Caught on Camera
Meg Maguire
Wilderness survival television star Dominic Tyler (Ty) and his assistant Kate Somersby are stranded in a remote cabin during a freak winter storm. Things look pretty bleak–until they make a fire and strip off their wet clothes….Act I–set upSurvive This! is Kate's life…as are unscripted fantasies about Ty, her boss and best friend. But when Kate is suddenly injured, Ty decides filming is too dangerous for her. This will be Kate's last adventure for a while.Act II–plot pointKate is furious and threatens to quit. But Ty needs her. So what can he do? Keep her occupied by filming every minute of their intense and definitely unrehearsed sex!Act III–cliff-hangerIt's Kate's choice now: Her hard-won career? Or end credits featuring dangerously wild sex with Ty? Ha. Some choice. But either way, the final cut is guaranteed to be a thrilling ride!
“Take your clothes off.”
Kate’s mouth curled up with a devilish twitch.
“Beg pardon?” He swallowed.
“You heard me, Ty. Strip. You trust me? Get your clothes off. Everything but your underwear.”
Ty’s eyes bored through the camera into hers. She felt it then, The Shift. Saw it in the way his muscles tensed. He licked his lips. “This is really what you want?”
“Getting there.” Kate made her voice as smugly casual as she could, hoping the thick weight behind it would pass for boredom.
He unbuttoned and unzipped his pants and let them fall down his legs, revealing the powerful thighs that haunted Kate’s dreams. Rock climber or not, Ty was built like a swimmer.
His body was long and lean, with cresting hip muscles that drew Kate’s attention straight between his legs to the bulge in his boxer briefs. Lust banished Kate’s misgivings and cemented her determination to see this through.
“How long have you wanted to see this, Katie?” he asked, turning the tables on her.
“From the very start.”
Dear Reader,
Welcome to my very first Blaze novel! To say I’m flattered that you’ve picked up this book would be the understatement of a lifetime.
Though I’ve never been trapped in the snowy wilds of Saskatchewan with an Australian free climber (yet), I did throw myself fully into the research process for Caught on Camera. Much of that research consisted of forcing my then boyfriend, now husband, to watch hour upon hour of reality survival programs with me. That’s hour upon hour of rather fit and capable men performing rugged acts of bravery, often shirtless.
Needless to say, it pained me greatly. Though neither of the hosts of my favorite shows were the basis for Ty’s character, I offer my most heartfelt thanks for their suffering. Equally warm thanks go to the unseen masses behind the cameras and credits—I only hope Kate does your fascinating jobs a bit of justice.
And to my readers, thank you! If you have thoughts to share, please find me through my website www.megmaguire.com, blog or on Twitter. I’d love to hear your reactions to this, my first ever Blaze book.
Enjoy!
Meg Maguire
Caught on Camera
Meg Maguire
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Before becoming a writer, Meg Maguire worked as a record store snob, a lousy barista, a decent designer and an overenthusiastic penguin handler. Now she loves writing sexy, character-driven stories about strong-willed men and women who keep each other on their toes…and bring one another to their knees. Meg lives north of Boston with her husband. When she’s not trapped in her own head she can be found in the kitchen, the coffee shop or jogging around the nearest duck-filled pond.
To Amy and Jen, who read it first and helped make it better.
To Laura and Brenda, who recognized my voice behind all the profanity and newbie mistakes, polished me up and gave me a chance to shine.
To my parents and big brother, my extended family and best friends, so supportive it’s unnatural.
To the economy, for taking away my day job at the exact right moment.
And above all, thanks to my husband…for putting up with me.
May all your ptarmigans be willowy.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
1
KATE SCANNED THE TREES, one thought on her mind—food. Food being a very loose term. Roots, seeds, rodents, carrion…nearly anything would do in this desolate wasteland. In every direction, miles and miles of slushy spring snow, acres of scrubby pines, but lunch…?
“Fat frigging chance,” she muttered. Then she saw it—a little clump of twigs in the crook of an old tree, a bird’s nest. “Come on, eggs.” Kate searched for handholds. She dug her boots into the knobby bark, locked her thighs around the trunk. Inch by slow, slippery inch, she made her clumsy ascent, mumbling a drum solo to herself. “Buh, buh-buhbuh-buh…” At moments like this, she always got the show’s theme song stuck in her head.
Each episode opened with a flurry of bongos and a glimpse of misty green wilderness. Every few beats a new image flashed onto the screen—a man wading hip-deep through a rushing river, scaling a sheer cliff face, striking a flint. Words burst onto the screen—Dom Tyler: Survive This! The title disappeared to make way for a second bout of montage overlaid with credits that went ignored by most viewers in favor of the handsome man with his dirty blond hair and fascinating eyes, arms like a boxer and smile like a natural-born con man.
Kate knew the show’s opening by heart. Heck, she’d filmed half the footage herself. And she knew Dom Tyler by heart, too. Those arms and that smile belonged to her boss, her best friend. And it was his fault she was halfway up a tree in the desolate wilds of Saskatchewan just now, wrecking her jeans with sap.
Wincing at the bark digging into her thighs, she took a deep breath and hauled herself onto a thick branch, ten feet off the ground. Bingo—eggs.
“Woo hoo!” She pumped her fist in the air. Glancing toward the campsite, she bellowed, “Ty! I’ve found your lunch!”
A faint noise of acknowledgment drifted through the otherwise silent landscape. Balancing on the limb, Kate slid the video camera strapped across her back forward and shouldered it. She aimed the viewfinder at the three illfated eggs nestled in the wreath of twigs and hit the record button.
“Songbird eggs,” she murmured into the mic. “Need a confirm on the species. Early spring is one of the best times of year to find bird eggs if you get lost in the Canadian wilderness—double-check that fact. They can be cooked, or eaten raw if fire is scarce, and they’re a great source of protein.”
The show was an hour long, forty-two minutes after commercials. Forty-two minutes of Dom Tyler explaining how to stay alive in some of the world’s harshest environments—a different location each episode. Though his looks likely distracted most viewers from actually retaining any of the lessons.
For nearly every shot that made it to air, just off camera stood Kate, armed with the stern poise of a lion tamer and a hastily acquired vocabulary to rival David Attenborough’s. She researched and wrote nearly half of the show’s narration. It was Dom Tyler’s name in the title and face on the screen, but she was the one behind him, cracking the whip, keeping the show and its host on track.
She let the camera roll a few more seconds before shouldering it and fumbling back down the trunk, hopping the last few feet to the soggy ground.
“Ty?” Ty, because he winced whenever anyone called him Dominic. Kate headed toward the fire they’d set up by the river, shouting to him as she picked pine needles from the front of her jacket. “We’re going to need to get you up there. I want some climbing and hand shots. I made some notes you can record in postproduction.”
She rounded the bend at the edge of the woods and discovered why Ty wasn’t shouting back. Sitting splay-legged on a fallen tree, he had one of the other cameras perched on his broad shoulder, its lens trained on Kate, red light blinking. As she neared, she heard him narrating for his own amusement, a raised whisper in the Australian accent that earned them at least a quarter of their ratings.
“…the natural habitat of the Kate Somersby. We can see from her stance that this approach is one of postured aggression, though the look in the female’s eyes suggests that mating may be on her mind. Let’s wait and see what she’s after.” Ty abandoned the voice-over as Kate pushed her boot against the front of his vest, toppling him harmlessly backward into the wet snow.
She crossed her arms over her chest and mustered her best fed-up assistant glare. It was day two of their three-day exile in this snowy wasteland, and cold was not her strong suit. “Some of us have been scaling trees, Ty. Earning our saddle sores.”
“That’s one way to get your rocks off.”
“I need you up there.” She stared down at her professional partner of the past two and a half years, blatantly appraising all six feet three inches of him, from his boot-clad feet up to his unruly golden-brown hair and sideburns, and that evil, evil eyebrow. His chin and jaw were peppered with several days’ blond stubble. By the time they got back to L.A. he’d probably have a full-on beard. It wouldn’t do a thing to disguise his movie-star good looks, just as his clothes couldn’t trick their viewers into forgetting what was hidden beneath, once they’d caught a glimpse.
Kate knew what lay beneath the thermal shirt Ty currently wore under his vest, too. She knew it with more familiarity than she’d known the body of any former lover, despite the fact that she and Ty had never so much as kissed. That disappointed certain parts of her, relieved others. She loved her job too much to risk it over something as stupid as hormones. And she loved Ty, too—as a friend. She wouldn’t risk losing him, either…though the thought of such a mistake had certainly kept her warm on a few cold nights.
She gave Ty’s hovering foot a soft kick. “C’mon, up you get. Eggs.”
Ty groaned. “God, eggs.”
“Tell me about it.” She grabbed the hand he stuck out and yanked him up to sitting. “I’ve got a few of my own that’ll be going to waste in a few years, if I keep running around the globe with the likes of you.”
