“Excuse me?” he whispered, not daring to hope—but hoping anyway.
She straightened to her knees, grabbed their bottles of beer off the table, and handed one to Luke once he sat up to lean against the cupboards. She settled down on the floor beside him and took a long chug of her beer—swallowing this time—then suddenly grinned. “The way I see it, we have three choices. We can break into my family’s ski-resort maintenance garage and steal one of the snowcats; we can steal some horses from my cousin Robbie; or we can snowshoe the forty miles to Springy Mountain. Your choice, Dr. Renoir.”
She was going home!
And she was taking him with her!
“I have a fourth choice,” he carefully offered, not wanting to dampen her spirit—or get himself thrown off her team. “You can go home and tell your parents how much you love them, then askthem if we could borrowa snowcat. I’m sure they’ll be so happy to see you, they will gladly lend us one.”
She glared at him.
“What?” he asked, his hopes waning.
“I thought you said you’d do anything to help me.”
“I will. I am.” He ran his hand through his hair, wondering if his lower brain wasn’t going to be the death of him. “It’s just that I’m pretty sure you and I have both deceived your parents quite enough already. Stealing from them is more or less adding insult to injury, don’t you think?”
“Okay then, we’ll steal from Robbie,” she said, rolling onto her hands and knees and crawling toward the transmitter. “Riding horses into Springy will be colder, but it beats the hell out of snowshoeing.”
He grabbed her arm to stop her, then urged her to turn to face him. “Camry, you’re going to have to deal with your parents eventually.”
“I will, just as soon as we find Podly.”
He tightened his grip. “You think you can’t go home unless you’re bearing gifts?” He shook his head, his eyes never leaving hers. “Take it from a world-class ass of a son and stepson—parents don’t want anything from their children but love. And the lesson it took me six stubborn years to learn is that loving them means trusting them.”
She blinked at him, then suddenly threw herself at his chest, knocking him back against the cupboards. Luke quickly set down his beer to wrap his arms around her just as she buried her face in his shirt.
He cupped her head to his chest. “It’ll be okay, I promise.”
“They’re never going to forgive me.”
“Of course they will. They already have.” He lifted her chin. “They’re just waiting for you to forgive yourself.”
“But you don’t understand,” she whispered, burying her face again.
“Then explain it to me,” he petitioned, holding her tightly against him.
She quietly sighed, saying nothing.
Luke contented himself with just holding her as he stared at the tiny transmitter sitting next to the stove . . . and resigned himself to the fact that he was about to add stealing a snowcat to his growing list of crimes.
Chapter Ten
It had taken Luke less than twenty minutes to throw his belongings in his suitcase, so he’d spent the rest of the afternoon studying Podly’s transmitter—which for some reason had stopped chirping. Camry had stayed in her bedroom, supposedly packing, but Luke suspected she’d taken a nap. It was early evening, and they were sitting across the table from each other, eating the only thing he knew how to cook: scrambled eggs and toast.
Or rather, Camry was eating. He was getting one hell of a lesson on letting his lower brain call the shots. “What do you mean, I have to go stay at the hotel?” he repeated. “I thought we were leaving for Pine Creek in the morning?”
“I’ve decided not to leave until Wednesday.” She shoved her fork into her eggs. “Or maybe Tuesday evening, so we’ll arrive in Pine Creek around midnight. It’ll be easier to steal the snowcat then.”
Dammit, she was ditching him! “Then let’s leave tonight,” he offered, careful to keep his frustration from showing. “The sooner we get going, the sooner we’ll find the rest of Podly. I had the Weather Channel on all afternoon, and they’re talking about another snowstorm heading north by Thursday or Friday. With any luck, we can be on and off the mountain before it hits.”
She shot him a confounded look. “You said you spent two monthssearching for Podly. You expect that because I’ll be with you this time, we’re going to drive directly up to the satellite, load it in the snowcat, and be off the mountain in a matter of days? It will probably take us weeks to find where it crashed.”
“Then all the more reason to leave now.”
“I can’t,” she muttered, poking her eggs a bit more forcefully. “I have a couple of commitments here I have to deal with first.”
“What commitments?”
“I babysit four dogs, remember? I can’t just take off all of a sudden and leave my clients without day care.”
“They’re dogs, Camry, not kids. They can stay home while their masters work, like normal dogs do.”
“But I promised Tigger’s and Max’s owners that I would keep them over the holidays. The Hemples are leaving for England tomorrow, and I’m supposed to have Tigger for an entire month. And Max’s mother is leaving on Tuesday for Wisconsin, and she won’t be back until after New Year’s.”
“Call and tell them you have a family emergency or something.”
“You want me to lieto them?”
Luke very kindly refrained from pointing out that she’d been lying to her parents for almost a year. “Then let’s get on the phone and find alternative accommodations for their pets. Surely there are kennels around here.”
“Tigger can’t stay in a kennel! She’d be scarred for life. And so would Max. Why do you think these people have me babysit them? They’re not dogs, they’re family.”
Luke sighed, not wanting to ask his next question, but seeing how his lower brain was in charge, he asked it anyway. “So what’s your plan, then?”
She looked back down at her eggs. “We’re going to have to take Tigger and Max with us,” she said, so quietly that Luke had to lean forward to hear her.
He reared back. “You expect to take two dogs to Springy Mountain in the middle of the winter? Camry, the snow’s deeper than Tigger is tall. And the snowcat’s going to be crowded enough with the two of us and our gear. Where are you planning to put Max? He’s the size of person.”
“We can carry most of our gear on the roof, and we’ll steal one of the resort’s larger groomers. That way we can even sleep in it if we have to.”
Luke dropped his head in his hands to stare down at his plate. Had she changed her mind about his going with her, or did she intend to go home at all?
She touched his arm, and he lifted his head. “You have my word, I’m not trying to ditch you,” she said, apparently reading his mind. “It’s just that while I was packing this afternoon, I suddenly remembered I’d committed myself for the next month.” She smiled crookedly. “We’ll find Podly, I promise. And who knows, maybe Max and Tigger will come in handy. They’re both hunting breeds; they can sniff out the satellite for us.”
Luke laced his fingers through hers. “If you’re really not trying to ditch me, then why do I have to go back to the hotel until Tuesday?”
Her cheeks turned a lovely pink, and her gaze dropped. She tried to pull away, but Luke actually tossed her hand away with a snort. “You’re out of here ten minutes after I leave. Only you’re not going home, you’re running away again.”