Free Joy in His Heart by Kate Welsh Page A

standing over me making weird noises. Then he licked me.” She shuddered and wiped her cheek. “It startled me, is all.”
    “No doubt,” Brian said, reaching for a neutral tone and schooling his lips in a straight line. A grin at that moment could be disaster. She was so prickly anything could start another argument and they really didn’t have time for one. He decided not to mention the fact that she’d been wide-awake and trying to press her back through solid rock, looking more scared to death than startled when he arrived. It seemed as if his mother had taught him something after all.
    When to shut his mouth.
    “Come on. We have to get out of here,” he urged and offered her his hand.
    “Then it is dangerous?” she asked and put her hand in his.
    He pulled her to her feet and helped her lean against the rock. After bending down to pick up the crutch and pad she’d been sitting on, he explained. “The cub isn’t too much of a danger on its own, but its mother will be if we’re between her and her baby or she doesn’t like how close we are. Since we don’t know where she is, we’d better be on our way.”
    Brian didn’t hand her her crutch, but stepped to her left side after shouldering the pack and tucking the gurney pad under his arm. “I know you don’t want my help but we’ll get away from here faster if you accept it. I think I found a deer path at the other side of the meadow. That will be a little easier going than this trail. It looks like our best bet from here.”
    Prepared for her to fight his help, he was surprised when she only nodded and wrapped her arm around his waist. He did the same to her and wished it didn’t feel so right to have her by his side.

Chapter Six
    A lmost in a daze, Joy gave in and let Brian help her. He led them back the way he’d come and out into the meadow. The bright sunshine warmed her skin. Minutes later though, she swallowed deeply as they approached the tree line, fighting an instinctive fear and a corresponding tightening of her muscles. Not long after their return to the darkness of the dense forest, they came to a stream and were able to replenish their dwindling water supply.
    As Brian had hoped, the deer track was easier to navigate. Because of that they were able to cover more territory than if she’d gone it alone. But, though his assistance helped her toward their goal and lessened the pain in her knee and ankle, his nearness was sheer mental torture.
    As they trudged along in silence, Joy found herself going over the last twenty-four hours. She realized they had been all her worst nightmares come true.
    First had come the rude awakening that her passenger was the one person she least wanted to spend time with. Then the inevitability of the crash of her plane had forced her to parachute with him into one of the wildest parts of the northeast. Next she’d awakened to find herself hurt, out of her element and completely dependent on the man whose rejection had broken her eighteen-year-old heart twelve years ago.
    It wasn’t bad enough that she’d had to deal with a long, torturous night in a crude shelter. Oh, no. Following a night spent huddled in the dark, quaking with fear, she’d experienced a truly terrifying moment when she woke. Alone in the makeshift camp with miles and miles of wilderness between herself and civilization, she’d thought nothing could be worse.
    She’d been wrong. Because none of the rest of it compared to waking from a short, accidental rest on the trail staring into the furry face of the most horrendous death she could ever have imagined. She shuddered at the memory.
    Joy could still hear Brian’s chuckle after he’d burst upon the scene that she’d found anything but funny. He’d once tormented her from behind doors and garden walls and trash cans in the back alley for an entire summer with the chant of “Lions and tigers and bears.” The memory had echoed from the recesses of her mind and she’d been all set to