“I figured you’d wake yourself up, once you got the rest you needed.” She knelt down beside him, picked up a stick, and pushed the embers into a pile. “I’ve thought about what you said yesterday,” she continued softly, not looking at him. “And I agree that we should ignore Roger’s ultimatum that we get back to Gù Brath before the solstice.” She glanced at him, then back down at the fire. “The only people who have any say about our being married is us. We’ll get home when we get there, and we’ll be legally married when we want—by who we want.”

She took hold of his sleeve, her sharp green eyes direct, her expression defiant. “We’re a team, and together we can conquer the world if we want to, and trump Providence without even breaking a sweat.” She reached down, lifted his hand, and fingered his ring. “Apparently I’m the one who forgot that the unconditional part of love works both ways,” she whispered, smiling crookedly as she raised her eyes back to his. “I love you, Luke, for exactly who you are.”

He slowly set the pot down in the snow before he dropped it, then just as slowly pulled her into his arms and held her against him with a sigh. “Thank you,” he whispered into her hair. “For loving me just that much.”

She melted into him, her own sigh barely audible over the sound of slurping.

“What the . . . ?” Luke glanced down to see Tigger’s nose driven into the pot of soup. “Hey, that’s mine!” he yelped, grabbing the dachshund and shoving her at Camry. “Your dog was eating my soup!”

“My dog? You were the one calling himself Daddy yesterday.”

Luke picked up the pot and sat down, holding it protectively against his chest when Max came bounding up, his tongue licking his sniffing nose. “I think we should hook them up to the sled and make them pull us today.”

“Come on, guys,” she said with a giggle as she scrambled to her feet. “Let’s go pack up while Daddy eats his breakfast. We all have a long day ahead of us. But just think about the fabulous tales you’ll have to tell Suki and Ruffles when you get back,” she pointed out to them, her voice trailing off as she ducked into the shelter.

Luke frowned down at his soup, then used his finger to flick a whisker off the rim before he drank right out of the pot. Hell, if he was going to play the part of a sled dog today, what was a little hair in his soup?

Chapter Nineteen

Despite the ineffectual sun hanging low in the southern sky, Luke was a ball of sweat not two hours into their trek. Breathing heavily from the incline that traveled along the ridge rising sharply to their left, he stopped in the middle of the tote road, shrugged off the rope, and flexed his shoulders. He pulled his GPS out of his pocket, punched some buttons, and realized they were only a couple of miles from the turnoff to Pine Creek, which still left another twenty-three miles after that.

“Okay, everyone walks for a while,” he said, tucking the GPS back in his pocket, then putting his gloves back on. “Except Tigger, I suppose.”

Camry had just set Tigger forward between her legs to stand up when a low rumbling whispered through the air. “What’s that?” she asked, glancing around.

Luke looked up, adrenaline spiking through him when he saw the sheet of snow sliding down the exposed ridge above, heading straight toward them. “Avalanche!” he shouted, immediately snatching up the rope. “Stay in the sled! You won’t be able to run in the deep snow!”

“Max! Come!” she cried, falling back when Luke jerked the sled and ran.

The rumble grew louder, echoing down the steep granite gorge, the snow pushing an icy wave of air ahead of it that sent chills racing up Luke’s spine. He veered toward the stand of trees growing on the edge of the wash, but his snowshoes caught in the jumble of talus from previous rockslides, and he fell to his knees. He gave one last mighty heave on the rope to pull the sled past him, Camry’s scream drowned out by the wall of snow slamming into them.

The rope jerked out of his hands, then tangled on one of his snowshoes as Luke helplessly tumbled in a sea of churning white, all the while fighting not to lose contact with the sled. The noise was deafening, the snow unbelievably heavy as it meted out its endless battering. The lacing on one of his boots snapped, the snowshoe attached to it pulling the boot off his foot. His hand scraped what felt like metal, but just then the rope gave a sharp tug before ripping the other snowshoe off his boot, releasing him to continue his turbulent free fall alone.

And just as suddenly as it had begun, it ended.

Luke slammed against an unmovable object, the air rushing from his lungs in a whoosh. An eerie silence settled around him, his body sheathed in what felt like concrete, every damn cell in his body screaming in agony. The snow had packed around him like a vise, squeezing his lungs and making it nearly impossible to breathe; when he opened his eyes, he literally couldn’t see past his nose.

Camry! Unable even to hear his own scream, Luke frantically wiggled back and forth to free himself. His fingers brushed what felt like bark, and as he slowly increased the cavity around him, his knee connected with the tree that had stopped his fall.

Slowly, painstakingly, he was able to work his arms up beside his head, and he dug the snow out of his ears. He stilled, listening for any sound that might tell him Camry was okay, or at least that Max had made it to safety. But when he heard only the blood pounding through his veins, Luke focused on figuring out which way was up. His guess, based on the fact that the more he wiggled the farther he settled to his left, made him start digging past his right shoulder.

His fist suddenly punched through to open air! He gritted his teeth against the protest of his battered muscles and started jackknifing his body as he pushed at the snow above him. He suddenly heard barking. “Max!” he shouted through the small opening he was creating. “That’s my boy! Come on, Max!”

The opening suddenly closed when a nose drove into it, and a warm tongue shot out and touched his wrist.

“Thatta boy, Max!” Luke said with a laugh. “Come find me, boy. Dig!”

With Max digging down from the top and Luke clawing his way up, he was finally able to break his upper torso free. “Good boy!” he chortled when Max lunged at his chest and started licking his face. He pushed the dog away, pointing beside him. “Keep digging. I’ve got to get free so we can find Camry.”

With Max’s help, Luke was finally able to lever himself up and crawl on top of the snow. He immediately got to his knees and looked around. “Okay, Max. Use that wonderful nose of yours and find Camry. Come on,” he said, scrambling to his feet, again ignoring his screaming muscles and the fact that he had only one boot. He clapped his hands excitedly. “Find Camry, Max!”

The Lab immediately jumped into the hole from which Luke had just emerged, and started whining and sniffing around.

“She’s not in there. Come on, let’s play hide-and-seek. Find Camry!” he repeated, slapping his leg to urge the dog out. “And Tigger. Let’s go find Tigger!”

Luke took several steps onto the uneven tangle of packed snow, his hopes rising when he realized it had been a relatively small slide, only about a hundred feet wide and two hundred yards long. He looked around for anything dark, like a hat or glove or . . . anything. He cupped his hands to his mouth. “Camry!”

He stilled, listening. “Goddammit, Camry, answer me!”

But all he heard was terrifying silence.