“So you keep telling me…but don’t pretend you don’t love this.” He wiped wet snow off the backs of his arms, zipped the camera into its sturdy bag and set it aside.
Kate sat down beside him on a log. He was right, of course. For all its ridiculous moments, she adored this job. And not just the job—but their partnership. Plus she was an unapologetic control freak and this gig allowed her to do what she did best on a grand scale, and get paid for it. At twenty-eight, thoughts of settling into a normal life could wait a few more years, or as long as the network continued to renew their contract.
Ty took her handheld camera and reviewed the footage, frowning. “Why is it you never find us wild rib-eye?”
“Why is it you never find us anything, period?” she asked, though it was a mean exaggeration. Ty more than pulled his weight, but today he was noticeably unfocused. Kate wasn’t surprised. He was running on very little food and even less sleep.
He handed the camera back and stared at her with the unearthly blue-green eyes that earned them another quarter of their ratings. “What?”
“Nothing.” His tone suggested otherwise. “Take me to your eggs.”
“Terrifying choice of words, Ty.” They stood and she tossed him the wool hat he’d been wearing in the previous scene. He tugged it on and followed her back to the tree. “Third limb.”
He squinted upward. “I see it.”
She trained the camera on Ty as he demonstrated how to loop a length of climbing rope around the trunk to make the task easier. Kate frowned at her ruined jeans and savaged thighs. In three minutes he was up and back again with the eggs in his vest pocket.
“What d’you fancy?” he asked, his perpetually mischievous eyebrow cocked at her. “Raw or boiled?”
“It’s your lunch, Ty. I’m having an energy bar.”
“What’ll look better?” he asked.
“You cooked that goose, yesterday. Better do an ‘if you can’t build a fire’ scenario.”
“You’re the boss.”
She pursed her lips, skeptical. “Care to put that in writing?”
Ty merely smirked, a dimple forming beside one corner of his mouth. Technically speaking, of course, he was the boss. It wasn’t just his name on the show, either—in addition to being the host and narrator of the wildly popular reality program, he was also its creator. He’d dreamed it up, pitched it, got himself the contract and come to the table with much of his survival experience already hard-earned from a stint in his twenties as a globe-trekking rock climber.
“How are we getting to tomorrow’s location?” Ty asked as he set up a tripod for the raw-egg-eating shot.
“Do you even look at the itineraries I write up for you?”
He angled the lens, fiddled with the settings. “Don’t need to, Katie. I’ve got you.”
“May God have mercy on the woman you trick into marrying you one day, Ty.” Not that you’re the marrying kind, she added to herself. She pulled her copy of the meticulous memorandum from the back pocket of her filthy jeans. “We’re meeting the dogsled folks tomorrow morning at five. The trip should take about three hours, then we’re doing an ice-fishing spot if the lake up there’s still frozen. Snowmobile team’s picking us up at sundown.”
“Beautiful. And after tomorrow?”
Kate smiled at the thought. “You know.”
Ty met her eyes above the camera. “Tell me anyhow, Katie. I love to hear you say it.”
“After tomorrow, we’re done for another season.”
Ty sighed, loud and dramatic. “And so our next destination will be…?”
“I don’t know about you, but mine’ll be my bed.” She could practically feel her cool sheets and soft pillows now.
“Sounds good. I’ll see you there.”
Kate waited until Ty glanced at her before she fixed him with a look she hoped conveyed her grumpy exhaustion. “While we’re on the topic, may I make a suggestion or two, for next season’s locales?”
“Mmm?”
“I’m thinking Maui. Saint John’s? Fiji? Please? This snow is killing me.”
“You’re from New England,” he said, eyes swiveling back to the camera’s screen.
“And I hated snow growing up, too. Come on, Ty…lost at sea? Even that’s got to be better than this.”
He shook his head. “No open ocean stuff.”
“Why are you so weird about—”
“I get seasick,” Ty interrupted. “Quiet on the set.”
He switched the camera on and went to work. Kate fell silent, smirking to herself. Only Dom Tyler could make swallowing the contents of raw songbird eggs erotic. Unlikely as it seemed, this shot was pure gold when it came to capturing the viewers’ attention. And with the snowy locale, this episode needed all the help it could get. Even though it was technically spring, winter still felt very much like the order of the day here in Saskatchewan. Winter meant snow and ice, gusting winds and cruel cold. And layers. Layers made the chance that the viewers would get a glimpse of Ty’s bare torso seem less likely. And that meant fewer pairs of anticipating eyes glued to the screen—the top half of Ty’s body secured them the largest chunk of their enviable viewership. They were by far the best-performing show on their nature-and travel-based network, and survival had very little to do with it.
“The viewers are going to love that,” Kate said when he finished recording.
“Our viewers are kinky, then…present company included.” He smiled at her, dismantling the tripod.
Kate bit back a smile of her own. “I’m immune to your charms, thank you very much. And if the viewers had to spend as much time with you as I do, they’d feel the same way.”
Ty faked offense, raising his eyebrows. “Now don’t tell me this isn’t what you were expecting when you moved to L.A. I mean, tell me this isn’t Hollywood glitz and glamour at its best.” He waved an arm around, indicating the dreary landscape, the minimalist campsite and the two of them. He hadn’t bathed since they’d left Los Angeles three days earlier, the antithesis of glamour. Kate wasn’t looking much better.
“I never thought being a personal assistant would be glamorous.”
“Of course not.” He grinned at her, looking skeptical. “Your coffee table’s only covered in celebrity mags because you couldn’t find any coasters, I’m sure.”
Kate pushed the slushy snow around with her foot. “Being a PA—the kind I thought I’d be,” she corrected, “is pretty slummy. I assumed I’d be fetching twelve-dollar lattes, and wiping poodle crap off somebody’s stilettos. Holding some celebutante’s hair back while she puked discreetly in the alley behind the poshest club in Hollywood. That sort of thing.”
“Very classy,” Ty said. “But I know there’s more. Don’t think I can’t see you salivating when the swag turns up.”
True. They’d been making this show for three seasons now and Ty was beginning to qualify as a bona fide TV celebrity. Kate had nearly hyperventilated the first time a designer offered Ty a suit to wear to an awards ceremony. He’d ultimately blown the event off in favor of a Lakers game and she’d grudgingly returned the goods.
“This isn’t exactly what I’d pictured…more frostbite, fewer flashbulbs. And you aren’t exactly the boss I’d pictured, either,” she admitted, squinting at him as they walked back to the fire. “I’d imagined a starlet with a dietpill habit, not some nature-boy with an adrenaline addiction. And this isn’t the skill set I thought I’d be gaining.”
Ty dragged a frame pack over and extracted a length of rope from the front pocket, tossing it to Kate. “Bowline,” he ordered in his best drill sergeant’s voice.
Kate made a perfect bowline knot in seconds flat. One of a hundred talents she’d learned from Ty and from books since landing this crazy job.
“Double figure eight.”
She tied a beauty.
“I bet Reese Witherspoon’s PA can’t do that,” Ty said smugly.
“No, and I bet she can’t treat a snakebite or diagnose dengue fever.” Kate made a loose slipknot and tossed it around his neck. “Now that I think about it, Ty, this gig’s not really teaching me any of the skills I’ll need if I’m going to run a powerful Hollywood agency someday. I thought I’d be reading Variety in first class, not manuals about ice-cave exploration in the back of a Cessna.”
He shrugged. “Funny what choices the universe makes for you.”
“Yeah. My cosmic dart didn’t land quite where I’d expected,” Kate added, referring to Ty’s new preferred method of choosing their shoot locations—tossing a dart blindly at a world map until it hit an appropriately forbidding destination. He had a penchant for leaving decisions up to chance, an aversion to caution that bordered on superstition.
He slid a long hunting knife from the sheath on his belt and slapped the handle into Kate’s palm. He pointed to a spruce tree a few yards away and stepped back.
Kate took aim and threw. The knife whipped through the air and the blade found its target, thwacking into the trunk, dead center.
Ty groaned and clapped a hand over his heart as if he were fighting an arousal-induced heart attack. “Goddamn, woman.”
Kate smiled to herself, and hoped the cold breeze would banish the prideful flush warming her cheeks.
Ty slipped the rope from his head and put it away. “And to think, when I met you you’d never even had poison ivy before.”
“That’s not true.”
“Well, you had a manicure. You can’t deny that. What have I done to you?”
“Nothing I didn’t ask for,” Kate said, rising to the flirtation. True, this show was most definitely not the job she’d envisioned when she’d started looking for work as an assistant, fresh off the plane from the East Coast. She’d been desperate and had no experience, and Ty had simply been the first person who’d succumbed to her strong-arming and hired her. Unlikely or not, it had evolved into Kate’s dream job. The travel and new experiences comprised a part of that, but secretly, the real appeal was Ty himself. Kate looked him over again, eyeballing the man who’d easily become her best friend these past couple years. The closest friend she’d ever had…though she’d never told him as much. She took a seat on the log, stretching her achy legs out in front of her.
