Nick let her come, fighting the urge to sink to his knees in gratitude.
“Where have you been, Nick Malone?” she asked, close enough that he could see the square points of her jaw and the perfect round apples of her high cheeks. “Never mind.” She threw herself at him.
“Oomph!” The impact of her body meeting his set him back a full step. When she wrapped him in a bear hug, he responded readily.
He’d needed to see her. He’d needed the sight of her like water.
“You said you’d be back yesterday.” Her voice sounded muffled against his shoulder.
“I did say that,” he acknowledged, unwilling to release her. Still, he set her back on her heels so she wouldn’t feel the slight quaver in the muscles of his arms. “We got hung up at the ruins.”
“Something bad?” she asked, her impossibly dark eyes clouding with apprehension.
He shook his head. “I lost track of time.”
Her brows came together as she zeroed in on his upper lip. “What happened there? Boxing match with a coyote?”
Before she could reach up to where blood stained the skin beneath his nose, he raised the dirty handkerchief again and swiped. “Nothing. Minor nosebleed.”
“Nick,” she said, gripping his shoulders as her gaze trekked across his face. “Are you okay? You look…”
“Fine,” he finished. “I’m fine.” He dismissed his headache, allowing a smile to play again across his lips. “You came looking for me?”
“You’re over twenty-four hours behind schedule. What else was I supposed to do?”
“You set out late,” he pointed out. “What if I was further up the trail? What if you lost the way? That’s easy, even with a map.”
“I would’ve found you,” she said stubbornly.
Dammit, she would have. “You should have waited till morning,” he advised.
“I brought a tent.”
“I didn’t know you had a tent,” he said, amused. “Can you pitch it?”
“I would’ve figured it out,” she claimed.
He didn’t give voice to his doubt. Seeing her silhouette pop over the hill had been like witnessing a miracle.
Her frown grew. She dug in her pocket, producing a clean handkerchief. “You’re a mess,” she said as she brought the cloth up to his nose.
He didn’t wave her away. Normally, the break from the real world did him well. As a paramedic, he rarely had any free time. While he loved his job and valued the relationships he’d built with coworkers, the firefighters who worked out of the same station, the medical personnel and the people he and his team had helped through the years, sometimes he longed for the solace of nature—for forest, mountain, desert terrain… He was an adventurer at heart, just like his father.
This year, however, something was different. He hadn’t realized how much until he’d seen her. While she wiped his skin clean, he tried not to breathe her scent too deep. He tried not to dwell on the beauty mark near the corner of her left eye or the silver chain that disappeared underneath the unbuttoned vee of her shirt. Even in nature, Haseya Colton liked a little shine.
The flash of metal stood out against her dusky skin. He saw the faint dewy tinge of perspiration at the hollow of her throat and tried to ignore the stir beneath his navel he’d managed to mute for the better part of their friendship.
“There,” she said, satisfied, pocketing the handkerchief once more. She tilted her head, narrowing her eyes in an intuitive manner so like her mother, Bly Colton, it was striking. “Something’s wrong.”
He attempted to swallow. The muscles of his throat refused to work again. “Got any water?”
Her eyes widened. “You ran out ofwater?”
Embarrassment flustered him. He shrugged his pack off his shoulders, letting it slide to the ground. Never mind his advanced hiker status. He was a medic. He knew what the human body required and what happened when it lacked proper fluids. More, he knew Dark Canyon Wilderness. He knew it almost as well as the pattern of spots on Riot’s hide. Its long stretches without water were no stranger to him. He should’ve known he wasn’t packing enough for him and Riot. “I’ve got some left.”Not enough.
She, too, shrugged off her pack and pulled out her thermos. “Here.”
He wrapped his fingers around it, dipping his head gratefully to her. “Ahéhee,” he said—“thank you” in her mother’s native tongue.
