“No.”
“And then there’s that…whatever the hell we saw. We need our guns.”
“You can get your gear, but you are not going after my stuff.”
He stood up. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
“Jack,” she growled, stretching out his name to emphasize her warning. “If something happens to you, then I’m stuck out here alone. I don’t even have boots. If you die, I die, too. Along with our baby,” she tacked on for good measure.
“Believe me, I understand the consequences. I’ll bring back your boots and suit and get them dried out.” He pointed toward where he’d hung her wet clothes on a branch. “As soon as something is dry enough, put it on.”
He walked onto the lake. “If an hour goes by and I’m not back,” he called, “then you may worry. But not before.”
“It doesn’t take an hour to walk out there and back!”
“I’m going to see if I can free my sled. You just concentrate on keeping warm so our son doesn’t catch a cold.”
Our son. He liked the sound of that.
Chapter Fifteen
D amn him, he was going after her gear! She knew it because he hadn’t actually promised that he wouldn’t—apparently thinking that if he didn’t lie to her, she might start trusting him again.
He’d obviously forgotten about lies of omission.
Megan settled back on the bed of fir boughs he had made after he’d built the fire, and opened his jacket to feel the heat on her neck and chest. She cupped her belly in her hands. “Oh, baby,” she whispered. “I nearly killed us both trying to avoid that…that thing. No, make that all three of us, because Jack would have died trying to save you and me.”
She scooted closer to the fire. “So what do you think?” she asked her belly. “Is Jack Stone the sort of man we want in our lives? I think he really does love me.” She patted her belly. “He definitely loves you. I can’t count the times I’ve caught him staring at my stomach. You’d think he’s never seen a pregnant woman before.”
She picked up a stick and poked at the fire. “He said he used to have a brother—is he dead, or are they just estranged?” She unzipped the bib of her ski pants, hoping it would help her bra dry. “He must have died, if Jack wants to name you after him. I was planning to name you after my uncle Ian if you’re a boy, but maybe we can compromise. Are you feeling cozy in there, baby, like your daddy said?”
Could a fetus even catch a cold, or had Jack only been trying to distract her? Megan leaned to the side and looked out at the lake again. She could just make out the position of his sled because the moon was reflecting off its windshield. She couldn’t, however, see any shadow moving around it.
A violent shiver wracked her at the thought of Jack trying to retrieve her gear. That water was so numbingly cold, and she’d come so close to dying. She’d been so surprised when that…that…
What in hell was that creature? It had looked like a dragon. But they were reptilian, not amphibious, weren’t they? She snorted, settling back in front of the fire and picking up the stick again. “They aren’t either, you crazy woman, because dragons do not exist.”
Unless…
Kenzie! He’d seen the creature, too! Hell, he’d been close enough to catch its odor. She had smelled the same rank odor on his clothes that she’d smelled in the air tonight, just before she’d hit the water. Which meant Kenzie did have something to do with whatever was breaking into the shops in town.
And he was probably the man who had attacked Jack that night; the guy Robbie had chased off. Then Robbie had followed his tracks and would have caught up with him—which meant her cousin also knew what was going on.
It was the damn magic. It had to be.
Kenzie had been a panther for the last three years, before Winter and Matt had turned him back into a man on the winter solstice. So why couldn’t the magic conjure up a dragon? Hell, it could turn the sky green if it had a mind to. Providence—which was the real force behind the magic—was even capable of creating an entirely new tree of life, which it had done by combining Matt’s oak and Winter’s pine. A dragon was mere child’s play!
“Oh God,” she groaned. “What am I going to tell Jack?”
The man wasn’t blind; he had seen exactly what she had, and eventually he was going to want to talk about it. That creature was breaking into the town shops, so wouldn’t Jack want to let the citizens know he was closing in on the culprit?
Speaking of which, why was it breaking into the shops? It had only stolen doughnuts and candy bars, according to what Jack and Camry had said. But it had looked like it was eating a fish tonight, when it had suddenly appeared in her headlights. Had it been using the open water next to the ledge as a fishing hole? She’d have to check that out first thing in the morning, before they were rescued.
Okay, she needed a plan. She was going to have to persuade Jack that what they’d seen was some sort of anomaly, like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster. Yeah, she’d tell him that Pine Lake was so vast and deep, it had its very own mystery creature.
But she didn’t have anything to back up her story. There hadn’t been any other reported sightings, and the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot were well-established, ongoing legends.
Maybe she could imply the creature was new to the area. She snorted. Yeah, she could just see herself saying, “Isn’t this exciting? We’re the first ones to sight it! We’ll make the national news!”
No, the quieter they kept this, the better. Her father and uncles had managed to keep the magic a secret for nearly forty years, and her generation had to continue keeping it a secret. She’d just have to persuade Jack that they shouldn’t speak to anyone about what they saw tonight; not even anyone in her family. It would be their little secret.
He might go for that, if he thought sharing a secret would bring the two of them closer together.
Megan checked her clothes on the branches and discovered that her turtleneck and silk top were dry, but that her sweater still had a long way to go. She slipped off her jacket and slid the bib of Jack’s pants off her shoulders, then decided to take off her bra since the back elastic wasn’t drying. She pulled the two jerseys on over her head, rezipped the bib, and slipped back into the jacket. She’d already taken off the shirt he had wrapped around her head, and she turned it on the branch so the back would dry, sure he would need it when he returned.
She crawled past the fire enough to see the lake again. How long had he been gone? Twenty minutes? Half an hour? And how in hell was she supposed to rescue him without her boots?
Megan sat back and eyed the bottoms of the ski pants she was wearing. They were made of thick leather and were long enough that she could tie the ends closed and walk with her feet inside them. She gazed around camp trying to spot something to tie them with, that wouldn’t break after only ten steps.
Her bra! She could use the straps.
She snatched the bra off the branch and tried ripping a strap off one of the cups. That wasn’t happening. She looped it over her foot and pulled, but the only thing that ripped was the satin cup. She searched for a couple of rocks, then had to use a stick to free them from the frozen ground. She set the end of the strap on one rock and beat it with the other.
“Come on, you stupid thing,” she growled, pounding the double-stitched material. “I have to go save Jack.”
It was a good thing she was only a C cup; anything bigger would probably be quadruple-stitched! Figuring she’d mangled the material enough to weaken it, she looped it over her foot again and pulled. It gave with a sudden tear that sent her flying backward.
She scrambled upright and did the same to the other strap, then pounded the tiny metal rings on the back until they broke. She finally dangled the freed straps in front of her. “Am I my father’s daughter, or what?” she said proudly. “I should have my own ‘Survivor-woman’ show on the Discovery Channel!”