Free Northern Exposure by Debra Lee Brown Page A

pinned snugly between his. He could feel her breasts pressed up against his back, the soft weight of them as they rose and fell with each breath.
    He realized he had a hard-on the size of Texas. After adjusting his trousers, he tried, without luck, to untangle himself from her. She scooted closer as heinched toward the side of the tent. In the end he jammed the sleeping bag down between them, so at least they weren’t in direct contact.
    His watch read nearly six, though he didn’t need it to judge the time. Gray light bled through the thin fabric of the tent. This time of year it got dark around nine and light again around five.
    He hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but there’d been no fighting it. He’d barely gotten a couple of hours the night before at the station. He’d lain there in the tent, awake, as long as he could, listening, waiting to see if they were going to have more company.
    He was sure, now, that they were being tracked, followed. Not they, so much as she. Wendy. He was also sure that rock slide was no accident. It was meant to separate the two of them, to get her alone.
    The question was, who was the guy following her and what did he want?
    Joe hadn’t seen anyone on top of the pass when he’d hiked back up to retrieve Wendy’s compass, but he’d had a weird feeling that someone was there, hiding above them between the pinnacles of broken, snow-dusted rock. The same someone who’d made the boot print he’d seen where the wooded canyon below them met the steep approach to the pass.
    After the slide had started, out of the corner of his eye he’d seen movement above them, a familiar flash of predator-gray camouflage. He would have gone after the guy if it hadn’t meant leaving Wendy alone. Moreover, seconds into the slide, Joe had known the trail wouldn’t hold. He had to get to her or risk being separated. And like it or not, Wendy Walters was his responsibility, it was his job to keep her safe.
    That’s what he made himself believe in the graylight of dawn, her heat at his back, the scent of her on the goose-down bag covering them. He told himself that was the only reason he’d dumped his pack in a panic and had scrambled down the trail, desperate to reach her.
    Wendy sighed in her sleep and snuggled closer. Joe had nowhere to go. He was trapped between her and the wall of the tent. He’d edged off his half of the inflatable pad beneath them, and now the only thing between him and the hard, frigid ground was a few millimeters of rip-stop nylon.
    Twenty seconds later he was up and out of the tent.
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    It was annoyingly clear to Wendy after nearly half an hour of arguing, during which time they’d boiled water for tea using her single-burner backpacker’s stove, shared a breakfast bar and repacked her gear, that Joe Peterson was never in a million years going to let her carry her own backpack while he carried nothing.
    â€œOkay, fine,” she said at last. “You carry it.”
    She pulled the old knapsack she used as a camera bag out of the blue pack, and slung it over her shoulder. Her Nikon was already strapped securely to her chest in a professional harness, loaded with film and ready to go. The snowcapped peaks surrounding the reserve were beautiful, and small wildlife was abundant. She intended to get some good shots today regardless of the weather, which looked iffy, at best.
    She’d slept like the dead and felt good this morning, almost guiltily so. Joe had made it plain, not with words but with cold looks and abrupt movements, that he was not happy about having to spend the next two weeks with her.
    Too bad. She refused to feel guilty. That slide was no more her fault than his.
    â€œReady?” he said, as he cinched the belt of her blue backpack tight across his hips.
    â€œReady.”
    â€œOkay, I’m only going to say this once. If you want to get out of this in one piece, you’ll do exactly