“It’s not like they’re marked with BUMP signs.” He shoved Max into the backseat. “I can’t see them because Max keeps breathing on the glass and fogging it up.”
“Wait. Stop here,” she said. “I think this is the turnoff we need to take.”
“You think?”
Cam scowled over at him. “It’s been years since I’ve been this far north. I’ll get my bearings once the sun rises.” She reached over and shut off the engine, opened her door, then nearly fell out when Max shoved past her. “Okay, you overgrown brat, it’s time we set down some rules,” she said, lunging after the dog. She took hold of the lab’s head and held him facing her, her nose only inches from his. “One, you wait until I tell you it’s okay to get out. And two, you stay in the backseat with Tigger. You try to crawl in the front with us again, and you’re riding on the roof with our gear.”
“That put the fear of God in him,” Luke said, walking around the snowcat with Tigger in his arms. He stopped to look at their surroundings in the stingy light of the breaking dawn. “It might have been years since you’ve been up here, but I just spent two months scouring these woods. This tote road leads up the south side of Springy.” He pointed in the other direction. “And that way will take us closer to the lake, and eventually around to the north side of the mountain.”
“Then we should go that way,” she said. “Since your trajectory data points to the satellite’s having come in from the north.”
“Except that it couldn’t have,” he contradicted. “Based on its orbit at the time it malfunctioned, Podly should have crashed into the south side of Springy.”
Cam stopped packing down the snow to make a spot for Tigger and looked at him. “So are you suggesting we search the same woods you already spent two months searching, or do you want to look where the satellite really is? Because I happen to know it’s on the north side of the mountain.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “How?”
“Because I watched its entire descent.”
“You actually sawit?”
Cam took Tigger out of his arms and set the dachshund in the circle she’d stomped down. “Winter was having her baby right then, and my other sisters and I were sitting down on the dock in front of her home, waiting for the big arrival. That’s when we noticed what we thought was a meteor streaking through the sky, heading right toward Springy Mountain. It was coming from the north, traveling south. We all saw it, but just then Mom came out of the house and shouted to us that we had a brand-new baby niece.” She shrugged. “I completely forgot about it until Saturday, when you told me Podly had crashed north of Pine Creek last June.”
Luke stared at her, his jaw slack. “Then I guess we head north, don’t we? Wait. You said you were at Winter’s house. She had her baby at home?”
Cam nodded. “My mother and all my sisters had their babies at home. It’s sort of a MacKeage tradition.”
His jaw went slack again.
“What’s so odd about that?” she asked. “Women have been having babies at home since we lived in caves.”
“But what if something went wrong? You’re miles from the nearest hospital.”
Seeing that Tigger was done with her business, Cam set her in the snowcat, then turned back to Luke. “I guess you could say that it’s also our tradition to have relatively easy births.”
Luke’s expression turned unreadable. “So if you were to have a baby . . . would you be expected to have it at home, too?”
“Expected? No. Each of my sisters chose to have her babies at home with a midwife, but they weren’t expectedto. In fact, Daddy practically begged them to go to the hospital.” She started looking around for Max. “But if I ever do decide to have children, I would likely follow tradition.”
Luke took hold of her sleeve and turned her to face him. “Does that scare you?”
“It’s a moot point, since I’m not having kids.”
“Because they’ll steal your passion for science?” he asked softly.
“And because I want it to be my choice, not the universe’s.”
“Excuse me?”
Camry eyed him for several heartbeats, then sat down on the track of the snowcat with a sigh. “Okay, since you’re madly in lust with me, I suppose you have a right to know why I’ve been . . . reluctant to have intercourse.”
He snorted, but then held up his hand when she shot him a scowl. “Okay, we’ll go with reluctant.” He sat down beside her. “So what’s the universe got to do with your having sex?”
Cam hesitated, wondering just how much of her family background she should disclose. But the more time she spent with Luke, the more she realized he wasn’t at all like any of the men she’d dated. He was . . .
Hell. For the first time in her life, she was tempted to risk it all on a man.
And since he would be risking it all, too, he certainly deserved to know what he was getting himself into, didn’t he?
She pivoted to face him, made several attempts to start, then finally said, “Have you ever heard the saying that the seventh son of a seventh son is gifted?”
He arched a brow. “I believe I’ve heard something to that effect.”
“Well, my mother was supposed to be the seventh son of a seventh son, but when she was born a girl,everyone thought that was the end of that. But instead of the end, Grace Sutter’s birth was actually the beginning of an even stranger axiom. You see, Mom and her six brothers, and her sister Mary, were all born on the summer solstice.”
He leaned away, both eyebrows raised in disbelief. “All eight kids?”
She nodded. “But here’s where it gets even more improbable. Mom had seven daughters, and all of us were born on the wintersolstice.”
Luke snorted. “Now you’re just messing with me.”
Cam took hold of his sleeve and looked him directly in the eye, letting him see she was deadly serious. “My sisters’ children have been born on random dates throughout the years, all except for Fiona, who was born on this summer’s solstice. And Winter is Mom’s seventh daughter.”
“It’s just a date on a calendar, Camry. Millions of kids have been born on one of the solstices. But what does any of that have to do with your reluctance to have sex?”
“Well, there’s another tradition in our family,” she said, dropping her gaze and letting go of his sleeve. “It seems that all six of my sisters got pregnant the very first time they made love to their husbands,” she whispered.
He said nothing for several heartbeats, then softly asked, “And were they all virgins when they met their husbands?”
“No. Or at least several of them weren’t.” She stared off into the woods. “I believe Winter was. Heather got married when she was eighteen, so she might have been, too. But I’m pretty sure Megan, Sarah, Chelsea, and Elizabeth weren’t.” She looked over at Luke. “But their virginity is not the issue. Every one of them got pregnant the very first time they made love to the man they eventually married.”
“And so you’ve never gone all the way because you’ve been afraid that . . . what? That you might get pregnant and then have to marry the father? But birth control is very reliable today.”
“That’s what Megan and Sarah and Elizabeth thought. I know that Sarah was on birth control pills, and Megan told me Jack used a condom. But don’t you see? It’s like the universepicked out their husbands for them.”
“They didn’t have to marry those men, Camry. That was their choice.”
“But they loved them.”
“Then what’s the problem? Everything worked out for the best.”
She stood up, crossing her arms to hug herself as she faced the woods. “But what if I want to love someone and not have babies with him?” She spun around to face him. “Where is it written that I can’t have one without the other?”