“You may not be grooming me for a gig as an agent,” Kate said, “but I’ll settle for executive producer.”
“You’re practically that already.” Ty jogged to the tree and retrieved his knife, slid it into its sheath as he trudged back. “I know you thought you’d be choosing my thousand-dollar wristwatches instead of pulling leeches off me, but no one can deny you’re still an ace at running my life.”
Kate smiled with indulgence. “And that’s exactly what I wanted.”
“Control freak.”
“Death wish,” she shot back. “And like it or not, you’ll be in GQ before you know it. The glamour will follow,” she murmured, dreamy, holding her hands out as if envisioning their future rendezvous with stylists and PR agencies.
“So you say.”
“Plus this gig is a fantastic workout.” She flexed her arm. Her figure had certainly benefited from two-plus years of this demanding lifestyle. “And my passport’s got an enviable collection of stamps.”
“Good to know there are some positive side effects to putting up with me,” he said. “And you’re always up to the challenge.”
“I survived three nights in Death Valley, Ty. I think I can handle the likes of you.”
Kate wrapped up their banter with an emphatic slap of her hands on her thighs and stood, refocusing on the task at hand. She grabbed a half-frozen protein bar out of her pack, gnawing on it while Ty stowed the tripod.
“How do we get your shirt off in this episode?” she asked, chewing.
“I’m thinking sweat, hypothermia danger, drying clothes by the fire?”
She frowned. “We do that in like, every single snow scenario.”
“Yeah, and it’s the most legit rationale.” He let slip a hint of rare irritation. “But I’m listening. What’s your brilliant idea this time?”
“You want to fall in an icy river?”
He finished tidying the campsite and stared at her, arms locked over his chest. “I don’t, but I’ll bet it’s top of your list.”
“Use your shirt to rig a makeshift fishing net?”
“Better.” He took a couple steps closer.
“Torn off by a cougar in a fight to the death?”
He stopped right in front of her. “You’re way too young to qualify as a cougar, Katie.”
“Cute,” she drawled disapprovingly, but The Shift had already happened. That’s how Kate described it to herself, this change as Ty went into his shameless playboy shtick. To him this flirtation was a game, a distraction she was certain he only orchestrated to get on her nerves. But its effects ran deeper than she’d ever let him know. Ten thousand women probably had school-girl crushes on Dom Tyler, and Kate didn’t need him knowing she was among them. Still, when he got that gleam in his eye and lowered his voice to that devious hush, he was more than just Kate’s friend and boss. He was the man who set her on fire off camera, no flint or tinder required.
“We need at least another couple hours of footage today,” she said, easing the zipper of his vest halfway down his front. “So get that look out of your eye.” She jerked the zipper back up to his stubbly chin and gave his cheek a couple of light slaps.
“Taskmaster.”
She sighed. “Somebody has to be.”
Still mired deep in The Shift, Ty ran his hands up and over Kate’s shoulders, his calloused thumbs pressing the pulse points of her jugular, as they always did at this moment. A moment that been taunting Kate continually for the past two years and then some. God, two years…
His smirking mouth inched closer as he stooped to eclipse the considerable difference in their heights. The weather-roughened skin of his lips grazed her temple, her cheek, her jaw. His lips neared hers until their noses touched, and then he smiled. This was the point when he always smiled.
“Oh,” he said, pantomime realization furrowing his brow and dampening the growl in his voice.
“What?” Kate prompted, her refrain weary.
He sighed with theatrical regret. “Forgot I just ate those raw eggs.”
“Yes, of course.” She rolled her eyes.
Ty withdrew, just as he’d done in exactly this same fashion a hundred times before. “Can’t risk giving you salmonella.”
“No, obviously not.” But Kate wouldn’t mind giving him blue balls. Was there a female equivalent? If so, she’d had a clinically dangerous case for a long time now.
The first time he’d done that, when they’d been filming the first season’s final episode, she’d fallen for it. That mouth, sliding down past her good ear, those fingers on her throat—hook, line and sinker. Close enough to feel his breath heating her cheek, and then, “Katie?”
And then her breathless, “Yes?”
And then, “I’ve just remembered. We haven’t checked our shoes for scorpions. One of the leading causes of avoidable tragedy in the desert.”
Infuriating. Who flirted like that? Week after week after week? A stunning Australian sociopath with a risk predilection, apparently.
Before the show had come about, Ty had been a fringe celebrity in Australia and in certain sporting circles. He’d gone to school in Sydney for filmmaking then spent several years as a quasi-professional free climber. He was a bit of an anomaly—or a moron, as some asserted—as he’d climbed in remote areas, without a partner or any safety precautions. He’d taped himself as he was climbing, much like the show, one camera capturing the scene, the other recording from his own vantage point as he dangled from cliff faces. Kate had tracked down a bunch of those videos back when she’d been looking into this job. Watching them, she’d known some of what she was getting herself into, dangerwise. Attractionwise she’d been woefully unprepared. Her less professional feelings for Ty had trickled in slowly, grown as their friendship did and as their joint project gained success. Those feelings had eventually snowballed into a full-blown infatuation, but potent or not they were nothing compared to Kate’s fear of rejection. She’d been left by enough people already…her father when she was tiny, her fiancé at twenty-five. Plus her mother, who’d technically always been around, but had never really ever been there. History had taught Kate that whenever she let herself grow attached to somebody, they ditched her, and she’d left that pattern behind her, along with the rest of her crappy former life on the outskirts of Boston.
Here in the present, Ty flashed her a merciless smile, his eyes lit up in the cold northern sunlight. “God, that was a close one.”
She rolled her eyes again—like hell it was. This exchange was like clockwork in its methodology. Water torture. Drop by drop, month after month. No small wonder Kate sometimes felt as if she were drowning.
“You are so unprofessional,” she sighed. Silly as it was, this little routine always left Kate feeling vulnerable. She tugged reflexively on her bad ear. It still ached sometimes, even twenty-plus years after she’d recovered from the infection that had taken most of her hearing on that side. She kept her eyes trained on the ground, hoping once again that her face wasn’t coloring. Her good mood waned. In its wake she shivered, remembering how tired and cold she was.
“I’m going to get some panoramas,” she grumbled, meaning the sweeping scenery shots they used to fill the air between action sequences. The film editors spliced them in and the music guy added appropriately grand-or diresounding accompaniment for whatever the location was. She suspected most of their female viewers simply tolerated these scenes, impatient for the next shot of Ty.
Kate walked a short distance and began recording. In the finished product they tried to give the illusion that Ty did all the work himself, but anyone with half a brain knew the unsteady camera that was frequently filming him had a person behind it. A disclaimer flashed on the screen just after the show’s opening sequence, designed to render this masquerade acceptable. Do not attempt these survival scenarios. Dom Tyler has a trained crew assisting him. This program is for entertainment only.
Boots crunched on the snow behind Kate to give away her partner’s approach. Even if they hadn’t, she could sense him. Ty had an energy that made everything near him vibrate at the same frequency. Kate liked that about him. It gave her a contact high, a taste of the chaos she worked so hard to keep at bay in her own body and brain.
She kept her eyes on the camera. “What is it, Ty?”
“What are you going to have for dinner tonight when we get back to town?” he asked from just behind her right shoulder.
She shook her head. “Masochist.” Ty never ate what he couldn’t hunt or scavenge from the wild when they were in the middle of making an episode.
“You going to have a beer?” he asked.
She didn’t reply.
“You going to have six beers and finally make a pass at me?”
“Doubtful, Ty. I’d need about a fifth of whiskey and a handsome bribe for that to happen.”
“My PA could arrange that.”
“Oh, could she?” Kate turned to fix him with her best impression of an unamused assistant.
Ty commenced to sing, shamelessly. It was a song off an old cassette by the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo. Though neither Kate nor Ty spoke Spanish beyond the tourist level, she suspected a native speaker would find his rendition damn near fluent—they’d listened to that tape a hell of a lot.
“Doesn’t it take you back, Kate?” Ty asked, interrupting his own vocals. “What was your favorite Torture Tape?”
“As the driver, or the passenger?”
“Driver,” Ty said.
One of Kate’s very first assignments as Ty’s PA was to find them a vehicle big enough to transport the filming and camping gear and safe enough to get them from Honduras to Alaska—since their initial budget hadn’t allowed for air travel—and cheap enough to make Kate’s eyes roll at the ridiculousness of the task. When they were on the road in that ancient death trap, whoever got stuck driving was allowed to torture the passenger by playing the most obnoxious secondhand cassette they could find, ad nauseum.
Kate pondered the question before lowering her eye to the viewfinder once more. “I thought the soundtrack to The Little Mermaid was one of my better efforts.”
“That was pretty rough…although I prefer it over Mariah Carey. At least the way you sing it.”
