girl! She snuggled down into the fleece lining of the slippery bag, wishing she had her pillow. And a decent flashlight.
She clicked off her poor-excuse-for-a-light, placing it by her sleeping bag, then shut her eyes. Yeowl! A distant howl echoed through the night to pop them back open, her heart pounding a drumbeat in her ears.
“How can I be such a wimp?” Jami whispered to the darkness, aware of only the thin, worn canvas of a rickety tent between her and creatures of the night.
Entire body saturated with tiredness, her mind drifting and floating as she tried to identify every noise, Jami again closed her eyes. She concentrated so hard on hearing the night sounds around her, she barely noticed as sleep gradually claimed her through gauzy layers of consciousness.
Inside the dome tent, Grant Carrington slithered into the last sleeping bag. Toby stirred, a bump in the blue bag a few feet away. “Hey, Grant?”
“What, buddy?”
“Think my mom’s asleep?”
“Probably. Unless she’s scared all by herself.”
“She’s never scared,” Toby mumbled, rolling to his other side and snuggling back down.
Grant kept his flashlight on until the boy’s eyes fluttered closed. Soon he heard Toby’s slow even breathing, punctuated occasionally by a tiny snore and knew the child was asleep. Shutting off the flashlight, he lay in the darkness wondering about Jami, berating himself. He knew her stubborn streak and should have found a way to allow her to gracefully back down from her decision to sleep in that pup tent. He’d felt sure she wouldn’t go through with it, but had underestimated her internal steel. She had more character in her little toe than most people had in their whole bodies. If only she wasn’t so stubborn.
He scowled, considering his own behavior. What a pair they made. Cupid’s perfect couple couldn’t even go one night without quarreling.
Turning onto his side, he faced the tent vent opening in a netted window toward the pup tent. It was too dark to see anything. If only she’d accepted his flashlight. Angry at himself, Grant grabbed his shirt, stuffing it into a ball under his head. If he didn’t get a moment’s sleep the entire night, it’d be his own fault. He never should have let Jami insist on that pup tent.
The howl of a wild beast reverberated through the night. Jami jerked awake, fighting loose from the clutches of the sleeping bag. Frantic, she kicked free. Swallowed by darkness and sick with rising panic, she tried to get her bearings. Where was the exit? She’d never felt so trapped. Or vulnerable.
Other howls joined the first with unearthly menace. Jami screamed, jumping to her feet, her shoulder whacking the side tent pole.
Creak, crack! The tent collapsed, burying her under old canvas and downed tent poles. “Ow! Help!”
Grant flew out of the dome tent with a frightened Toby on his heels. Aiming the brightest flashlight beam at the pup tent, Grant spotlighted Jami, her head poking up from the destructed tent as she floundered.
“What happened?” Grant scanned the area with the yellow beam of the flashlight and switched the light back on Jami. She looked like a wild woman with her hair tangled and hanging into her face, her eyes twice their normal size.
“Didn’t you hear those blood-thirsty creatures?” she demanded, full of as much fire as fright.
“We heard some coyotes howling, that’s all. Right, Toby?”
“Yeah, Mom, that’s all,” the child quickly agreed.
“That’s all?” Jami sputtered, struggling to get out of the tent wreckage twisted around her.
“The coyotes are more scared of us than we are of them,” Toby bragged, “Grant said so.”
“Nobody bothered to tell me,” Jami retorted.
“You didn’t ask,” Grant replied, trying his best not to laugh as the tousled redhead bobbed around the tent ruins. A bent tent pole was snagged in the back of her hair, as though she had a metal tail.
“Mom broke her tent, didn’t she?”
“She certainly did,” Grant agreed, illuminating the pup tent remains as he strode toward Jami.
She scowled, still tangled in the tent. “I didn’t.”
“Then why’d it fall down?” Toby asked, catching the key chain light rolling out from under the canvas.
“Because I bumped the pole.”
“See?” Toby shook his head at his mom, his own hair sticking out in places, but still much neater than his mother’s wild tresses.
“You head back to bed, partner,” Grant suggested, as he took Jami’s arm to help her shed the collapsed tent. “I’ll rescue your mother, and we’ll be with you in a minute. Okay?”