At Last Read Free Page B

them stupid. And oh, how she hated being stupid. Even worse was being stupid in mixed company. She’d done it before, of course. Too many times to count. She’d thought she’d gotten past it but apparently not.
    “Need help?”
    With a grimace, she slowly turned to face Matt. Yeah, she needed help, and they both knew it.
    He was still leaning against the tree, arms crossed over his chest, the gun on his hip catching the sun. He looked big and tough as hell, his shoulders broad enough to carry all her problems. His hair brushed his collar, a little shaggy, a lot tousled. Sexy. Damn him. He stood there as if he had all the time in the world and not a concern in his head.
    And of course he didn’t.
He
wasn’t lost.
    But there was something else, too. There was a sort of… crackling in the air between them, and it wasn’t a bird or insect or frigging elk call either.
    It was sexual tension. It’d been a long time, a real long time, since she’d allowed herself to acknowledge such a thing, and it surprised the hell out of her. She knew men, all of them. She’d been there, done that, bought
and
returned the T-shirt. She knew that beneath a guy’s chosen veneer, whatever that may be—nice guy, funny guy, sexy guy, whatever—lay their true colors, just lying in wait.
    But she’d been watching Matt for months now, and he was always… Matt. Amused, tense, tired, it didn’t seem to matter, he remained his cool, calm, even-keeled self. Nothing got to him. She had to admit, that confused her.
He
confused her. “I’m actually okay,” she said.
    He expressed polite doubt with the arch of a single brow. Her pride was a huge regulation-sized football in her throat, and admitting defeat sucked. But there was ego, and there was being an idiot. “Fine,” she said. “Just tell me which way is south.”
    He pointed south.
    Nodding, she headed that way, only to be caught up short when he snagged her by the backpack and pulled her back against him.
    She startled, jerking in his hands before forcing herself to relax. It was Matt, she reminded herself, and the thought was followed by a hot flash that she’d like to blame on the weather, but she knew better.
    He turned her ninety degrees. “To get back to the ranger station and your car, you want to go southwest,” he said.
    Right. She knew that, and she stalked off in the correct direction.
    “Watch out for bears,” Matt called after her.
    “Yeah, okay,” she muttered, “and I’ll also keep an eye out for the Tooth Fairy.”
    “Three o’clock.”
    Amy craned her neck and froze. Oh sweet baby Jesus, there really was a bear at three o’clock. Enjoying the last of the sun, he was big, brown, and shaggy, and
big
. He lay flat on his back, his huge paws in the air as he stretched, confident that he sat at the top of the food chain. “Holy shit,” she whispered, every Discovery Channel bear mauling she’d ever seen flashing in her mind. She backed up a step, and then another, until she bumped into a brick wall and nearly screamed.
    “Just a brown bear,” said the brick wall that was Matt.
    “Would you stop sneaking up on me?” she hissed over her shoulder. “I hate to be sneaked up on!”
    Matt was kind enough not to point out that
she’d
bumped into him. Or that she was quaking in her boots. Instead, he set his drink down and very softly “shh’d” her, gently rubbing his big hands up and down her arms. “You’re okay,” he said.
    She was okay? How was that possible? The bear was the size of a VW, and he was wriggling on the ground,letting out audible groans of ecstasy as he scratched his back on the fallen pine needles, latent power in his every move. Sort of like the man behind her. “Does he even see us?” she whispered.
    As she spoke, the bear slowly tipped his big, furry head back, lazily studying Amy and Matt from his upside down perch.
    Yeah, he saw them. Reacting instinctively, she turned and burrowed right into Matt. “If you laugh at me,” she