Kate made herself sound more exasperated than she was. “Can I help you with something, Ty?”
“Don’t you miss the van? I do.”
She sighed. “I don’t know what I miss the most…the Naugahyde ripping the skin off the backs of my thighs in the Mexican heat, the leak above the passenger seat. The way it broke down every five thousand miles so we had to sleep in the back.”
“Don’t forget the mysterious latex smell,” Ty added.
“It’ll still be there when we get back to L.A. For now I’m actually enjoying having a vehicle with a working radio for a change.”
“Well, not me.” Ty fell silent a few moments as Kate resumed filming, then she felt him toying with her short ponytail. “You fancy a snowball fight?” he asked. “I’ll give you first throw.”
“Please go back to work, Ty. Get me twenty more minutes of commentary. We need to pack up in an hour, anyhow. Do your MacGyver challenge.”
He gave her ponytail a final flick before he left her, tromping back toward the campsite, belting out Los Lobos. She shook her head. It was like herding toddlers some days, though to be fair, once the work was done, she was just as bad. All the time she’d spent traveling with Ty had brought out facets of her personality she hadn’t even known were there. He saw her at her stinkiest and bitchiest and least lovable, and he still stuck around, totally unfazed. It was the closest thing to unconditional love she’d ever known.
A few minutes later Kate clicked the camera off and headed back to camp to find Ty crouching a few paces from a tripod, addressing the mic. She checked to make sure her shadow wasn’t about to creep into his shot then tiptoed around him to get to her pack. He was good. When the camera was on, Ty could ignore her presence like she wasn’t even there.
“…and ptarmigans and some larger rodents, although as you’ve noticed, I haven’t been so lucky. Let’s pretend I was, though, for the sake of storytelling—let me show you another way to make a fire. We’ve got some decent sun right now, so I want to try something with that disposable camera the crew included in my little arsenal.” He abandoned the shot to gather a few things, returning to show their future audience how to smash up a cheap point-and-click to get the lens out and use it to ignite the cardboard housing.
Kate walked over as he wrapped the segment. “Very nice. See how fun it is to do your job?”
“Thanks for the disposable.”
“That was an easy one,” she said. “Your MacGyver rating was only about a three.”
“You ought to be challenging me a bit more, then. Time to head to town?”
Kate consulted her waterproof watch. “Yeah. Let’s get packed up.”
The snowmobile team would arrive in short order to bring them back to the one-traffic-light-town they’d based the expedition in. They’d drop their stuff off at the motor court and go in search of dinner, and in just a few short hours the other Ty would come knocking. The thought made Kate shiver inside her more-than-adequately-warm coat.
2
“AH, CIVILIZATION.” Ty slid onto a bar stool beside Kate, relieved for a bit of padding under his frozen, beaten body. He sat on her right as always. She’d never told him exactly what had happened to her left ear, but he didn’t pry. Getting questioned about her childhood snapped Kate up tighter than a bear trap…and besides, Ty didn’t particularly fancy returning the favor. Secrets didn’t bother him. What he had with Kate was better. They lived in the present and took each other at face value.
He studied her in the red-and-blue glow of the beer signs and settled into the warmth, as easily as he settled into his friend’s company. He loved that about Kate—the comfort. Ty hadn’t felt that with anyone else, not girlfriends or drinking buddies or old college mates, not even his family, at least not since he’d been very young. But with Kate…effortless. Set loose in the current of their no-frills rapport, Ty was able to let go and simply drift.
She ordered a pint and a cheeseburger and Ty waved politely but dismissively at the bartender. He watched Kate grab some napkins, already preparing for her feast. Then Ty nudged her shoulder with his. “God, you’re mean.”
She turned to him, resting her elbow on the shiny wooden bar and her chin in her hand. “It’s your rule, Ty. No one told you you’re not allowed to eat.”
He shifted on his stool, trying to twist some of the achiness from his muscles. Saskatchewan was cold and damp and its early darkness made him miss Australia with a rare but tangible pang. Or maybe that was just his empty stomach. He looked at Kate. “Well, you’d think you might want to join me, you know, out of solidarity. Just once.”
“Don’t hold your breath, boss.”
“You know my idea for when we run out of places to film in the wild?” he asked, spinning a coaster around on the bar.
Her eyebrow rose. “That thing where you pose as a homeless person and survive for a week on the streets of Detroit?”
He shrugged. “Or Delhi, or Lagos. What d’you reckon? It’s sounding pretty good right now. At least I could go to a soup kitchen.” He picked up the coaster and balanced it on Kate’s head.
She gave a contemptuous snort. “Nobody’s going to fall for you as a homeless person.” She took the coaster off her head and poked his upper arm with it. “Not with triceps like those. And you can’t do an American accent to save your life. You sound like a South African Rocky Balboa.”
“I could get a voice coach.”
She shook her head. “No way.”
“What about my other idea, then? ‘Dom Tyler: Undercover in San Quentin. Survive This, Law-Abider!’ Prison food’s sounding pretty good right about now. Showers.”
“And shivs and gang wars and dropped soap? Forget it.”
The barman delivered Kate’s beer. She drew it close, sucking the foam off the top before picking up the glass, gazing over the rim at Ty with indulgent cruelty. Maybe it was his own maddening hunger, but every time she did that Ty couldn’t help but imagine it was the sort of look she’d give a man right after she tossed the handcuff keys all the way across the room.
She groaned with obscene satisfaction. “Damn, that’s good.”
“I’ll bet.” Ty offered her a smile that said he wasn’t finding her the least bit cute. And that was sort of true. She wasn’t cute. She was dead sexy.
Ty squinted at her as her French fries arrived. People called Kate cute all the time. She was petite, with the clearest, most luminous skin Ty had ever seen, like a face wash model. And shoulder-length dark brown hair, straighter and shinier than even a shampoo ad would dare to promise. Sure, she looked cute. Much the way a rabid kitten might seem adorable, right up until you made the mistake of petting it.
“What are you staring at, Ty? Do I have ketchup on my face?” She wiped a thumb over the corners of her mouth.
Cute… Ty knew better. He saw Kate when no one else was around, at all hours of the day and night, at her best and her worst. In dresses and heels at cocktail parties and in his own boxers and undershirt while her filthy clothes were drying by a bonfire in some godforsaken stretch of remote wilderness. Sexy. Sexy when she chased him down to exact her revenge for a well-aimed snowball to the face, sexy when she greeted him half-asleep, grudging smile framed behind the chain-lock of her motel room door at 3 a.m.
Kate’s burger arrived and she luxuriated in it, a cat in a sunbeam.
“I hate you,” Ty murmured, mouth watering for more than just the burger.
“Oh man, this is amazing. So juicy.”
“I hope you get food poisoning.”
“I suppose I’m overdue,” she said through a bite.
That was true enough. The number of times she’d smoothed Ty’s hair off his forehead and rubbed his back while he suffered through the consequences of an ill-advised meal out in the woods… She’d said she was prepared to do anything as a PA, no matter how unglitzy, but she couldn’t have meant all this. One day she was going to reach her limit, and though it’d kill Ty to lose her, at least he’d finally be able to make good on those threats his body issued whenever he came within two breaths of kissing her. Such as now, for instance.
“Do you want my pickle?” she asked with sickly sweet innocence. “I could toss it out into the snow. That wouldn’t be cheating. You’d still technically be foraging.”
“I’m going to break into your room when you’re showering and flush the toilet on you.”
She grinned, eyes narrowing. “Maybe I should order dessert,” she whispered, and took another bite.
“Evil.” Evil for more than this food flaunting—for flirting back when Ty knew she’d never go there with him as long as they were professional partners. Kate put her job above everything, surely far above any attraction she might feel for him. If they ever got their moment, it’d have to come after the show was canceled. On especially long nights, when he and Kate were the only humans for miles around and he lay awake listening to her steady breathing in a dark tent or the back of the van, Ty prayed for bad ratings.
“What would you have right now, if you could, Ty?” Kate’s eyes darted to the chalkboard menu behind the bar. “Steak?” she guessed, perusing the fare. “Fried chicken and mashed potatoes?”
He offered his best Sean-Connery-as-Bond accent. “Don’t toy with me, Moneypenny.”
“Something not on the menu?” Kate asked with raised eyebrows, a distinct challenge. Get a drink or two in this girl and she turned into a flirting machine.
Ty rose to the dare she was posing, licking his lips. “Such as…?”
She leaned in closer, fixing her eyes on his. “I know exactly what you want,” she said. She was only teasing, but Ty’s body responded nonetheless.
“What do I want, Katie?”
“Ooh, I’m thinking…crab,” she concluded. “Legs. With lots of melted butter and new potatoes.” She did know what he liked. She knew him better than she probably even realized, and that’s what made Ty’s attraction tougher and tougher to write off the longer they worked together. She gave a last wiggle of her eyebrows before she sat up straight again.
