“Thank you.”
“I won’t pry into your activities during your free time, but I expect the same amount of work out of you that I’ve always had.”
“You’ll get it. But I have an afternoon off coming, and I’d like to take it tomorrow.”
“Guess I don’t have to ask where you’ll be going.”
“No. And…I’d like to borrow a horse. If you can’t lend me one, I understand, but I—”
“You can borrow the damned horse.” Emmett sounded gruff. “Smudge can always use the exercise.”
“Thanks, Emmett.”
“You’re welcome. And if you have any more bright ideas regarding Pam, don’t keep them to yourself.”
Luke smiled. “I won’t.”
NAOMI HAD EXPECTED to toss and turn, but she slept great. She loved camping, but there was something to be said for a good innerspring. As she packed up for the hike back to the campsite, she thought about what likely would be happening there in the next few days and searched around for items she wouldn’t normally take camping.
Lacy underwear topped the list. Then she threw in a see-through nightgown that she’d never considered wearing while sleeping in a tent. She had a perfume bottle in her hand, ready to pack it, when she came to her senses.
Good grief, had she completely lost her mind? Fragrance of any kind was a no-no. She was in bear country, for God’s sake, not at a beach resort.
For that matter, she might want to forget the see-through nightgown, too. It was the sort of thing a woman wore when she emerged from the bathroom of a luxury suite and sashayed over to the king-size bed where her lover waited, his gaze hot. When two people were crammed into a small dome tent, transparent lingerie lost most of its impact.
With reality smacking her in the face, she pulled out her lacy underwear, too. She was doing field research on a nesting pair of eagles, not arranging a romantic tryst with the man of her dreams. Luke had suggested this arrangement after catching her at her rumpled worst. If she got all fancy on him, he might laugh.
Or worse yet, he might wonder if she was trying to snare him with her feminine wiles. Then he’d turn tail and run. He’d proposed a straightforward liaison where they both understood the parameters. Seductive clothing could easily send the wrong message.
Because she could cut cross-country to the campsite, her hike was only about five miles. Hiking always helped her think. As she walked, she examined her knee-jerk response to this situation with Luke.
She’d automatically reached for the accepted female lures—fragrance and suggestive clothing. She’d reacted as if she needed to make herself more desirable to him. Oh, yeah, Luke would have been suspicious of her motivation for doing that.
She was suspicious of her motivation. Before this affair started, she might want to search her conscience to make absolutely sure no hidden agenda existed. This relationship couldn’t be a bait and switch where she accepted his invitation to a no-strings affair and then subtly tried to bind him to her.
Hiking across a sunny meadow filled with sage and wildflowers, butterflies and songbirds, was perfect for soul-searching. She did a mental practice run through the scenario. For a few weeks, she would enjoy Luke’s company and his gorgeous body. They’d have great sex and watch the eagles together. She’d become used to having him around.
But the eagles would leave the nest. Luke had already said that was about the time he planned to head for parts unknown. She’d have to bid him goodbye without making a big deal out of it. Could she?
Well, of course she could. After she’d graduated from college and before starting her first job, she and some friends had spent the summer backpacking through Europe. They’d had an amazing time, but that trip had ended and the friends had scattered. They kept up through emails, but their summer of bonding was only a memory now.
Had she been sad when the trip had ended? Of course. Would she like the chance to do it again? Definitely. But that wasn’t possible. