Page 27 of Lost With You
He grinned. “Well done.”
“Are you up for a game?”
His ribs tightened. “Depends on the stakes.”
“We’renotplaying for chips. Or money.” She pulled the cards out of the case and started shuffling. “For entertainment only. What card games do you know? Crazy eights? Gin rummy?”
Don’t say it, dude.
“Go fish?” she prompted. “War?”
He said, “Strip poker?”
He knew he was spitting in the wind. But he needed some acknowledgment that he wasn’t the only one using every mind trick in the book to kill the urge to share his body with her.
Her eyes narrowed, glinting with mischief. “High hopes, huh?”
Getting higher by the minute.
“It would be wiser to play something less dangerous.” With a flick of a hand, she began to deal. “Like go fish.”
He sighed loud enough to be dramatic as he gathered the cards, but he couldn’t say he was disappointed. The earth hadn’t moved beneath their writhing bodies, but he sensed a shift in the air between them.
Most definitely in his favor.
CHAPTER NINE
Ten Days Out
Casey stepped out of the canoe and splashed into the shallows. Theewfactor of the soft riverbed hardly registered as she yanked one foot and then the other out of the mud. On dry land, she slowed to a stop and glanced around the small clearing, fringed with pine trees. It looked the same as every other place they’d camped. After too many miles to count and still no sight of Owl’s Head Rock, Dylan had made an executive decision to change tactics. They’d backtracked down the river and then paddled up the fork they hadn’t chosen earlier. For the last two hours, they’d been paddling under a misting rain not quite hard enough to warrant pitching a daytime tent.
Swaying on her feet, she felt like a wet rag, squeezed tight. Everything was damp—her clothes, her hair, her spirits. How could Dylan, rakishly unshaven and mud-splashed, still look so hot?
“How fast,” he said as he tied the canoe’s tow rope to a sapling, “do you think we could set up camp?”
“Last time, you pitched it in eight minutes flat.” She pulled the hem of her T-shirt up to wipe the mist from her face. “As for a fire…that’s not going to happen today.”
“True.” He averted his gaze from the wink of her navel. “Let’s get the tent set up, but only the tent. We can unload the camp stove and everything else later.”
Her shoulders sagged. “Why the delay?” She was jonesing for hot coffee.
“We still have a few hours of daylight.” He pulled the muddy tent bag from the canoe and strode to a pitch site. “We should spend it reconnoitering.”
She grimaced at the thought of traipsing through the dripping woods. “Reconnoiter what, exactly?”
“That outcropping we passed about a quarter mile back.” He dropped to his knees and unzipped the soft case to retrieve the stakes. “We’ll see more of the landscape from up there and maybe even the Owl’s Head landmark.”
“But your Pops said it was visible from the river.”
“It’s been eight, nine decades. I’m adjusting expectations.” He yanked out the waterproof tent and spread it wide. “Dig out your hiking boots while I pitch the tent.”
Suppressing a sigh, she pulled her backpack from where she’d stowed it in the prow, though it felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. A buckle caught on the edge of the seat. Once free of that barrier, the pack dragged between the pinch of two plastic bins of stowed rations. She finally yanked it loose, but she didn’t feel any freer for it. A creeping restlessness had partnered with her weariness today. She and Dylan weren’t moving forward at all, with all this retreading of familiar territory. She hated being stuck in place.
There was more than one reason why she lived in a van.
“Dylan.” She dropped the pack where it lay and sank a hip against the gunwale of the canoe. “I’ll sit out this trek.”
He pinned her with a keen-eyed look. “You’re flagging.”
