keep the badge,” Kayla quipped demurely. “I’ll take Ranger Rick.”
Jo glanced around the cabin. There was an old iron stove with nickel trimmings, three metal bedsteads, one along each wall, and little else besides a few nails in the walls for hanging clothes.
Ten days, she thought. It didn’t sound very long when she agreed to this. Now it loomed before her like a period of banishment, each day an eternity.
But she owed Hazel, if not herself, a cheerful attitude. McCallum money had financed McCallum Secondary School before there was even a Montana state legislature. And recently, since the hard-pressed state budget had virtually eliminated funding for art and music education, Hazel had almost single-handedly rescued the programs—and Jo’s teaching position.
So what Hazel wanted, Hazel got, even if she had the addled notion to try to make an inept camper survive the wilderness.
“I have dibs on this,” Kayla chimed in, flopping her blond self down on the thin mattress. She carefully arranged her cosmetics on a little wooden shelf beside the bed.
Bonnie turned to Jo and said under her breath, “She’s got dibs on everything, inanimate or not.”
Jo smiled distantly and placed her backpack on the middle bed.
Next to her, Kayla picked up a compact and examined herself. Her eyes rose to meet Jo’s.
“Dottie says your momma was Miss Montana?” Kayla asked, her voice a little wistful.
There it was again, Jo thought, her mother’s fame dredged up almost immediately by a virtual stranger. She felt a fist clench in her chest as she was reminded, yet again, that she dwelled in a perpetual maternal shadow.
“Dottie says right,” Bonnie supplied when Jo refused to reply. “And she was one of the finalists for Miss America.”
“Well…Montana,” Kayla said dismissively. “I mean, that’s nothing like being Miss Texas or Miss New York.”
“Why not?” Bonnie demanded.
Kayla studied her face carefully in the compact mirror before she replied.
“Oh, you know. Big frog in a small pond. We’ve got so many pretty girls in Texas, so it’s a real competition. But y’all in Montana got such an itty-bitty population.” Kayla flashed a mouthful of stunning enamel at Jo. “Not that I’m saying your momma didn’t deserve it. Shoot, I’ve seen pretty girls up north, occasionally, though winters up here will try a girl’s complexion.”
“We manage,” Bonnie assured her, amusement in her tone.
Jo had realized that Kayla wasn’t the brightest light on the porch. But as the dig just now proved, she was skillful at delivering stinging words in a syrupy tone.
Just like Jo’s mother, who had believed she only had her looks to count on, Kayla was probably just as insecure. Even though Jo should have hated the curvaceous beauty, she just couldn’t. There was too much about Kayla that was familiar.
“Officer on deck!” Hazel joked, stepping into their cabin. “Sorry to break up the gabfest, girls, but it’s time for your work assignments.”
“Work?” Kayla said. “I thought this was a vacation!”
Hazel cast a dubious glance at the redundant creams, lotions, toners, mask potions and other cosmetics crowding Kayla’s shelf. “If we want halfway decent meals, it’ll be a team effort,” she replied. “Kayla, it’s your job to gather firewood and kindling each day. Bonnie and Jo, you’ll take turns hauling water.
“This is going to be an interesting ten days, ladies,” Hazel predicted, adding, “One of you had better get water now. Dottie’s starting supper.”
Jo couldn’t help wondering what Hazel was up to, for there was definitely some secret purpose behind her manner, her sly glances.
But the serene beauty of the Bitterroot country soon scattered her thoughts as she descended a looping path, the only sound the natural chorus of insects.
There were more trees as she descended, aspens not yet blooming gold, and narrow silver spruces. She reached the stone footbridge Hazel had mentioned; it arched over a narrow but deep-cut, bubbling stream.
It was peaceful on the bridge, beauty surrounding her on all sides, and she paused to enjoy the moment. Long, narrow shafts of sunlight poked through the overhead canopy of leaves, making silvery flashes of the minnows below in the creek.
A swarm of mosquitoes assailed her, and she suddenly remembered that her long hair, which because of the windy car ride she’d pulled into a ponytail and tucked into her blouse, was useless as protection.
Absently, Jo set the water container down and undid the two top buttons of her blouse. With graceful, languid movements, she reached behind her collar and pulled out her hair.
A masculine voice startled her. “Going skinny-dipping?”
She flinched, turning to confront the handsome smoke jumper who’d shown up with Kayla. Nick Kramer, that was his name. She remembered how his quick gaze seemed to take in every detail—the way a gyrfalcon studies a meadow looking for a little gray mouse.
She had to shade her eyes from the sun behind him. What with the sun blindness and the fact that his dark silhouette seemed to tower over her, she took an instinctive step back.
When his own gaze dropped south and lingered there appreciatively, she glanced down and felt her cheeks heat with embarrassment. With two buttons undone, her blouse was wide open and gave him a good view of her bra and bare flesh.
“Can I help you?” she asked defensively, fingers fumbling to button her blouse.
“Me?” He almost seemed to laugh. “Usually I’m the one doing the helping.”
“I asked if you needed some help. I did not say help yourself,” she snapped.
“Evidently I should, judging from what I’ve just seen.”
She felt the betraying flush all the way to her collarbone.
The corner of his mouth tugged. “Let me guess—you’re a closet nudist? Hey, don’t let me interfere with your free expression of—”
“I was not undressing,” she flung at him.
“I’m sorry, then.” His words were strangely quiet and wistful.
He was well over six feet and she had to look way up to meet his gaze. Being a townie and an academic, she usually only worried about intellectual might, but now, alone in the woods with a man who was strong enough and big enough to take without asking, she suddenly became acutely aware of her physical vulnerability. She took another wary step back from him.
He only flashed that self-assured grin of his. “I’m not following you, so forget the paranoia. I’ve got the same job you have.”
He held up at least a half-dozen plastic canteens, all strung on a length of cord.
Seeing the canteens brought her back to reality. He wasn’t some woman-hungry