“I could fire you, you know.”
“Yeah right, Ty. You’d be lost without me.” She turned to watch the television mounted in the corner. A newscaster was droning about a late-season storm warning, but Ty thought Kate ought to be more concerned with the imminent threat her flirtation was causing. He watched her expression change as she turned to him again.
“You know, you and I are like everything except lovers,” she said.
The statement threw Ty for a momentary loop. Hope and lust jockeyed for his attention, warming him like whiskey, from the inside. “Yeah. Why? You looking to change that?”
She smirked at his tone, shook her head and took another sip of beer. “Nope.”
Ty’s body cooled with disappointment. “Why not?”
“Well, mainly because it’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”
Ty rolled his eyes. “Brilliant. Thanks for even bringing it up, then.”
“But I was just thinking how it’s interesting, about you and me.” She wagged a French fry between them. “I mean, we’ve managed to make all this work for three whole seasons now, under the most stressful conditions possible. But we’re both still totally useless with relationships.”
“Oh, cheers. And wait—so, indulge my fragile male ego a moment, but why’s it such a rubbish idea, exactly?”
“Because if, no, when we screwed it all up, we’d both have nothing,” she said. “And I spent a lo-o-ong time having nothing, and it sucks. I don’t plan on going back to it. And definitely not over sex.”
“We’ve survived tropical storms and quicksand and network mergers together,” Ty said. “You don’t think we could survive maybe drinking a bit too much and waking up next to each other?”
“Not a chance I’m willing to take, Ty. Plus I wake up next to you all the time and trust me, it’s grossly overrated.”
He put a hand to his chest, faking a blow to his heart. “You are stone-cold, Katie.”
She shrugged, eyes drifting to the TV above the bar. “It’s Saskatchewan.”
Ty leaned into the bar, mirroring her body. He made sure he kept the flirtation over-the-top, joking, always their way. “What if it was really good sex?”
Kate smirked and shook her head again.
“You don’t know what we might be missing out on.”
“I’ll live. And anyhow, I’d get strung up by tall women everywhere for poaching in their rightful territory.”
Ty switched tracks. “What if we weren’t all those other things? What if the show got canceled tomorrow?”
He saw thoughts forming, gears ticking behind Kate’s unfocused eyes as she chose what bones to throw him, picked whether to tease him or pull him up short. In the end she did both. “I dunno, Ty. And I don’t intend to find out… But if that day does ever come, and we can still stand the sight of each other, you have permission to make a pass at me—a real one. But not a moment before.”
She sat up straight and aimed her attention back at her food. Ten minutes later she slid her half-full second glass of beer back across the counter. Ty watched the barman take it away as if it were his firstborn being wrenched from his arms. Damn, he’d kill for a beer right about now. He let that craving replace the one that had taken up residence between his thighs.
“Bedtime,” Kate said with a satisfied yawn—a postcoital yawn if ever he’d heard one.
They walked side by side back to the motor court, hugging their bodies against the bone-deep cold. They mounted the outside steps to the second level of rooms and bid one another good-night under the yellow glow of the parking lot’s lights. Ty watched Kate’s softly swishing hips carry her a few paces to her door, watched her find her key and disappear into her room with a final smile over her shoulder.
He’d be good tonight. He was tired. He could make it—what, six hours? Ty searched his pockets for his own key and heard Kate’s dead bolt click. He knew already he’d hear it again before long, sliding back open to let him in. Who was he trying to kid, anyhow?
WHEN THE INEVITABLE KNOCK came at her door, Kate rolled over to groggily scan the digital screen of her trusty travel alarm clock. Three twenty-eight…dear God in Heaven. Already knowing what this would be about, she resigned herself to leaving the warm cocoon of the sheets and shuffled to the door.
She squinted into the jaundiced light. “Morning, Ty.”
A frigid breeze seeped in behind him. “Invite me in?”
“Yup. Knock yourself out.”
Kate had long ago learned that having a handsome, strapping man with an exotic accent turn up on her doorstep in the dead of night didn’t necessary mean what one might hope. She’d also learned to sleep with a bra on if Ty was staying in the same motel as her. It just saved a lot of time and modesty not having to scramble for one night after night.
As her guest strolled past in track pants and a bawdy T-shirt he’d purchased with her in Tijuana, Kate flipped the television on. She checked their channel’s Canadian sister just in case their show was on in reruns, but it was mired in infomercials. She heard Ty’s flip-flops land on the carpet and the rustling of the sheets as he made a space for himself on her bed. Those sounds shouldn’t still give her a charge after all this time, but they always did. And actually, why shouldn’t they? Everything she’d said in the bar still stood—she wouldn’t ever complicate what they had by throwing sex into the mix. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t think about it.
She sat on the edge of the bed, setting the remote by Ty’s elbow. He stretched out on his stomach, facing the screen, and Kate ran her hands through his messy hair, trying to establish some kind of order. This was allowed, another extension of their nearly all-encompassing whatevership, but God knew why. Unspoken understanding allowed them to do a lot of things that they both knew they’d better knock off if one of them started seeing someone else. Not inherently incriminating things, but ones no significant other could ever reasonably be expected to put up with.
She sighed. “You couldn’t wait another hour, Ty?”
“Can’t sleep over there. There’s a rattle in the heating vent or something.”
“Sure there is.”
He always had an excuse for turning up. Ty was a terrible sleeper, practically an insomniac, but Kate didn’t fully understand her own role in these predictable intrusions. Experience had taught her that Ty was useless at any activity that required him to remain still for longer than thirty seconds, but why keeping her awake seemed to cure his sleeping disorder remained an inconvenient mystery.
He groaned happily, settling in. That sound… It brought back memories Kate could have done without. It had been two years now since she’d accidentally walked in on him having sex with his then-girlfriend, but the pImages** of it were clear as day. Blissfully, Ty was still none the wiser.
Back in L.A., Ty lived in an apartment Kate had found for him after the first season wrapped, one far more to her taste than his. She suspected he’d be happy in some craphole studio by the freeway, but she’d snagged him what she felt an up-and-coming TV personality should have. He’d hated the wall-to-wall carpeting on sight, but to this day Kate said a little thank-you prayer whenever she laid eyes on it.
She’d had keys to his place and had gotten in the habit of coming by unannounced to go over rough cuts of the show or to drop off papers for him. She’d since gotten out of this habit.
When she came by that traumatic evening she’d let herself in as usual and followed the sounds of the television to Ty’s living room, just as she’d done a dozen times before. The hall light had been off and the maligned carpeting hadn’t given away her footsteps, so by the time she reached the threshold she’d given the two preoccupied bodies on the couch no reason to halt their happy activities. For a half a minute Kate had stood there, frozen.
From across the room she’d watched the long expanse of Ty’s bare back, elegant muscles writhing, his sculpted ass and hips pumping hard, flanked on either side by two svelte, female legs. Kate had smelled it, too, that raw, hot, sex smell. She’d heard Ty over the murmur of the TV, his animal moans and grunts blending with the woman’s. Kate had slunk back out of the apartment unnoticed. Her blood ran hot at the memory, the sight of another woman’s hands on Ty’s bare body.
He spoke, snapping Kate from her trance. “What are you thinking about?”
She blinked, felt a blush warm her face and thanked God it was dark. “Do you remember Angie?”
“Of course. I dated her for almost a month. That’s like a record.”
“I was thinking about her,” Kate said, casual. Thinking about her freakishly long legs wrapped around your waist. “I don’t get why you two broke up. She was like the female equivalent of you.”
“That should be your reason, right there.”
“She seemed nice enough,” Kate offered, feeling him out.
“She was lovely,” he confirmed. “I think she’s a hosiery model now. Bit of a waste…she was a smart one, dating choices aside.”
Kate had been out to dinner with the pair of them a few times and was always left feeling like Ty’s kid sister. If a tigress like Angie couldn’t keep Ty occupied then a comparable mouse like Kate was dead in the water. Not that she was looking to, of course. Definitely not.
“But Angie was odd, too,” Ty offered, making Kate’s dangerous train of thought jump its tracks. “She had that daft little yappy dog. And she paid to have her eyelashes dyed. What is it with L.A. women?” He yawned and settled them on a channel rebroadcasting a trashy talk show. Folding his arms under his chin, Ty got comfortable, setting the remote by Kate’s leg.
“You’ve only got about forty minutes before we need to be up and presentable,” she reminded him.
“I’ll take it.”
Kate offered another sigh, long and melodramatic. “You’re so weird.”
Ty could usually manage about three or four hours on his own during these trips before he crawled into Kate’s bed, demanding distraction or soothing. He transformed into a different man at night. Restless and moody and needy, so different from his on-camera self, that picture of confidence and charisma. Kate read in his body what he needed from her. She circled her palm between his shoulder blades.
