"How young? Did she have cubs?"

"The first year she didn't mate. But this year there was some real caterwauling around here for the two weeks she and her mate traveled together." The left corner of Nevada's mouth lifted a bit and he added blandly, "Seems like the young females always scream the loudest."

"There's a reason they scream," Eden said before she could think better of it.

"Really? What?"

All right, how am I going to get out of this one? Eden asked herself wryly, caught between embarrassment and amusement.

"Er, take my word for it," she said, knowing her cheeks were bright with something more than cold.

"Give me some words and I'll see how I take them."

"Better yet," Eden said quickly, thinking of a graceful exit from the topic, "I'll give you a textbook on cat anatomy."

"Did you bring it with you?"

She sighed. "No."

"Then we're back to words."

Eden suspected she was being teased. Nevada's eyes had a definite crinkle at the corners. She took a deep breath, reminded herself that she and Nevada were both adults, and began speaking as though she were in a graduate seminar.

"Male cats are built to begin, but not to end, copulation. Therefore, disengagement must be rather uncomfortable for the females."

Nevada gave Eden a sideways glance. "I'm missing something."

"Barbs," she said succinctly.

The sleek black of Nevada's beard shifted a bit as his mouth quirked, but he said only, "Can't be all that bad-"

"Spoken like a true male," she muttered.

"-because the older females keep coming back for more," Nevada finished, ignoring Eden's interruption.

She saw the gleam in his eyes and knew that Nevada was teasing her. She struggled not to laugh. It was impossible. The wicked light in Nevada's eyes reminded her of Baby's when he had danced up to her with a mouthful of forbidden socks and lured her into play.

Nevada listened to the rippling warmth of Eden's laughter and silently decided that it was even more beautiful than a wolf's wild song. He fought the impulse to put an arm around Eden and hug her to his side, and then to bend down and taste lips whose tempting curves haunted him at every moment.

I should have left yesterday, storm or no storm. If I stay much longer I'm going to reach out and take what I need more than I need air.

Having her would be like sinking into fire, all hot and clean and wild, no boundaries, no restraints, nothing but the two of us and the fire burning higher and higher…

A wolf's howl leaped and twisted in the wild silence, calling to them, demanding their attention.

"He's found cat sign!" Eden said. She looked eagerly around the landscape, trying to decide on the quickest route to Baby. "It could be bobcat, I suppose."

"I'm betting it isn't," Nevada said promptly, heading toward the creek. "There's a big old fir on top of that rise. The lady cougar likes to lie up beneath the lowest limbs and watch the land."

"Hurry," Eden said, following. "Once Baby starts running, we may not see him again until he's ready to come into the cabin and chew the ice out from between his toes."

Nevada moved swiftly down the slope toward the creek that gleamed blackly between low banks of snow. Despite the snow that had fallen yesterday, neither Nevada nor Eden needed the snowshoes they had tied to their backpacks. Only in the steepest ravines or in the most dense forest was snowpack more than six inches deep. Yesterday's storm had filled in minor hollows and ripples, leaving behind a pristine surface that took and held tracks as though it had been designed for just that purpose.

Baby howled again. Then came a series of short, excited barks.

"He's seen the cat!" Eden said.

"Will he call off?"

"Doubt it. Not after being shut up in a car and then in the cabin."

Nevada leaped the stream with a lithe power that made Eden think enviously of a cougar. She judged the distance to the other side and skidded to a stop. If she jumped, she'd be asking for an icy dunking on landing and a twisted ankle in the bargain.

"Go on," she urged. "I'll catch up as soon as I find a safe way across. Try to get a look at the cat so we can identify it if we see it again. Once they're forty feet up a tree, cats are darned hard to see, much less identify, even with binoculars."

Nevada hesitated for only an instant before he took off up the rise toward a big fir tree.

Eden trotted – and occasionally slid and slithered – along the side of the creek, muttering about boulders concealed by snow and other traps for the unwary. Finally she came to a place where sun or wind or both had cleaned the rocks of snow. She jumped from boulder to boulder across the stream and headed up the rise. Soon she was following Nevada's tracks.

Lord, that man runs like a big cat. No slipping, no struggling for balance, nothing but clean, long-legged strides.

Baby's barks were faint now, continuous, and very excited.

Sounds like the cat is up a tree. That was fast work. Hope Nevada got a look before it was too late.

When Eden got to the top of the rise, she saw the place where the cougar had been stretched out on the ground beneath a low limb, watching the world in relaxed silence until a loudmouthed black wolf had appeared. Then all hell had cut loose. The cougar – for the size of the tracks left no doubt that a cougar had made them rather than a bobcat – had exploded out of cover, sending a shower of snow from lower branches. The cat had hit its full running stride instantly, racing over the sparsely wooded slope, heading uphill as cats always did when pursued.

Baby's barking ended abruptly, telling Eden that Nevada had already caught up. Cocking her head, Eden listened, heard nothing to indicate that the chase was anything but over, and returned her attention to a particularly fine set of tracks the cougar had left. Baby wasn't going anywhere now. Neither was the cat. The tracks, however, were at the mercy of the rising wind and the sun. She had to photograph the tracks before they lost their fine, crisp edges.

Automatically Eden took off her backpack, opened it and went to work. She pulled out camera and ruler, lined up the ruler close to the tracks, adjusted the camera's macro-zoom lens and triggered the shutter. In the forest silence, the snick, snick, snick of the shutter and the faint rubbing of her clothes against the snow when she knelt were the only sounds. When she was through measuring and photographing the prints, she took out a notebook and began to record information.

Eden was halfway through a sentence when she had the distinct feeling of being watched. She spun around. Nevada was standing less than an arm's length away.

"Lord, Nevada, you're a quiet man!"

"Sorry. I didn't mean to startle you."

Eden pushed a deep breath out of her lungs to slow her hammering heart, took a better grip on her pencil and resumed recording her observations.

"Did you get a look at the cougar?" she asked.

"It's the young female. She wintered well. Coat is thick and smooth, no sign of hesitation in her stride. I can't be positive, but I think she's nursing cubs. Her teats were swollen."

With a startled sound Eden jammed her notebook and pencil into her jacket pocket. "I'd better go call off Baby. I don't want a new mother getting panicked."

Nevada lifted Eden's backpack and started back up the trail. "Don't worry about the cougar. Last time I saw her, she was stretching out on a limb to watch Baby jawing at her from below."

"Will I be able to see her?" Eden asked, excited.

"Some."

"How much?"

"The black tip of her long, thick tail."

"Figures," Eden muttered. "Seems like all I ever see of my cats are silent ghosts sliding away at the corner of my eyes."

When Nevada and Eden arrived at the fir where Baby was leaping and yapping, not even the tip of a tail was to be seen. Eden called off Baby and went to work examining the tree through binoculars. Finally she spotted the cougar partway up the big evergreen.