good idea to share this with Casey, no matter how warmly she was beaming encouragement with her magical reporter powers and fathomless brown eyes.
At least they were having an honest conversation.
“With Pops failing,” he said, “I figured the opportunity to explore the route he’d talked about so much had slipped out of my hands. I’d waited too long to get it going.”
“Death—and sickness—they sneak up on you.”
Huh. “Garrick and Logan said the same thing.” His friends had suffered losses, too. Because of those, the three of them had shared some pretty deep philosophical discussions. But where had Casey found that wisdom? The question teetered on the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed it down. If he asked, she’d clam up, and that would destroy this sudden intimacy. “Both Garrick and Logan urged me to finally set up the expedition, do it even if Pops couldn’t join me. I couldn’t procrastinate any longer, and I would regret it if Pops passed before it was done.” He shrugged. “They were right. Here I am.”
Her gaze flickered to her pack, where he could just see the notebook she’d been scribbling in poking through rumpled clothes. He waited for her to grab it, take notes, like she had every night after dinner, burying her nose in the work. But her gaze returned to him, and she made no move for a pen.
His heart warmed as a filament of something soft and strong wrapped around it.
“Now you know why we’re really here,” he said, looking everywhere but at her, “and I just realized that my deck of cards is in another bag.”
“No worries.” She sat up. The horror novel tumbled off her abdomen. Yanking her open backpack, she shoved her arm so deep that her T-shirt gaped. He glimpsed the soft white curve of a breast beneath the neckline as she pulled out a pack of cards.
“Fortunately,” she said with a twinkle of triumph, “I went to camp, too.”
He grinned. “Well done.”
“Are you up for a game?”
His ribs tightened. “Depends on the stakes.”
“We’re not playing for chips. Or money.” She pulled the cards out of the case and started shuffling. “For entertainment only. What card games do you know? Crazy eights? Gin rummy?”
Don’t say it, dude.
“Go fish?” she prompted. “War?”
He said, “Strip poker?”
He knew he was spitting in the wind. But he needed some acknowledgment that he wasn’t the only one using every mind trick in the book to kill the urge to share his body with her.
Her eyes narrowed, glinting with mischief. “High hopes, huh?”
Getting higher by the minute.
“It would be wiser to play something less dangerous.” With a flick of a hand, she began to deal. “Like go fish.”
He sighed loud enough to be dramatic as he gathered the cards, but he couldn’t say he was disappointed. The earth hadn’t moved beneath their writhing bodies, but he sensed a shift in the air between them.
Most definitely in his favor.
CHAPTER NINE
Ten Days Out
Casey stepped out of the canoe and splashed into the shallows. The ew factor of the soft riverbed hardly registered as she yanked one foot and then the other out of the mud. On dry land, she slowed to a stop and glanced around the small clearing, fringed with pine trees. It looked the same as every other place they’d camped. After too many miles to count and still no sight of Owl’s Head Rock, Dylan had made an executive decision to change tactics. They’d backtracked down the river and then paddled up the fork they hadn’t chosen earlier. For the last two hours, they’d been paddling under a misting rain not quite hard enough to warrant pitching a daytime tent.
Swaying on her feet, she felt like a wet rag, squeezed tight. Everything was damp—her clothes, her hair, her spirits. How could Dylan, rakishly unshaven and mud-splashed, still look so hot?
“How fast,” he said as he tied the canoe’s tow rope to a sapling, “do you think we could set up camp?”
“Last time, you pitched it in eight minutes flat.” She pulled the hem of her T-shirt up to wipe the mist from her face. “As for a fire…that’s not going to happen today.”
“True.” He averted his gaze from the wink of her navel. “Let’s get the tent set up, but only the tent. We can unload the camp stove and everything else later.”
Her shoulders sagged. “Why the delay?” She was jonesing for hot coffee.
“We still have a few hours of daylight.” He pulled the muddy tent bag from the canoe