“Oh God,” she groaned. “What am I going to tell Jack?”

The man wasn’t blind; he had seen exactly what she had, and eventually he was going to want to talk about it. That creature was breaking into the town shops, so wouldn’t Jack want to let the citizens know he was closing in on the culprit?

Speaking of which, why was it breaking into the shops? It had only stolen doughnuts and candy bars, according to what Jack and Camry had said. But it had looked like it was eating a fish tonight, when it had suddenly appeared in her headlights. Had it been using the open water next to the ledge as a fishing hole? She’d have to check that out first thing in the morning, before they were rescued.

Okay, she needed a plan. She was going to have to persuade Jack that what they’d seen was some sort of anomaly, like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster. Yeah, she’d tell him that Pine Lake was so vast and deep, it had its very own mystery creature.

But she didn’t have anything to back up her story. There hadn’t been any other reported sightings, and the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot were well-established, ongoing legends.

Maybe she could imply the creature was new to the area. She snorted. Yeah, she could just see herself saying, “Isn’t this exciting? We’re the first ones to sight it! We’ll make the national news!”

No, the quieter they kept this, the better. Her father and uncles had managed to keep the magic a secret for nearly forty years, and her generation had to continue keeping it a secret. She’d just have to persuade Jack that they shouldn’t speak to anyone about what they saw tonight; not even anyone in her family. It would be their little secret.

He might go for that, if he thought sharing a secret would bring the two of them closer together.

Megan checked her clothes on the branches and discovered that her turtleneck and silk top were dry, but that her sweater still had a long way to go. She slipped off her jacket and slid the bib of Jack’s pants off her shoulders, then decided to take off her bra since the back elastic wasn’t drying. She pulled the two jerseys on over her head, rezipped the bib, and slipped back into the jacket. She’d already taken off the shirt he had wrapped around her head, and she turned it on the branch so the back would dry, sure he would need it when he returned.

She crawled past the fire enough to see the lake again. How long had he been gone? Twenty minutes? Half an hour? And how in hell was she supposed to rescue him without her boots?

Megan sat back and eyed the bottoms of the ski pants she was wearing. They were made of thick leather and were long enough that she could tie the ends closed and walk with her feet inside them. She gazed around camp trying to spot something to tie them with, that wouldn’t break after only ten steps.

Her bra! She could use the straps.

She snatched the bra off the branch and tried ripping a strap off one of the cups. That wasn’t happening. She looped it over her foot and pulled, but the only thing that ripped was the satin cup. She searched for a couple of rocks, then had to use a stick to free them from the frozen ground. She set the end of the strap on one rock and beat it with the other.

“Come on, you stupid thing,” she growled, pounding the double-stitched material. “I have to go save Jack.”

It was a good thing she was only a C cup; anything bigger would probably be quadruple-stitched! Figuring she’d mangled the material enough to weaken it, she looped it over her foot again and pulled. It gave with a sudden tear that sent her flying backward.

She scrambled upright and did the same to the other strap, then pounded the tiny metal rings on the back until they broke. She finally dangled the freed straps in front of her. “Am I my father’s daughter, or what?” she said proudly. “I should have my own ‘Survivor-woman’ show on the Discovery Channel!”

She was just leaning forward to tie the bottom of her pants closed when she heard Jack approaching at a hurried pace. Megan shoved the straps in her pocket, grabbed her mangled bra and looked around, then simply tossed it in the fire. She lay down on the bed of fir boughs and closed her eyes, sleepily fluttering them open when he strode into camp.

“That didn’t take long,” she said, stretching with a fake yawn, watching him drop his heavy load of gear.

He hunched down in front of the fire and held his hands to its warmth, glancing at her out the corner of his eye. Yup, his hair was soaked and had started to freeze, and every inch of visible skin was covered with goose bumps.

“Did you fall in the slush? Your hair’s wet,” she pointed out, ignoring the fact that his clothes were dry.

He stiffened. “No.” He pushed a log deeper into the flames a bit more roughly than necessary.

A blind man couldn’t miss her dry sack sitting on the ground, even though he’d tried to hide it by throwing her wet snowsuit on top. Then again, maybe he was grumpy because he was freezing.

“Did you remember the cocoa?”

He gave her a suspicious glance, then reached under her wet snowmobile suit, pulled out the Thermos, and tossed it to her. He picked up several more sticks and shoved them in the fire, only to suddenly stop in mid-shove. He used the stick in his hand to lift something out of the flame, which he held up between them.

Megan realized it was the charred remains of her bra. She snapped her head around to look up at the branch the clothes were hanging on. “Well, jeez,” she said in disgust, looking back at her bra with a frown. “It must have fallen into the fire.”

Jack eyed the distance from the branch to the fire, then lifted one brow, implying the bra would have needed wings to reach that far.

Megan opened the Thermos and drank directly from it, then wiped her mouth with the sleeve of Jack’s leather jacket. “Can you get your sled unstuck?”

“Not without a block and tackle and two hundred yards of rope,” he said, still eyeing her suspiciously.

It was killing him that she wasn’t reading him the riot act—she’d have to remember this strategy in the future.

“I went after your survival gear,” he growled.

“Was the water very deep?”

He eyed her again. “Just over my head.”

Megan took off his jacket. “Here, slip this on. It’s already warmed up.”

“No, you keep it.”

“I’m actually starting to feel hot,” she countered, tossing it to him. She turned and pulled his shirt off the branch and tossed that at him, too. “Wipe your hair dry. And if you hand me the dry sack, I’ll see what goodies we have.”

He pulled the liners out of her soggy boots and set them beside the fire to dry, then stood up, picked up her snowsuit, and draped it over another branch, then he finally set the dry sack beside her. He slipped into his jacket and obediently started wiping his hair with his shirt.

Megan took pity on him; he was cold and tired, and adding tension to that mix was cruel. “Look, I know we needed my gear if we have to spend the night out here. I…I just didn’t want anything to happen to you,” she whispered, feeling her face flush—and not due to the roaring fire.

He stopped wiping his hair.

She shrugged, hoping to appear more nonchalant than she felt. “I guess I’ve gotten used to having you around this past week.”

“I’m not going away, Megan.”

“I know.”

He came over and sat beside her on the boughs, taking her hands and holding them in his. “I need to talk to you about what I said that day I sent you away.”

She tried to pull back, but he held firm.

“I didn’t mean it, Megan. I’d walk through the fires of hell before I’d ask you to do that.”

“I know.”

“What do you mean, you know?”

“I figured that out about five minutes after my plane took off. I was looking down at the nesting sites we’d been working together, and realized that anyone who handled those goslings and eggs the way you did wouldn’t ask me to end my pregnancy.”