“Mmm…”
“Yeah, yeah.” She pretended to be watching the TV, but as always, her mind wandered to Ty. She’d been without sex for a while—months now—and ignoring the firm contours of this happily moaning man’s warm back was an impossibility. Especially when she’d already seen what they could do.
“That feels so bloody good,” he groaned.
Kate heard in his voice that he was already poised to drop off to sleep. Beneath her palm, his muscles released the tension they’d arrived with. Kate siphoned away his restlessness and let herself get lost in idle thoughts.
This body was a ratings booster, no doubt about it, and Kate knew it intimately, almost every inch. Knowing it came with her job description as Woman Friday—someone to check skin for ticks, thorns, signs of illness, to disinfect cuts. Someone to pop dislocated joints back into place. Tend to fevers. To provide company in places so remote it drove a person mad just trying to comprehend it.
Her hand continued to circle its familiar, if borrowed, territory.
“Ty? Are you awake?”
He snored softly, as if in response.
“I don’t know why we bother getting separate rooms,” Kate said, knowing he wasn’t listening. “It’s a waste of money. We should just book a double. Or get adjoining rooms. Then at least you wouldn’t have to wake me up every damn night. You could just waltz on in and commandeer my bed like you always do.”
Kate had a fantasy about these motel incidents, about Ty slipping in while she was asleep and rousing her as he slid under the covers beside her. She imagined his long body pressing into the length of hers, his mouth finding hers in the dark, as familiar and easy as their rapport. Her palms would race down his shoulders and back, over his hips, his ass, taking in all the shapes of him. She imagined slipping her hands inside his underwear, just as he rolled on top of her, his intention and his need unmistakable. Kate lived for feeling needed, and the idea set her body on fire. She imagined his sounds, as well, the same as the ones he made when he took his boots off at the end of a long stretch of hiking or ate a restaurant meal after three days with barely anything in his stomach. That’s how he’d sound when she wrapped her fingers around him, or her lips, or as he slid into her. Beautiful.
The motions of her hand on Ty’s back and her wayward thoughts hypnotized Kate, and she almost screamed with shock when the bedside alarm clock began to buzz. She fumbled before managing to switch off the screeching device, then prodded Ty back to lucidity. Oddly enough, once he’d fallen asleep in her bed, even that industrial-strength siren couldn’t reliably rouse him.
He groaned. “That was not forty minutes.”
“No, that was forty-three minutes. Come on.” She poked his butt with her finger. “Time to get up.” She abandoned him to head to the shower.
TY TURNED OVER AFTER the bathroom door clicked shut. He stared up at the texture of the cheap ceiling plaster, illuminated in rainbow fits and starts by the droning television. Kate’s water turned on and he heard her almighty yawn. There was a cold patch of skin on his back where her hand had been.
He thought back to the stupid conversation they’d had in the bar, about what they were to each other, everything but lovers. What he felt for Kate went far beyond familiarity and trust and partnership, beyond sexual attraction, too. It was wrapped up in how he felt around her. Calm, but alive. After growing up in the suffocating vacuum left in the wake of his sister’s death, Ty had emerged into adulthood starved for human energy. He’d found it in dozens of half-assed relationships with animated but hollow women—women who appeared dynamic but were really just terrified of being alone. But Kate…her energy ran deep. She was driven. She practically vibrated with passion, but it was contained. Focused. Sometimes Ty wanted to wrap himself around her and feel contained, too, for a change.
Of course he wanted other things, as well. So many nights spent lying beside her during these early-morning bed hijackings, wishing he could turn over. Roll onto his back and feel her hands, curious and fearless and demanding, touching him. He twitched from the thought of it. Kate might technically be his employee, but she was also the ringmaster in their two-man circus. She was the one in control, dishing out directives, and he wanted that little shot-caller in bed. He craved the hands of that capable, judgmental taskmaster on his body—assessing him and demanding his obedience.
Sighing at his own ridiculous lack of professionalism, Ty sat up and clicked the TV off. He went to the bathroom door and knocked.
Kate’s shout came through the hiss of the water and the shoddy pressed wood of the door. “What?”
“What color is the shower curtain, Katie?”
A theatrical groan. “It’s opaque, Ty.”
He pushed the door in, and was smacked in the face by the steam rolling out from behind the partition. It was a wonder Kate didn’t boil herself alive, she took such insanely hot showers. But she’d done her time in glacial rivers, and gone days without so much as a wet hand towel to wipe her face. She’d earned these indulgences.
“Are you excited?” she asked over the din, and Ty heard a shampoo bottle snap open or closed.
He closed the toilet lid and sat. “Yeah. You?”
“Of course. I’ve never been dogsledding before.”
“They sounded skeptical.”
“Yeah, well, they should be,” she said. “They wanted us to train for a week, so the dogs would get to know us. We’re giving them four hours.”
“We’ve done madder things.”
“You don’t have to tell me. I am a little nervous, though.” Her steam-flushed face appeared at the edge of the curtain, hair dripping water over her cheek and onto the bath mat. “Those dogs are brutal. I watched some videos online—it’s like kicking apart drunks in a bar fight, keeping them in line. Drunks with fangs.”
“I’m up for it.” Few things intimidated Ty…. Decisions petrified him, but with Kate around, happily calling the shots for the show, he was mercifully stripped of that duty. He was in charge of taking the actual risks, the ideal job description for a man who lived to tempt fate. Anything for a thrill. Anything to keep him safely distracted from the static buzzing in his restless skull.
Kate’s head disappeared behind the curtain. “Bet you’re ready for today to be over with, old-timer. Ready for some time off?”
Ty laughed. “Only in this business does thirty-one count as old age.” Still, thirty-one…when had that happened? Ty’s life and career had progressed through a series of flukes—the reckless acceptance of others’ dares, the pursuit of goals selected by the flip of a coin or the toss of a dart. On-screen, Ty was the picture of focused self-assurance, but demand something as simple as a choice of restaurants from him and he froze. He’d gotten good at hiding it, always deferring to his date’s choice of destination, ordering whatever special the waitstaff suggested. Ty was a pro at passing off paralyzing indecision as easygoing chivalry.
Kate’s voice cut through his thoughts. “Okay, get out.”
Ty closed the door behind him, the dry air of the main room feeling arctic after the sauna of Kate’s shower. The water shut off and he listened as she pushed the clacking curtain rings to one side. He was good. He didn’t try and picture the scene. Not this time, anyhow.
She emerged five minutes later smelling like her usual postshower self. Lotion, he guessed. Nothing flowery, just clean. Like laundry. Ty wanted to toss her across the bed’s rumpled sheets and get himself slapped.
“What are you sighing about?” She toweled her wet hair and looked at him with those stormy blue eyes.
“Nothing.”
“All right then, get your dog-kicking boots on, Grizzly Adams. Let’s go make a masterpiece.”
3
“THERE! THAT’S IT!”
Ty looked to where Kate was pointing, spotting the sign for Grenier’s Sled Supply and Excursions up ahead on the winding, pine-lined road. He turned them into the drive, their rented truck bucking in the deep, slush-filled potholes. Unseen dogs barked hysterically.
Kate the Guerilla PA was out the door before Ty even brought them to a complete stop. She strode toward the gruff lumberjack of a man who’d emerged from the converted farmhouse. The two met halfway in a long handshake, and Ty watched Kate launch into her spiel, whipping out waiver forms and other legal inevitabilities from her laptop bag. There were papers to be signed regarding their safety, the equipment’s safety, the price of the rentals versus the negotiated cost of flashing the business’s sign and giving them a name drop in the show. Thank goodness for Kate. That sort of stuff bored Ty to tears.
He gathered the two packs and the camera gear from the back of the truck and joined the conversation, glancing between them. “All right?”
Kate did the introductions. “Ty, this is Jim Grenier. Jim, this is Dom Tyler.”
“Of course. Me and my wife love your show, Mr. Tyler.” Jim Grenier seemed to be telling the truth, or a decent facsimile of it.
“Cheers. And ‘Ty’ is fine, by the way.” He accepted the older man’s hand and shook it with a manly curtness. This was what men wanted from Ty—what his on-screen persona promised. No nonsense, a man’s man. Ty always delivered it, too, knowing men were by far his harshest critics…particularly specimens like this one, real frontiersmen, rare in this day and age. Ty scanned Grenier, his rugged clothes and boots, weather-beaten face and full beard. Ty’s duty was to acquiesce, to demonstrate his enthusiasm and gratitude for the knowledge on offer, but never to come off as a softie. Plenty of these guys were dying for a chance to knock a hotshot television survival host down a few pegs. Ty thought this fellow seemed okay, though. Skeptical, but amused. It beat open contempt, at any rate. Plus Ty felt he should get a pass on this one—what did an Aussie know about dogsledding?
“Let’s go meet the team,” Jim said, and he led them back to a paddock filled with barking dogs. All huskies, some white Siberian, some gray and more wolfish-looking, some tethered and others roaming free. All of them sized Ty and Kate up with ethereal blue or pale brown eyes.
