eyes on a sigh. Other than having a wrenched knee and Margo having to worry about her son, he kind of liked the idea of being stuck in the woods with Katy. Because it still got pretty chilly at night, and the best way he knew for two unprepared people to stay warm was to snuggle.
Okay, two and a half people. But even with the kid snuggled between them—which he didn’t doubt Katy would insist on—Gunnar figured his arms were still long enough to make respectable contact.
He snapped open his eyes two minutes later when Katy dropped to her knees beside his leg. “Give me your knife and T-shirt,” she ordered, holding out her hand.
“Why?” he asked, even as he reached down and unsheathed his multi-tool.
“Because we can’t just sit here doing nothing all night.” She snatched the tool out of his hand, then used it to gesture at him. “I need that shirt you’re wearing under your fleece.”
“Why?”
She opened the serrated blade. “To make a bandage for your knee.”
He grabbed her hand as the knife descended toward his ankle. “Why?”
She sat back on her heels and took a calming breath. “Because Shiloh apparently watches a lot of nature shows, and he’s not real keen on spending the night in a forest he knows for certain has bears. The kid’s truly scared,” she continued with a sad smile. “He’s a house hermit, and before he moved here, the biggest patch of woods he’d been in was half an acre of scrub brush on an abandoned lot down the street from his house.”
“So, you’re expecting us to walk out of here?”
“We’ve still got about four hours of daylight and it can’t be more than . . . what, two or three miles to Inglenook?”
“Try five.” Dammit, he wanted to snuggle, not hike five miles up and down a mountain on a bum knee. If he rode out of here on an ATV, he’d be back in business in two days, tops. But if he had to hike out, his knee would be the size of a football tomorrow morning and he’d be laid up for a week.
She looked down at his knee, which already was swollen enough to show through his jeans, then looked up and—Christ, was that a gleam in her eyes?
“Man up, Wolfe. I’m sure you’ve been on much longer marches with significantly worse injuries when you were a . . . in your former life.” She pulled her hand from under his, gestured at his chest with the knife, then grabbed the hem of his pant leg and pierced it with the blade. “If you’re shy, I won’t peek while you strip.”
For the love of God, what freaking former life?
Gunnar unsnapped the buttons on his fleece and pulled it off over his head, grateful he hadn’t tied it to his saddle when they’d stopped to let the horses drink. Because the only thing worse than hiking five miles with a bum knee would have been doing it half naked in Maine in the mountains in June.
Katy stopped slicing the pant leg, sat back on her heels, and looked around. “Shiloh,” she called when she spotted the kid a few yards off the trail across from them. “Forget the firewood and try to find a fairly straight, stout branch that’s about as long as Mr. Wolfe is tall.” She glanced down and turned the multi-tool over in her hand, then looked in Shiloh’s direction again. “If you can’t find any you think would work as a hiking stick, then look around for a young tree about as thick as your wrist and I’ll cut it down.”
“We’re gonna walk home?” Shiloh shouted, dropping his armful of branches and running to them. “So we won’t have to sleep in the woods?”
“That we are,” Katy said cheerily.
Gunnar saw the light leave Shiloh’s eyes when the kid glanced at him then back at Katy. “But I thought Mr. Wolfe hurt his leg and can’t walk. We . . . we can’t just leave him out here all by himself with a bear around. It’ll be dark before anyone can come get him.”
“That’s what the hiking stick is for, Shiloh. Mr. Wolfe is coming with us. It might take a bit longer, but we should still be home before dark.”
Gunnar pulled off his T-shirt to cover his sigh, only to stop with it halfway over his head when he heard Katy say, again quite cheerily, “See that, Shiloh. You start spending more time outdoors,