Caught on Camera by Meg Maguire Page B

cruel finger tracing her spine.
    Ty’s voice turned soft and melancholy. “Sure. Sorry.” He turned away and strode to the scattered cargo.
    For a half a minute she just watched him, suppressing a hundred urges—to call out to him, tell him she changed her mind, tell him to go to hell, tell him to come back here and take more, whatever he wanted. Instead she followed suit, wandering around and gathering their stuff. Each rescued item rooted her more firmly in rational thought, wrapped her in safety, kept the fear at bay. Kept the old Kate at bay, the one who’d let her heart rule her head in her teens and early twenties, led her down too many painful paths in pursuit of affection from men who had none to offer. Grasping, needy, white trash Kate Sullivan, little miss daddy-abandonment issues from the wrong side of a town she’d never make it out of… Only she had. She’d edited out all the bad bits of herself, ditched her Boston accent and her last name and her suffocating clinginess, reinvented herself. She was different now, and Ty was like a test. If she followed her body’s wishes she’d be gambling with too much—her job, her closest friendship, her new identity. And over what? If she knew Ty at all, it’d be a couple days’ or a couple weeks’ excitement, then he’d go cold. She’d seen him do it with enough women—women far more fascinating than Kate—and she refused to be the next in line.
    She watched his back as he pulled on some extra layers he’d scavenged from the remaining cargo. A tremor shuddered from deep inside her chest, and in its wake she felt the sweet relief of knowing she’d held fast to the one thingthat kept her in control. Kate found her coat and took Ty’s off, zipping herself into the familiar. She clad her body in warm down, waterproof nylon, her heart in the iron and steel forged by old pain and thickened by every person she’d ever lain down and played the sucker for.
    You’ve already got my life, Dom Tyler. She stared at him across the churned-up snow. Don’t think for a second you’ll take my heart.

4
    â€œS NOW’s PICKING UP,” Ty said, looking in front of them, then behind. “What do you reckon? Turn back and head for the Greniers’?”
    Kate shook her head, glad for a rational topic to refocus her attention. “The safety crew’s closer by now…it’s got to be.” She pulled her hat on and glanced around, noting how thick and dense the snow had indeed become. “But there’s a fork in the trail…it splits into two loops and they don’t reconnect for quite a ways. I don’t know which route is right, and the map’s in your pack.”
    â€œWhich is halfway home by now,” Ty sighed, looking in the direction the dogs had long since disappeared in.
    Kate nodded. “Along with the GPS and satellite phone. As far as the safety crew can tell, we’re making steady progress. They won’t even suspect anything’s wrong until this afternoon, when the dogs get back home ahead of schedule with no humans in tow.”
    â€œBugger.”
    â€œYeah, bugger. We need to move fast and find the fork before the snow covers the dogs’ tracks.” Kate sputtered out a frustrated breath. She forced herself into work mode, escaping thoughts of hypothermia, of Ty’s mouth, of theache he’d left in her body. They loaded all the supplies back into her pack and Ty shouldered it. Kate set the lone remaining camera up with its sun hood to keep the flakes from streaking the lens. Flicking the power on, she trained the viewfinder on Ty’s head and shoulders as she trudged alongside him.
    His posture shifted and he reclaimed some of the hostly professionalism he’d lost since the crash. He turned to address their future audience.
    â€œWell, this is unexpected.” He cleared his throat. “If the camera I mounted