“Nothing that she could see. But they must have eaten four cases of candy.” Camry shook her head in amazement. “That’s a lot of sugar for a couple of kids to put down.”

“How many kids did you actually see running out of the store?” Jack asked. “Megan, where are my crutches?”

“Under the couch,” she said from the sink, where she was suddenly very busy washing dishes.

Camry walked to the staircase. “I couldn’t really tell. I just saw them running past you toward the lake. They stayed in a tight pack.”

“And where did they go then?” he asked.

Camry shrugged. “Beats me. That’s when the guy stepped out of the shadows and grabbed you from behind.”

“Did you get a look at him?”

“No, it was too dark. He was big, though.” She eyed him speculatively. “About the size of our cousin, Robbie MacBain.”

“Robbie isn’t the man who attacked me.”

“How come you’re so sure?”

“The guy who jumped me had the same smell that was all through Rose’s store, only not quite as strong. MacBain smells sort of like pine pitch.”

Camry wrinkled her nose. “I swear I’ll never get that foul odor out of my nose hairs. And the slime…” She shuddered, then walked over to Megan. “You’re a biologist. What does this smell like to you?”

Megan leaned close to take a whiff of Camry’s sleeve, then jerked away. “Eewww, that’s awful,” she said, wiping her nose on her own sleeve.

“But do you recognize it?”

If Jack hadn’t been watching carefully, he might have missed Megan’s reaction. But when she stilled with her face buried in her sleeve, and her eyes widened before she suddenly turned back to the sink, he was certain she did recognize the odor.

“I can’t say what it is, exactly,” she said, her back to them. She started washing the dishes again. “It’s definitely organic, though.”

Jack remained silent, but Camry, bless her pushy heart, was like a dog with a bone. “Take another whiff,” she suggest, lifting her arm again. “You’re sure you don’t recognize it? It’s sort of pungent. And stagnant.”

Megan wiped her hands on a towel, then walked to the oven and opened it. “One whiff was enough. Let me think about it; maybe it will come to me later.”

Camry seemed puzzled by Megan’s unwillingness to even hazard a guess. She walked to the stairs again, and looked back at Jack. “Rose said Simon told her the bakery break-in had the same slimy goo all over the place, and that the state forensics lab hasn’t been able to identify it.”

“Not yet,” Jack confirmed.

She cast a sidelong glance at her sister, then told Jack, “I think it’s reptilian.”

“Reptiles aren’t slimy,” Megan interjected. “It’s more likely from an amphibian, like a frog or salamander.”

Camry gave Jack a smug smile, obviously proud of herself for finally getting Megan to comment. “Rose’s store was covered with it,” she said. “That’s an awful lot of frogs.”

Megan became very busy again.

Camry shrugged at Jack and ran up the stairs. “I’m taking a shower,” she called as she disappeared.

Jack studied Megan. What could she possibly know about the break-ins?

Or had she recognized the smell from hermit boy?

So what secret was the bastard hiding? No, make that Secrets with an S, to include the favor he’d asked from Megan. Hermit boy had hugged her, and that’s what Megan had just noticed on her own sweater. Kenzie Gregor smelled like a bog.

He was the right size to be Jack’s attacker, too.

Jack pulled his crutches out from under the couch and slowly got to his feet. “Thank you for letting me stay, Megan. I can’t imagine how I’d lug firewood to keep the stove going. It’s all I have for heat.”

She twirled to face him, her hands on her hips and her beautiful green eyes snapping fire. “Just don’t get the wrong idea. I’d do the same for a stranger I found on the side of the road. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And if you so much as allude to us getting back together, you’re out of here. Got that?”

“Got it.”

“And no talking about the baby.”

“Come on, Meg. You can’t ask me to ignore our baby.”

“It’s not our baby, it’s mine. You blew any chance of it being ours four months ago.”

Jack felt his neck heat up. “I didn’t have any choice. You were in danger.”

“Did it ever once occur to you to simply tell me about the danger, instead of treating me like a mindless idiot?”

“Of course it did,” he snapped. “And it also occurred to me that you’d dig in your heels and try to get to the bottom of it yourself.”

As suddenly as the tension had built, it disappeared. Megan gave Jack a speculative look. “So let me get this straight. I had to leave because it was dangerous, but it was okay for you to stay?”

“I was in the middle of a job.”

“So was I.”

“But I wasn’t pregnant. Look, I’m sorry if you don’t care for double standards, but those with wombs are to be protected by those without. Especially if that womb happens to be occupied.”

“So if I hadn’t been pregnant, you wouldn’t have sent me away?”

Jack wiped a hand over his face. Dammit, he was digging this hole deeper and deeper, and she was about to start throwing dirt on top of him.

“Unfair. That’s one of those questions women ask like, ‘Do these pants make my butt look fat?’ If I say yes, I’m still in the doghouse, and if I say no, you’re going to assume I’m lying.”

“There are towels in the bathroom closet,” she said, nodding toward the downstairs hall. “And there’s a bed set up in the room on the left. You can sleep there tonight.” She turned and walked to the fridge. “Dinner’s in an hour.”

Jack hobbled through the hall door, entered the tiny bedroom on the left, and nearly dropped to his knees. The place was packed full of baby things. A crank-up swing, a car seat, toys, tiny clothes, and colorful little blankets were stacked to the ceiling on one side of the room, the single bed teeming with more baby stuff on the other.

Jack broke into a cold sweat. Holy hell, he was going to be a daddy.

Chapter Ten

C amry didn’t even try hiding her smile as she approached Jack’s bandaged hand with the sewing shears. She was beginning to understand why Megan had fallen for the guy. He was sort of endearing, she decided, her smile widening when she took a large snip of the shower-soaked gauze and Jack flinched.

“I really can do this myself,” he said, trying to take the scissors from her with his good hand.

Camry firmed her grip on his wrist and took another snip. “I can see what a great job you’ve been doing. Those are some mean-looking scars on your hands and wrists. They look like burn marks.” She stopped snipping and arched an inquiring brow. “Are they reminders not to tug on the devil’s tail?”

Jack turned his uninjured palm up to look at it, then slowly closed his hand into a fist and dropped it to his lap under the table. “No, they’re to remind me why I became a pacifist.”

She snorted. “How’s that been working for you?” She loosened the wet bandage. “So tell me, Jack, are you really half Canadian Cree?”

Camry looked up again to meet Jack’s assessing gaze. She had to agree with Megan that his size did make him approachable. Not that he was wimpy by any means. Jack Stone was compact, sculpted with obvious strength, and had sharp, intelligent, compelling blue eyes. Maybe Robbie could give him a couple of lessons in basic self-defense.

“My mother was a woodland Cree from Medicine Lake, Alberta.”

“And your father?”

“He was American, from Montana. They met at a Greenpeace rally in Vancouver.” He held up his good hand when she started to ask him another question. “Mom was a conservation agent working to get large logging concerns to practice sustainable harvesting, and Dad was a biochemist who was fed up with chemical farming practices,” he continued. “It was love at first sight for my father, but it took him three years to convince my mother that she couldn’t live without him.”