The next few hours were spent getting a crash course in the sport. They’d both done their homework but it was a tough skill to pick up and run with—the dogs snarled and snapped, prone to infighting and distraction. After a few hours, though, Ty and Kate were confident. Kate excelled at shouting and rushing the dogs when they began to jump on one another. She played a very convincing alpha female, even though a few of these dogs weighed a good seventy-plus pounds, most of it muscle. Kate was slender, healthy and fit but not jacked, yet when her mind was set on something she turned as ferocious and unrelenting as a junkyard dog herself.
“You’re a little too good at that,” Ty said as she reasserted order following a scuffle.
“You forget I had six older brothers.”
Ty smirked at her. “And just how many of your brothers are dead again, Kate?”
Her lips pursed into an irritated frown. “None,” she admitted.
“And yet you still talk about your family in the past tense.”
“Yeah, well being out here with you makes Dorchester, Massachusetts, feel like a lifetime ago, Ty.”
He wanted to pry, but held his tongue. Kate only ever spoke about her past in vague or elusive terms. She didn’t act as if she was hiding anything, just turned weary and contemptuous when the topic came up, as though she were being asked to recite the multiplication table or some other mundane bit of information. But because he knew she was stuck with him, both physically and professionally, Ty didn’t mind salting the wound. If she didn’t deck him first, one day she’d slip and finally give him some insight into why she was the way she was. He might even return the favor.
By midmorning they had the gear loaded onto the sled and Ty mounted one camera at the front for some good action shots. Overcast sky and freezing temperatures aside, the grueling work had found them ditching their jackets before long and Ty was down to his undershirt. They were invited inside, and Ty sat in the Greniers’ kitchen and watched Kate eat a woodsman’s breakfast with Jim. She shoveled waffles into her mouth with one hand and waved a Dictaphone back and forth, asking syrup-muffled questions and recording Jim’s answers between bites of sausage. It was all potential voice-over filler for the episode. As usual, Ty wasn’t eating. The rumbling in his stomach alone told him this was day three. The goose from day one was a distant memory and he didn’t bother counting the eggs. He eyed Kate’s coffee with longing.
“I think that’ll do it,” she said with a gracious smile at their host, clicking the recorder off. “We’ll see you tonight around eight. Ty, I’m just going to go check the truck.” She nodded to them both before heading outside.
Ty stood and gave the older man’s hand a final shake. “Thanks for all your help, Jim. I hope we’ll do you proud out there.”
“Well, best of luck. Your wife seems extremely capable. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
Ty laughed. “We’re not a couple,” he said, enjoying the look of surprise on Jim’s face. “You’ve seen my show. You really think I can keep up with that?” He thrust a thumb in the direction of Kate’s departure.
“Well, she’s certainly…energetic.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Ty said, careful to keep his tone free of innuendo. He tendered his thanks one last time and stepped back into the cold, damp air. Wife, he thought with a grin. People made that mistake a lot, despite the fact that neither of them wore a ring. But it was no wonder that they must seem that way. In Ty’s opinion, making this show was just a years-long honeymoon, one lacking substantially in the consummation department. Other than that frustrating exception, if this was a marriage, he couldn’t find a reason to complain. If anything, his bachelor eyes strayed only when he mustered a concerted effort.
He made his way around the house to where one of Jim Grenier’s staff was hitching the eight-dog team to their waiting sled. He pointed Ty and Kate off in the direction of the trail they’d be following. It formed a fifty-mile loop through the woods, and the team had made the journey hundreds of times. Even if Ty got them lost, the dogs would bring them home as though on autopilot.
Kate pulled a furry Inuit cap over her head and fixed Ty with an adventure-hungry eye that sparkled even under cloud cover. “Ready?”
“Always.”
She climbed aboard behind him and bracketed her arms around his sides, grabbing hold of the bar at the front of the sled. “God, I hope I don’t puke on you, Ty. I can’t believe how many waffles I ate.”
Ty smiled and shook his head. “You unholy bitch.” He gave the shout to the dogs and they were off.
THE FIRST HALF HOUR of the trip flashed by in a snowy blur, fun and exhilarating. The following hour was bearable, though Kate was growing cold, fast. She flexed her fingers inside her gloves, willing her blood to move.
Ty turned his head to catch her eye. “You hanging in there?”
“Bit chilly.”
“Never let yourself sweat in a cold climate,” he lectured in an annoying, matronly tone. It was a lesson he’d imparted on the show at least a dozen times now. Of course it was exactly what Kate had done during the sled prep, leaving herself clammy and shivering now. Her wool sweater wasn’t cutting it. Ty had managed to fumble into his jacket a little earlier, but hers was stashed way up front, pinned somewhere between their frame packs.
She squeezed herself close so Ty’s body would block the wind. Plus she always liked his smell on day three. Must have been a positive pheromone match, since musky, unshaven, disheveled men were not Kate’s usual taste. Ty wasn’t to her typical taste in many respects, but damn if he didn’t feel plain old good right now—big and sturdy and strong. Crazy-strong. Kate remembered with a shudder all the nerve-racking climbing videos she’d tracked down when she was first courting Ty for the job. No ropes, no axe, no harness—just climbing shoes, insanely strong fingers and arms, and a complete lack of common sense. She squeezed him tighter, thinking about it.
“All right back there?” he asked.
“Yup. Just trying to hang on.”
He bellowed a mushing order to the dogs and the sled charged ever faster through the woods.
Ty’s daredevil tendencies hadn’t changed a jot since he’d landed the show, and neither had his reputation. People with too much time on their hands argued incessantly on message boards about whether he was the real deal or not, but Kate knew the truth. Ty would do anything as long as it was technically survivable. It went beyond adrenaline to something Kate couldn’t understand, some cosmic game of chicken he lived and breathed. Ty drove safely, but he never wore a seat belt. He walked alarmingly close to construction sites, as though daring a stray wrench to fall and clock him on the head. He frequented the shadiest bars in L.A. and rushed in to break up other men’s fights. Kate bet he picked the most dented cans at the supermarket, just to see if he’d come down with botulism. The world’s oddest, dullest game of Russian roulette.
The only time Ty ever showed hesitation was when there were kids around. Take him to the beach for a so-called relaxing afternoon and he turned into a sheep dog, alert and aware of everything going on around him, as if the theme from Jaws was playing on his own private frequency. Kate, on the other hand, was made to adhere to every precaution available during filming and travel.
Ty craned his head around as Kate rested hers between his shoulders. “Are you falling asleep on me?”
“No, just hiding in your slipstream.”
“We can pull over if you need a break. You need to pee? You drank enough blooming coffee back there.”
“Nah. The ice fishing site can’t be more than another hour. I can hold it. Beats stopping these guys and risking another fight. I can’t wait till we can ditch them at the lake. Although all this footage will be badass.”
“Delicious, hot, fresh-brewed coffee,” Ty murmured, ignoring her shoptalk.
“I know, Hercules. Just a few more hours. What’s on your menu?” Kate asked, referring to his dinner once filming wrapped and he could break his fast.
“Depends on if I get my fish, I suppose. But I suspect there will be potatoes involved. And dessert,” he added. “And beer.”
“I’m just going to have a salad,” Kate replied, cruel as always. “I’ve been eating far too much on this trip.”
“Ooh, she thinks she’s so clever.”
Kate glanced at the strip of gray between the trees lining the trail. “The sky’s getting dark, isn’t it?”
“I suppose…. ’S’all right, though,” Ty said. “It’s always good to add a little extra misery to the show.”
“The viewers do love watching you suffer,” she agreed. They frequently got letters and emails complaining when certain episodes didn’t strike the audience as miserable enough to be believable. They seemed to like watching strikingly good-looking people like Ty struggle.
“Not just the viewers, Kate. I see you behind that tripod, smiling under your stupid golf umbrella with your flasks of hot-bloody-chocolate.”
“It’s tea today,” she corrected in a languid voice. “You want a sip?” She grabbed the thermos from a compartment near her feet and waved it in his periphery.
He laughed. “God, piss off.”
Kate wrapped her arms around his waist so she could unscrew the cap without falling off the sled, and managed to take a long drink. “Oh man, that’s good. Who knew you could find decent chai in Saskatch—”
A shocking crack split the air in tandem with an almighty lurch. Kate lost track of reality as gravity flipped and she was suddenly suspended in the air. She heard a harsh grunt, the sound of Ty’s wind being knocked out, and she felt herself gasp as she collided with the trunk of a tree. Then, blackness.
BLOODY HELL.
Lying immobile in the snow, Ty watched the overturned sled being dragged away at full tilt by the dog team until they disappeared around the next bend. Half the supplies he and Kate had put on board had come loose and were strewn across the trail for several yards. It took him nearly an entire minute to catch his breath and get control of his limbs, but he was relieved to find that nothing felt broken. He fumbled to his feet in the four-inch-deep slush and looked around.
