clumsiness and ineptitude, but Daisy was making it. Sure, she was taking twice as long as most people to complete the course, but careful didn’t mean failure.
    The wind lifted her long ponytail and snapped it like a flag. Her jeans were dirty and her hands were curled so tightly around the guide rail ropes that her knuckles were white. But she was doing it.
    He stood below her, watching every step and wanting her to succeed.
    “Why does it have to sway so much?” she demanded, not risking a look at him but keeping her gaze fixed, just as he’d told her to, on her final goal. “It’s a rope, ” he reminded her, “bound to sway.”
    “I don’t understand how this is a survival thing,” she muttered, scooting her clenched fists farther along the guide ropes. Her feet slid forward another inch or two.
    “If you have to get to the other side of a river fast, you’d understand.”
    “Be faster to swim,” she pointed out and gave him a fleeting grin.
    “You’re doing fine. Pay attention to where you’re putting your feet. One in front of the other.”
    “I know,” she said, swallowing hard. “Good thing you made me change out of my boots before we left the lodge. Never would have done this in them.”
    He smiled to himself and kept pace with her. Thedog at the end of the leash he held barked and pranced and in general made a racket as it tried, futilely, to reach Daisy. “How can you concentrate with this dog shooting off its mouth?”
    “I’m used to it. Nikki’s very chatty,” she admitted and one of her feet slipped off the rope. She gasped but caught herself before she could fall. “Whoa, boy. That was close.”
    “It was.” And he didn’t want to think about the feeling that had jolted through him with her misstep. He’d watched dozens, hundreds of people walk this rope bridge and never once before had he had a vested interest in how they managed it.
    Lots of them had taken tumbles, too, and it hadn’t bothered him a bit. Yet damned if he wanted Daisy falling.
    Shaking his head, Jericho acknowledged that he was having a problem. He was supposed to be discouraging her from passing these little tests. Instead, he’d helped her as much as he could. Maybe it was because of her brother, Jericho told himself. Maybe he felt as if he owed her something. But then again, maybe it was just because he wanted her.
    He