Because she was a softhearted sap, that’s why.

Megan zoomed past a lone ice fisherman tending his traps, gave him a wave, and aimed her sled toward a well-traveled path leading to shore. She slowed down to maneuver over the rough transition from lake to solid ground, then glided up the winding spur to the ITS trail.

Maine had an amazing Interstate Trail System that took advantage of many of the unused logging roads in the winter. These virtual highways were proudly maintained by local clubs, to the point that they were nearly as wide and often smoother than their automobile counterparts.

They were definitely faster.

Megan stopped at an intersection, looked for sled traffic before turning north onto the ITS trail, and accelerated to thirty-five miles per hour. She noted Jack still in her mirror, and wondered how he liked taking second place. When a man owned a snowmobile engineered to attack the trails at speeds in excess of ninety miles per hour, that usually meant he had a lead dog mentality. Did Jack?

Of course he did. He’d bought that chick magnet, hadn’t he?

Good Lord! Did he see her as some fluffy snow bunny who would swoon over a man riding a cherry red rocket?

Naw. Jack knew her better than that.

Was he afflicted with little-man syndrome, then?

Megan snorted. Jack might be several inches shorter than the men in her family, but he sure as heck didn’t appear to be trying to prove anything to anyone. Getting beaten up three days in a row—including Camry’s pie in his face!—wasn’t exactly impressive.

Megan caught herself gaining speed and realized her sense of urgency was coming from her bladder. Darn. Only half an hour into their trip, and already she had to pee. She drove until she found a little-used spur going off to the right, went up it a few hundred yards, then pulled to the edge of the trail and shut off her machine.

Jack pulled up directly behind her. Megan took off her helmet, climbed off her sled, and walked back to his. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said. “Shut off your engine so we can hear if anyone is coming down the trail.”

He took off his helmet, frowned at her, and said, “How come you didn’t take care of that before we left?”

“I did. You try riding around with a baby sitting on your bladder.”

His eyes dropped to her belly and his frown reversed to a lopsided grin. “Oh. I hadn’t thought about that.” He reached out to turn the key on his snowmobile, but stopped and looked at her. “Are you sure it’s okay to just shut if off? Shouldn’t I let the engine idle for a few minutes, so I don’t damage something?”

Megan reached over to shut off his sled. “It’s the other way around, Jack. If you let a powerful engine like this one idle too long, it can overheat. You grew up in Medicine Lake, so how come you don’t know anything about snowmobiles?”

“Grand-père was old school. We snowshoed wherever we wanted to go. I did get a snowmobile when I was sixteen, but it was older than I was and broke down within a month. I think it’s still sitting in the woods thirty miles north of Medicine Lake.”

“You told Camry and me that your great-grandfather died when you were fifteen, and that you got hauled off by human services after that.”

“I also said that I ran away again.” He grinned up at her. “Since they hadn’t found me the first time around, I headed straight back to where Grand-père and I had been living. The people of Medicine Lake diverted the social workers looking for me, and gave me odd jobs so I could support myself. That’s how I got the sled. I bartered it for some doctoring.”

Megan narrowed her eyes at him. “You also said you didn’t inherit your great-grandfather’s gift.”

“But I did inherit his herbs. And I’d gone with him whenever he tended the sick, so I knew the drill.” He shrugged. “People just assumed his gift had passed down to me. And the way I saw it, having fresh eggs to eat in the middle of winter was damn well worth praying over someone.”

“My God, you were a con artist, deceiving sick people.”

“No, Megan, I was just a kid trying to survive. Go on, go to the bathroom,” he softly told her, waving toward a thick patch of bushes.

Megan turned and walked into the woods, unzipping her suit with a scowl. Confound it! She was not going to feel bad for calling him a con artist, no matter how wounded he’d looked. It was a wonder lightning hadn’t shot from the sky and struck him dead. Even idiots knew better than to mess with the magic.

Still, shame washed over her, making her feel like she’d just kicked a puppy. She couldn’t imagine not having the security and love of her family. What would she have done, how hard would she have fought to survive, if she had been orphaned at nine, raised by an old man who probably needed more looking after than she did, and then been orphaned again at fifteen?

Heck, Jack literally had raised himself.

Safely out of sight of the trail, Megan tramped down a place in the snow. She slid her suit down to her knees, sat down on top of it, and pulled off her boots so she could take the suit completely off. She stuffed her feet back in her boots, dug around in her pocket for a tissue, then dropped her pants and long johns to her knees with a sigh. This was so much easier for men!

“I’m beginning to hope you’re a boy,” she told her baby, cradling her belly while leaning against a tree to support her back. “And I won’t mind if you want to write your name in the snow.”

A full five minutes later, huffing and puffing as she wrestled her snowsuit back on over her layers of clothes, she heard Jack call out, “Everything okay back there?”

“Just peachy!” she shouted.

She growled under her breath when she heard him chuckle, and swore out loud when she had to put her foot down in the snow to keep from falling. She plopped down and brushed her sock clean before pulling on her boot with a sigh. It was going to be a long day.

Jack handed her a bottle of water when she returned to the sleds. “I prefer hot cocoa,” she told him. “You said you’d bring some.”

“In the interest of not slowing us down with bathroom breaks, I thought you should limit your cocoa intake, since it contains caffeine. But you need water so you don’t dehydrate, which can happen fast in winter.”

“You don’t need to lecture me on winter survival,” she said, shoving the bottle at him and stomping back to her sled. She picked up her helmet and took a calming breath. “I’m pretty sure this spur circles back onto the ITS trail in three or four miles. We might as well continue on it, since this whole area is part of the watershed I’m studying.”

“You’re just pretty sure it circles back?”

She glared at him. “I won’t get us lost.”

“Still, I think I’ll leave a trail of bread crumbs.” He pulled his own helmet down over his head, effectively shutting her out.

Megan sat down on her sled and turned the key, then shot up the narrow spur. The man obviously had no sense of adventure.

She drove eight or nine miles before she started thinking she might have to eat crow. The trail wasn’t going in the direction she thought it would; it was taking them northeast.

She came to another intersection and stopped. Should she go right or left? Even though left was east and she wanted to head west to get back on track, tote roads could be deceiving. Why weren’t these stupid trails marked?

Jack walked up to her sled and flipped up his shield. “I vote we go right,” he told her loudly, to be heard over their idling engines.

“Why? That’s east. We want to go west to get back to the lake.”

“Just a hunch.”

Megan looked around. Directly in front of them was a small mountain, though she wasn’t sure which one. She looked left and right, but both directions showed only a short piece of the trail, since it was winding through dense forest. She looked back at Jack. “And if I think we should go left?”