The cat was indeed stretched out along a hefty limb, watching the activity below through half-closed eyes. So well did the cougar screen herself with greenery that Eden wouldn't have seen the animal at all if she hadn't yawned. The motion revealed an astonishing length of pink tongue, as well as teeth of intimidating size and sharpness. The yawn ended, the jaws began closing, and the pink tongue vanished.

An instant later, so did the cougar. Occasional tufts of snow rained down, revealing that the cat was still moving somewhere within the drooping, multiple arms of the tree. No matter how hard Eden looked through the binoculars, she couldn't see so much as a patch of the cat's thick, tawny fur.

Baby whined coaxingly, tired of having to be silent.

"Nope," Eden said to Baby as she lowered the binoculars. "Fun's over." She turned to Nevada. "Are you sure she was nursing?"

"It's more of a hunch. She's healthy, but tires fast, even for a cat. She took to a tree real quick, even though Baby wasn't close to her." Nevada shrugged and squinted up into the tree with pale green eyes. "I'm no expert, though."

"I'll take your instincts over the expertise of anyone I've ever worked with. You're a very noticing kind of man." Eden reached for her pack, which Nevada was still holding in one big hand. "Let's try backtracking from that big fir. If you're right about her having cubs, she'll have a den, too. Maybe we can find it."

"It would make our work a lot easier," Nevada agreed.

Eden heard the word our and felt a shiver of pleasure travel through her body. But if Nevada realized what he had implied, nothing was revealed on his face.

"The cougars over on the other side of MacKenzie Ridge," he continued, "have much bigger territories. Up here, the countryside supports more deer, so the cats get by with a lot less land. Even so, they can cover twenty, thirty miles a day looking for prey or for a mate or just keeping their boundary markers fresh."

"Speaking of food, my lunch is in my backpack." Eden tugged discreetly at one of the straps Nevada held.

"Hungry?"

Eden looked up. Nevada's light green eyes were very clear, the lashes surrounding them were ragged slices of midnight, and he was watching her with an intensity that made her breath shorten.

"Yes, I'm… hungry."

Her voice was too husky, but Eden was helpless to change it. Something in Nevada's eyes was making her blood shimmer wildly through her body, leaving chaos in its wake. She would have moved, but felt unable to so much as take a step. Motionless she waited for him to say something.

"Nevada?" she whispered finally, looking up at him, wondering what was wrong, why she felt as though she were on the edge of a cliff and had only to spread her wings and fly… or fall endlessly, spinning away into infinity like a snowflake on the wind.

Nevada saw the yearning and uncertainty in Eden's wide hazel eyes, hissed a searing word between his teeth and let go of her backpack. The straps slid through her fingers. She grabbed awkwardly with both hands, but it was Nevada's extraordinary quickness that kept the pack from being dumped into the snow. Instead of giving the backpack to Eden, he slung it over one shoulder and turned back the way they had come.

For a moment Eden was too unsettled to follow. She watched Nevada stride through the widely spaced trees. He moved with a strength and silence that should have frightened her, but did not. His male grace and power tugged at her senses, just as the realization that she had never seen Nevada in any but dark clothes tugged at her emotions.

He wants me. He's never made any secret of it. So why won't he even kiss me?

The thought of being kissed by Nevada made Eden's blood shimmer wildly once more. Her breath came in hard, ragged, and she wanted nothing so much at that instant as the feel of Nevada's lips on her own.

Lord, if Mark had had this effect on me, we'd be married by now, with kids in the bargain.

The thought of having Nevada's children went through Eden like lightning, shaking her – another human being with a smile like hers and black hair like his, another person with curiosity and discipline and maybe, just maybe, a boy with his father's smooth coordination, his strength, his restraint.

Eden's breath rushed out, leaving her almost dizzy. She blinked and took several slow breaths as she looked around in the manner of a person who has awakened in a strange land. The snow-brushed trees were unchanged, the white glitter of sunswept snow was the same, and the tracks still showed as blue-white marks in the snow. Nothing in the world around her had changed.

Yet everything had changed. For the first time in Eden's life, her own inner world, the untouched, unviolated privacy of her dreams, had been transformed by the presence of a man.

I'm falling in love with Nevada.

No. Scratch that. It's past tense, over and done with, and I was the last one to know.

Baby whined and nudged Eden's hand. Absently she stroked his big head. He ducked, caught her gloved hand in his mouth and tugged. Immediately he had her full attention.

"You're right, Baby. It's time we left the mama cougar in peace. Or is it lunch you're after, hmm? Does your sharp nose know that all the food left with Nevada? Or do you sense that he's making off with my heart as well as my backpack?"

Yellow eyes watched Eden alertly.

"Yes, I know," she said in a low voice. "It's stupid of me to let someone walk off with something that vital. But my lack of sense is nothing new. A smart girl would have followed everyone's advice and let you die after finding you in that trap, rather than take a chance on getting savaged while trying to teach a wild young mostly-wolf to trust people again."

Baby cocked his head to the side, listening to Eden with every fiber of his mostly-wolf being. Then he made a soft sound deep in his throat and turned his head to look out across the land.

"Okay, boy, I get the message," Eden said. She swept her arm in the direction in which Nevada had gone. "Go catch up with lunch."

It was like releasing a catapult. Within three seconds Baby had reached his full stride and was running with his belly low to the ground and his tail streaming out like a dark banner. Eden followed more slowly, needing time to get a better grip on her unsettled and unsettling thoughts.

Nevada won't be an easy man to love. He's a winter man, shut down deep inside, waiting for a spring that hasn't come.

On the heels of Eden's thought came another, a realization as unflinching as winter itself. Don't kid yourself. You're going into this with your eyes wide open or you're not going at all. Nevada isn't waiting for spring. He probably doesn't even believe spring exists. That's quite a difference.

It's a difference that could break my heart.

Yet even knowing that, Eden could no more walk away from Nevada now than she had been able to walk away years ago from a wild young wolf made savage by pain.