Wild Heat (Northern Fire) by Lucy Monroe Page B

mean?”
    “Egan didn’t make it sound like you took tourists on the easy trails, that’s all.”
    “He doesn’t mind doing a mix. But for me, the more untamed the better.”
    “I remember that about you. I also remember you almost getting us lost snowshoeing one winter because you claimed that since you were part Inuit, you had a spiritual connection to the land.”
    He laughed and shook his head at his younger self. “We would have done better if that connection was a compass.”
    “Good thing I’d put one in my pack.”
    He usually carried one, too, but he’d been going through a phase, trying to find his instinctive link to the earth. “I thought if I didn’t give myself a backup plan, ancient instincts would come to the fore.”
    She laughed softly and gave him a fond look. “You were an idiot.”
    “So you told me then.” In colorful terms her gran would have been appalled to hear.
    “You acted like there were no old stories about the Inuit getting lost in the vast wilderness.”
    “I wanted to be special.” He’d been fifteen and just realized that his feelings for Kitty were not familial or platonic.
    He had thought if she saw him as her hero, she’d stop thinking of him like the brother he wasn’t.
    “If you’ll refrain from throwing it back in my face again, I’ll tell you that you always were special. You didn’t need some mystical ability to navigate the snowfields.”
    “Damn it, Kitty. When you threw me away, I was pretty sure you didn’t think there was anything good or valuable about me.” And it had hurt.
    So much so that he’d vowed never to let anyone’s opinion matter so much again.
    “Does it make it worse or better to know that I always knew how wonderful you were?” Her shoulders hunched, like she was trying to draw in on herself again. “I never doubted how lucky I was to have your friendship and I threw it away anyway. I was a real idiot.”
    Which just confirmed that no matter how highly she said she thought of him, Tack hadn’t been important enough to Kitty for her to keep in her life. Not as a friend and not as the man in her life.
    The reminder should have diminished the arousal her renewed good mood had sparked in him. But his dick didn’t care about the past or even his commitment to keeping a distance between them now.
    His whole body was heating with a fire nothing but drowning himself in her could put out.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    T hey reached the overlook, and Kitty rushed forward to the edge of the rocky outcropping.
    The way she turned in a slow semicircle, her hands extended as if thankful for the gift of nature, about did him in. Her soft gasp only made it worse. The sound way too much like what he imagined she’d make with his cock buried deep inside her.
    “I let myself forget how beautiful this was.” She shook her head. “No, that’s not true. I made myself forget.”
    “I don’t know if I could.”
    “Desperation drives us when nothing else could.”
    “Why did you have to forget?”
    “Because I thought I was never coming back.” She never looked away from the awe-inspiring view before them, like she’d never get enough of it.
    “You didn’t want to come back.”
    “You’re wrong.” The words were quiet.
    “You hated living in Cailkirn.”
    She shook her head but didn’t reply, just kept her focus on the lake below and the mountains in the distance.
    “You always said you were going to get out of this backwater town and never come back.” And she’d done just that.
    “We were kids. I wanted life in the big city, away from the town I associated with losing my parents.”
    “They died in Arizona.”
    “And I came to live in Cailkirn right after.” She sounded so lost.
    He walked up behind her, forcing down the need to touch but unable to maintain the distance between them.
    “I didn’t have enough time in Phoenix after Mom and Dad were gone to identify it with their loss. It always felt like my grief started in Cailkirn, and