“Katie?” He hiked back a little ways along the trail, shouting her name. Apprehension mounted when she didn’t shout back. There was a fallen limb in the middle of the path, and Ty felt sure that it had been buried in the snow before the sled had struck it and driven it up into the air, throwing them off. Thank God it hadn’t impaled either of them. Still, where was Kate?
He didn’t spot her until he doubled back. His blood ran cold when he caught sight of her gray sweater and jeans at the woods’ edge. She lay crumpled beneath a tree, motionless. Ty was used to chemical rushes—he was practically addicted to them—but the panic surging through his body stopped him dead in his tracks. Fear wrung the air from his lungs but Ty commanded his muscles to work, broke through the paralysis and into a sprint.
“Kate!” He slid to a sloppy halt beside her still body. Ty could taste copper in his own mouth when he spotted the trickle of scarlet running across her pale skin from her mouth to disappear into her hair. He was transported in a single breath, ripped back in time twenty-five years and nine thousand miles to a warm summer day, a beach outside Sydney. He saw his little sister’s hollow expression, her vacant eyes as blue as the ocean. He felt his own life fracture and scatter all over again as he stared at Kate’s white face.
“Kate. Katie.” He yanked his gloves off and tossed them aside. Taking hold of her jaw, he searched for signs of life. He just about died of relief when he felt a pulse beating in her neck, strong and steady.
“Katie.” He smoothed her hair off her face and wiped the blood from her skin as best he could. He lost himself for a moment to overwhelming emotions—relief and fear and gut-wrenching guilt, a lifetime of stale grief made fresh. He lowered his face to her shoulder and concentrated on her breathing. Each exhalation calmed him, rooted him back in the present. Kate was alive, but she wasn’t necessarily safe. Not out here, not if she was hurt.
Just as Ty began conceiving a plan for how best to get her to the safety team, her eyes opened.
“Oh thank Christ!” he boomed into the sky.
“Ty…” She sounded groggy, but she was okay. She was okay.
“Bloody hell, Katie, you scared me.”
“Where are we?”
He looked around, needing a second to recall there was a world beyond the face of the woman he’d just nearly lost. “The dogsled trail.”
“Right… And the dogs?”
“A long ways away now.” He stroked her hair, still frantic. “How do you feel? Is anything broken?”
She frowned. “I’m not sure. Let me try and stand up.”
“Careful.” Ty thought he might pass out himself, she’d given him such a fright.
“Ow,” she said, making it to kneeling.
“What?”
“Just bumps, I think. Nothing major… Oh God!” She stood up in a flash.
Ty whipped his head around, scanning for bears and avalanches. “What?”
“The equipment—the cameras! Do we have any cameras?” She looked overwrought. Unbelievable.
“Jesus, I don’t know. The sled dumped about half our stuff. Worry about it in a minute—let’s make sure you’re okay.”
“I am. I feel fine.” She touched her lips and studied the blood on her fingers, made an irritated face and wiped it on her jeans.
Ty saw her arms shaking faintly beneath her sweater and he slipped his jacket off. “Here.”
She took it, still distracted. “Thanks. What a mess.” Her calculating eyes scanned the area, telling him she was already back in work mode.
“Are you sure you’re okay? Do you feel any bumps? You could be concussed.”
“I’m fine. Let’s just get ourselves assembled.” She trudged toward their jettisoned supplies.
Ty, however, didn’t want to regroup just yet. Sense had been knocked into him by the incident. It had whiplashed his brain, sending the fear that had been niggling at the back of his mind for a very long time crashing to the forefront, demanding his attention. This ridiculous project—this stupid TV show—had nearly killed his best friend.
Beneath the subsiding shock, primitive synapses burst to life in his chest. Possessive ones. Their energy jumbled with the fear and guilt, making Ty’s blood run fast and hot—faster and hotter than even he was comfortable with. He watched Kate’s body working, already recovered from its trauma, and an instinct rose inside him, sharp and insistent. It burned through the angst and replaced it with other urges—urges not just to protect and shield this woman, but to possess her, to take her. To tear away that lone wall that kept them from being everything to one another.
A SHORT DISTANCE AWAY, Kate took a deep breath and made an inventory of the items she could see. She pulled Ty’s proffered jacket on, glad for the warmth and for a reassuring layer of protection. She needed to turn her attention back to the show, because in truth, the accident had scared her witless. She’d grown plenty used to adrenaline rushes since she’d taken this job, but this was a thrill too far—the closest she’d ever flirted with a major injury in all the time they’d been doing this. Too close for comfort. Even Ty seemed disturbed, and that in itself was scary.
More than a mere mortal, however, Kate was first and foremost a professional. No way she was going to stand around wasting time now that the damage had already been done. One of the cameras had been pitched in the accident. Kate unzipped its padded case and breathed a sigh of relief to find it in one piece. The show would go on.
“Good news, boss.” She held it up to show Ty, but he didn’t respond.
Ty’s eyes seemed to be looking through her, his energy even more intense than usual. His boots sloshed as he walked to her. She watched him swallow deeply, expression fraught as though he were unraveling.
“Yeah, Ty?”
He swallowed again, his eyes darting back and forth between hers. Something fierce was brewing behind the deceptive blue-green calm.
“It’s okay. We’re both okay,” she began, but his face told her the words weren’t registering. His arms rose and encircled her, cautiously at first, then he pulled her tight against his chest. One broad hand cupped the back of her head, pressing her face into his neck, the other fisting the oversize coat.
“Dear God,” he said, his mouth pushed so hard into her hairline that it sounded as if his voice were coming from inside her skull. “I never imagined I’d come so close to losing you.”
“I’m fine, Ty.” She tried to pull away but his embrace was tight and needy, so she let him hold on. She’d never seen him like this, so rattled. It embarrassed her a little, intimidated her a lot…. His breaths came fast and shallow, and Kate returned the hug with her free arm, hoping to calm him. “It’s okay.” She rubbed his back, an upright version of what she did when his insomnia drove him into her bed.
Ty’s body loosened. His hands released their death grip and he let her go, stepping back a pace and staring at her. His eyes were round and unfocused. Kate caught the corner of his mouth twitching.
She zipped the camera back in its bag and set it aside, looked nervously up at Ty. “Are you okay?”
Shaking slightly, his hands cupped her shoulders, the way they had dozens of times before. She felt her eyes widen and she squirmed as his palms slid up to her neck.
“This so isn’t the time, Ty.”
He ignored her protest, thumbs pressing against her pulse points as the script dictated. Lips on her temple. Snow began to fall.
“Knock it off,” she said.
“What?”
“Your stupid flirting shtick.”
His mouth slid farther still, until she heard his soft voice right in her good ear. “I’m not playing right now.”
She faltered. “Don’t be a jerk.”
He shifted so their noses touched, right on cue. “Then tell me what you want me to be,” he whispered, his lips grazing hers. That wasn’t part of the script.
“What I want you to be?” she whispered back, flubbing her lines.
“Who am I to you?”
The Shift again, but this time it was different. Intense, and not a game. All she managed to say was, “Who are you?”
“Yeah.” She felt Ty’s smile more than she could see it from this close, heard it in his words. “What am I, Katie? Your boss? Your friend?”
“Both,” she mumbled. Her heart had lodged in her throat like a rubber ball, cutting off her oxygen.
“Could I ever be more?”
“Are you about to kiss me?” she asked, dumbstruck, heart pounding. She’d never been any good at playing coy.
“Are you about to let me?”
She trembled. “I dunno. Frigging find out.”
Ty’s thumbs slid up past her jaw and pressed hard into her cheeks, just as his lips parted and took her lower one between them.
A kiss. An actual, technical kiss.
Kate’s eyes closed and a deep shiver passed through her body when she heard and felt a soft moan escape from Ty’s throat. A hunk of snow fell from her collar down the back of her sweater, the wet chill balancing the heat of Ty’s mouth. He kissed her again. She kissed back. He angled his jaw and opened his mouth wider, his tongue timidly flirting with hers, then going deeper, bolder. Kate’s hands were dangling limply at her sides and she got control of them, pushed them through the ends of Ty’s jacket’s long sleeves. Once they were free, she ran them up his hard, bare arms and settled them in his hair, knocking his hat off. His mouth felt dangerous—demanding and hot and wet, and he tasted just as she’d always known he would. Kate forgot the accident and her professionalism in a flash of hormonal amnesia. She wanted more. She wanted to taste every inch of him, and to be sampled by his mouth in return, all over her body. How many nights had she lain mere inches from this mouth, listening as Ty whispered sleepy words in the dark of a tent or the back of a van? How many nights had she spent wondering if they’d ever take things too far? She’d imagined this moment a hundred times—a thousand times. And she’d been wrong. It was so much better than her imagination had ever dared to hope.
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