under ten minutes and Caleb parked the bus. He gave instructions for the people to divide into two groups of twelve. One group was to go with him, the other group to follow Mack.
Caleb climbed off the bus and the tourists followed. Mack stayed rooted to the spot, his eyes never leaving her face. Cammie Jo hesitated, not knowing what to do.
Her pulse jumped like water droplets on a redhot griddle and her tummy tugged to and fro with this swishy-swashy sensation like a washing machine set to agitate.
She shouldn’t be scared. But then she realized the emotion wreaking havoc on her insides was not fear at all. But rather excitement tinged with something else. A feeling she’d never experienced with such intensity.
Sexual arousal.
The air between them was charged with more voltage than any high line wire. Every hair on her arm stood at erect attention.
Cammie Jo gulped. Hard. She was hot and wet and achy down there.
And then the bus was completely empty, save for her and Mack.
He trod slowly toward her, his boots echoing with a solid thud, thud, thud, that matched the crazy rhythm of her heart.
“I’ve got a bone to pick with you,” he said.
Cammie Jo jerked her head around, looking for a way out. Not because she was afraid of this bundle of walking testosterone but exactly because she wasn’t. She should have been scared to death because he was so close, so manly, so gosh darn p.o.’d at her. Instead she was turned on like a faucet twisted to full blast.
“No place to run, Sugar Plum.” He was standing directly in front of her in the middle of the aisle, his big hands planted on the backs of either seat. “If you want off this bus, you’ll have to come through me.”
Was she even breathing? All she knew was that his smoldering dark eyes had pierced her clean through and pinned her in place.
Normally, she hated conflict. Avoided it at all costs. But now she possessed a newfound bravado.
“And what kind of bone do you have that needs picking?” she asked coolly, amazing herself with her impudence. “Chicken? Beef? Pork perhaps?”
Ha! He almost smiled. She saw it flit at the edges of his mouth before he gained control by frowning deeply.
“Why did you run out on me last night?”
“Mack!”
They both jumped.
Caleb rapped on the outside of the bus window and tapped at the face of his watch. “We’re burning daylight, bud.”
“Duty calls.” Cammie Jo said with enough sugar in her voice to choke a honeybee.
“Don’t think this lets you off the hook. Sooner or later you and I are having a long talk.”
“Fine with me.”
“Fine.”
They stared at each other.
“You coming on the hike, then?” He inclined his head.
“Why, of course.”
He stepped aside, gestured with a hand. “Ladies first.”
Haughtily Cammie Jo rose, nose in the air, and started forward. She sailed past him, but then promptly tripped over her boot laces as she descended the bus steps, and sprawled face forward in the dirt.
IT WAS AN HOUR and a half into their three-hour hike through the spongy forest undergrowth and Mack couldn’t stop looking at Camryn. He smiled whenever he recalled how she’d leaped to her feet after falling from the bus and dusted herself off before he could get to her. He’d made a move to help, but she’d glared at him so hard he’d stepped backward, palms up in a gesture of surrender. She was a feisty thing; an odd combination of half regal cutie, half fierce tomcat.
Proving beyond a shadow of a doubt she possessed quality number two on his “wife” list.
He halted the group from time to time to give minilectures on the flora and fauna. During these little breaks, Camryn assiduously avoided looking at him, pretending instead to be wildly enraptured with a skunk cabbage or chipmunks or wild blueberry bushes.
Apparently she didn’t think he noticed when she cut her eyes surreptitiously at him. For his part, he stared at her boldly. He had nothing to be ashamed of.
Except she was a distraction to beat all distractions. Some nerdy middle-aged guy outfitted in the wrong kind of footwear kept asking him silly questions. Like, “Why are the Sitka spruce and the western hemlock the only variety of trees in the Tongass?”
“Because that’s the way it is,” Mack had finally snapped and he heard Camryn snicker. Was she laughing at him or the nerdy guy?
Caleb and his twelve adoring disciples were a quarter mile ahead of them in the forest. Mack brought up the rear in his group to prevent stragglers while Camryn had positioned herself far ahead of the pack, as if to put as much distance between them as possible by infiltrating Caleb’s group.
Mack admired the way Camryn’s trim little butt swayed from side to side in those snug-fitting jeans. He loved watching her hair bounce about her shoulders as she walked and the way her sweater adhered to her breasts.
He recalled the moment when they were alone on the bus together and he’d been trying to intimidate her with his maleness, hoping to wring a confession out of her concerning her strange behavior the night before. Instead of being unnerved as he expected, he could have sworn he saw sparks of unmitigated mischief in her fabulous green eyes.
“Which kind of bone needs picking?” she’d drawled, all spunk and sass.
My bone, he’d thought but hadn’t had the guts to say.
An unwitting image of that cute little butt of hers curving above his cupped palm jettisoned itself into his head and just like that, boom!, he got hard.
Taking a deep breath, Mack paused, put one hand on a tree and struggled to rein himself in.
“Oh!” someone up the trail cried and it sounded an awful lot like Camryn.
Mack’s head came up just in time to see a flash of color as she tumbled down the embankment.
6
JUST CALL ME GRACE, Cammie Jo thought as she somersaulted head over heels down a steep slope into a mossy creek bed where she ended up sprawled on her butt. The totem might cure shyness, but it didn’t seem to do a darn thing to exorcise a chronic case of klutz.
At the thought of the totem, her fingers flew to her neck.
Whew! It was still there.
Chagrined at her clumsiness, Cammie Jo shook her head.
“Camryn,” Mack shouted, “are you okay?”
She squinted up
