He had a roaring bonfire going in less than ten minutes, and five minutes later Megan was showing signs of thawing. Jack took his first painless breath in thirty minutes, and the knot in his gut started to loosen. But only a little. Because they were without transportation in the middle of nowhere, and had no phone, no food or shelter, and only one set of dry clothes between them.

The food and shelter he could deal with readily enough; it was the transportation that bothered him. Though he could keep Megan warm and even comfortable, he would prefer to get her home sooner rather than later.

“Oh my God. The baby,” she whispered.

Jack looked up from stoking the fire to see her hugging her stomach. “Are you having cramps?” he asked, unzipping the ski bib. He reached in and splayed his hand across the bare skin of her belly, relieved to discover she was no longer dangerously chilled.

“N-no. But what if…what if the cold water hurt the baby?”

He crawled behind her so that she was sitting between his thighs facing the fire, placed his hand on her belly again, and pulled her back against his chest. “The cold didn’t hurt the baby, Megan. He’s very well insulated, and you weren’t in the water long enough to bring your core temperature down that far.” He rested his cheek against hers. “Besides,” he added with a forced chuckle, “with his genetic heritage, he probably just considered this a refreshing dip in the lake.”

“You can’t keep calling it a him,” she said, relaxing against him with a deep sigh. “I don’t want to get used to the idea that it might be a boy.”

Jack also sighed, knowing she was going to be okay. “Even if I have a hunch that it is?”

“There’s a 50 percent chance you’ll be disappointed.”

“Naw,” he whispered against her cheek. “My hunches are at least 90 percent on target.”

They fell silent after that, staring into the fire, soaking in its life-sustaining warmth. Jack felt as if it had been a hundred years since he’d held Megan like this. He was loath to move, partly because he was so damned relieved she was going to be okay, and partly because he was in no hurry to head back onto the lake. But they really did need the survival gear in the saddlebags.

“I have to leave you for a few minutes. Will you be okay?”

She tilted her head back onto his shoulder to look up at him. “Where are you going?”

“To get some of our stuff.”

She turned in his embrace to face him. “It’s too dangerous. Wait until morning, when you can see what you’re doing.”

“We’re twelve hours away from daylight, and the temperature’s going to drop below zero tonight. We need the survival gear on your sled.”

She clutched his shoulder. “My sled’s under water, Jack!”

“It’s probably only nine or ten feet deep next to that ledge. And I noticed that your survival gear is in a dry sack. I’m betting there’s at least one sleeping bag in there, some food, and possibly a radio.”

“One frozen person is enough for tonight. You can’t take care of me if you’re a block of ice yourself.”

“I’ll strip off and be in and out in two minutes flat. I’ve done it before. If I have dry clothes to put on, I’ll be fine.”

“No.”

Seeing that she was recovered enough to argue with him, Jack peeled himself away from her and stood up. He walked over and pushed the two half-rotted logs he’d dragged from the woods deeper into the fire. “Any other suggestions, then?”

“Yes. We sit right here, keep the fire roaring, and we wait. Trust me, they’ll be looking for us before daybreak.”

“Not here. We’re still four or five miles north of where we should be.”

“They’ll use a plane to scour the lake, and they’ll see our smoke.”

“You’ll be well on your way to developing pneumonia by morning if I don’t get you settled into a sleeping bag in some sort of shelter.”

“No.”

“And then there’s that…whatever the hell we saw. We need our guns.”

“You can get your gear, but you are not going after my stuff.”

He stood up. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

“Jack,” she growled, stretching out his name to emphasize her warning. “If something happens to you, then I’m stuck out here alone. I don’t even have boots. If you die, I die, too. Along with our baby,” she tacked on for good measure.

“Believe me, I understand the consequences. I’ll bring back your boots and suit and get them dried out.” He pointed toward where he’d hung her wet clothes on a branch. “As soon as something is dry enough, put it on.”

He walked onto the lake. “If an hour goes by and I’m not back,” he called, “then you may worry. But not before.”

“It doesn’t take an hour to walk out there and back!”

“I’m going to see if I can free my sled. You just concentrate on keeping warm so our son doesn’t catch a cold.”

Our son. He liked the sound of that.

Chapter Fifteen

D amn him, he was going after her gear! She knew it because he hadn’t actually promised that he wouldn’t—apparently thinking that if he didn’t lie to her, she might start trusting him again.

He’d obviously forgotten about lies of omission.

Megan settled back on the bed of fir boughs he had made after he’d built the fire, and opened his jacket to feel the heat on her neck and chest. She cupped her belly in her hands. “Oh, baby,” she whispered. “I nearly killed us both trying to avoid that…that thing. No, make that all three of us, because Jack would have died trying to save you and me.”

She scooted closer to the fire. “So what do you think?” she asked her belly. “Is Jack Stone the sort of man we want in our lives? I think he really does love me.” She patted her belly. “He definitely loves you. I can’t count the times I’ve caught him staring at my stomach. You’d think he’s never seen a pregnant woman before.”

She picked up a stick and poked at the fire. “He said he used to have a brother—is he dead, or are they just estranged?” She unzipped the bib of her ski pants, hoping it would help her bra dry. “He must have died, if Jack wants to name you after him. I was planning to name you after my uncle Ian if you’re a boy, but maybe we can compromise. Are you feeling cozy in there, baby, like your daddy said?”

Could a fetus even catch a cold, or had Jack only been trying to distract her? Megan leaned to the side and looked out at the lake again. She could just make out the position of his sled because the moon was reflecting off its windshield. She couldn’t, however, see any shadow moving around it.

A violent shiver wracked her at the thought of Jack trying to retrieve her gear. That water was so numbingly cold, and she’d come so close to dying. She’d been so surprised when that…that…

What in hell was that creature? It had looked like a dragon. But they were reptilian, not amphibious, weren’t they? She snorted, settling back in front of the fire and picking up the stick again. “They aren’t either, you crazy woman, because dragons do not exist.”

Unless…

Kenzie! He’d seen the creature, too! Hell, he’d been close enough to catch its odor. She had smelled the same rank odor on his clothes that she’d smelled in the air tonight, just before she’d hit the water. Which meant Kenzie did have something to do with whatever was breaking into the shops in town.

And he was probably the man who had attacked Jack that night; the guy Robbie had chased off. Then Robbie had followed his tracks and would have caught up with him—which meant her cousin also knew what was going on.

It was the damn magic. It had to be.

Kenzie had been a panther for the last three years, before Winter and Matt had turned him back into a man on the winter solstice. So why couldn’t the magic conjure up a dragon? Hell, it could turn the sky green if it had a mind to. Providence—which was the real force behind the magic—was even capable of creating an entirely new tree of life, which it had done by combining Matt’s oak and Winter’s pine. A dragon was mere child’s play!