“Do they still live in Medicine Lake?”

He shook his head. “They died in an auto accident when I was nine.”

“Oh. Sorry,” she muttered, turning her attention back to his hand. “So who raised you after that?”

“My maternal great-grandfather, for the most part. We lived just outside of Medicine Lake until he died when I was fifteen.”

Camry looked up. “Then where did you go?”

“I finished raising myself. When I was twenty I joined the Canadian Air Force, but after four years I decided I wasn’t warrior material,” he said, darting a glance toward the kitchen where Megan was putting the finishing touches on dinner. “I kicked around Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal for another couple of years, working different jobs. Then one summer when I was visiting Medicine Lake, I found out that a friend’s sixteen-year-old daughter had run away from home, and I offered to find her.”

“Did you?”

Jack nodded, his eyes lighting with satisfaction. “Had her back home in less than three weeks.”

Intrigued, Camry also glanced toward the kitchen to see if her sister was listening—which she obviously was. Megan had her back to them, but she was perfectly still.

“Where’d you find the girl?” Cam asked.

“In Vancouver, living with a young man she’d run off with.”

“And you talked her into going home?”

“She had realized her mistake within days of landing in Vancouver; her boyfriend was a jerk and they were living in a crack house. She didn’t know how to call her parents and ask if she could come home.” He shot Camry a crooked grin. “Curiosity might get a person in trouble, but it’s usually pride that keeps them there.”

“So you found out you had a knack for tracking down runaways, and you turned it into a profession?”

“Something like that.”

“How do you go about finding those kids?”

“Personal experience,” he said evenly. “I ran away from half a dozen foster homes before I went to live with my great-grandfather.”

“When you were only nine?”

Jack finished unwrapping the bandage himself. “I was trying to get to Grand-père in Medicine Lake. I didn’t know he was fighting the courts for custody for me.”

“Why wouldn’t they give him custody? He was family.”

“He was also eighty years old at the time.”

“But he eventually won?”

“Only because after a year of arguing with the courts, he up and stole me from the foster home I was staying at. He took me to live deep in the forest until he died. When I came walking out of the woods alone, social services got their hands on me again and took me back to Edmonton. Not that I stayed long; I simply disappeared again.”

Camry gaped at him. He’d been running away since he was nine years old? She flinched when the oven door suddenly slammed shut. Jack grabbed his crutches, stood up and scooped the tape and gauze off the table, then hobbled into the downstairs bedroom without saying another word.

Camry turned in her seat to find her sister glaring at her. “What?” she asked quietly.

“Please tell me you don’t believe one word of that,” Megan hissed.

“Nobody could make something like that up, Meg. It’s too heart-wrenching.”

“You can’t honestly believe that a nine-year-old child would run off on his own like that.”

“But what if he did? Can you imagine what he went through, and how scared he was? And then his great-grandfather died. He must have had to bury him all by himself. And then he walked out of the woods, alone again.”

“He made it up, Cam. He’s trying to gain our sympathy.”

“What if it’s true?”

“Okay, what if it is?” Megan raised her chin defensively. “What does his childhood have to do with anything?”

Cam stood up and walked over to the counter in order to look her sister directly in the eye. “You and your baby are it, Meg. The two of you are the only family he’s got.”

Megan cringed away. “Whose side are you on?”

Cam took hold of her shoulders. “Yours. I’m on your side, sis. But can’t you see why he’s come here? He’s looking for a family of his own.”

“But how can I trust him?” Megan whispered. “He’s done nothing but lie to me since we met.”

“You do what any smart woman does,” Cam said. “You have him investigated. And if Jack’s story doesn’t check out, then you get Winter to turn him into a toad.”

“And if it does check out?”

Camry sighed. “That’s your call. But you heard the man; our pride is what usually keeps us in trouble. You and the baby are the ones who will have to live with your decision.”

Jack was unsure whether he was helping his cause or hurting it. The abbreviated version of his childhood had bothered Megan for some reason, yet it may have nudged her sister closer to his camp.

He pushed his empty plate away and leaned back in his chair with satisfaction. Who knew Megan could cook? The university funding the tundra study had provided a meal tent, and it had never occurred to him that she might have a domestic side. Not that he’d been thinking of hearth and home when he’d met her; he had been focused only on experiencing that passion she exuded like an elixir.

Thank God she’d been thinking along those same lines, albeit light-years ahead of him. Now, though, she was acting as if she wished the ground would open up and swallow him whole. She had spoken maybe three sentences toward him during the entire meal, delivered with an aloof politeness.

He did learn that she was conducting an environmental study for a man named Mark Collins, whom neither woman appeared to know much about. The majority of the conversation had been about Camry’s work. Ion propulsion was going to put Earth on the cosmic map, apparently, once Camry figured out how to stabilize the stuff.

What must the MacKeage household be like when all seven daughters and their scientist mother got together? Jack was gaining a whole new respect for Greylen MacKeage, considering his own head was still spinning from a conversation that had quite literally been out of this world.

“We should hurry up, Meg. I’ll clear the table and pack the dishwasher,” Camry offered, gathering up the plates. “You go to the baby’s room and decide how you want to arrange it before everyone gets here.”

“You have company coming?” Jack asked, also getting to his feet.

“Just Mom and Elizabeth and Chelsea,” Camry told him, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “And Daddy.”

Jack froze as he was reached for his crutches.

“Actually, it’s good that you’re here,” she continued, rinsing the plates in the sink. “You can entertain Daddy while we work on the baby’s room.”

Holy hell! “Maybe I should head over to my house. I don’t want to be in the way.”

Camry straightened from putting the plates in the dishwasher. “You won’t be in the way, Jack. Besides, when I ran over to get you some clean clothes, your house was cold. It can’t be more than fifty degrees in there.”

The perfect excuse! “Then I should go start a fire so the pipes don’t freeze.” At the sound of a giggle, Jack turned and found Megan with her hand over her mouth, her eyes shining with amusement. “What?” he snapped, forgetting he was trying to get back in her good graces.

“Nothing,” she said, making a futile attempt to stifle her smile. “I’m just remembering a conversation my family had over Christmas vacation. Your great-grandfather didn’t happen to be a Cree chief, did he?”

“Because our father is probably going to call you Chief,” Camry stated, also laughing at their little joke, which he seemed to be the brunt of. “To show his respect.”

“Grand-père wasn’t a chief,” he growled. “He was a shaman.”

Jack wanted to kick himself the moment he saw Megan’s reaction. She went perfectly still, her face blanching to the color of new snow.

Hell. What woman wouldn’t love hearing the child she was carrying descended from shamans?

“He—he practiced the magic?” Camry squeaked.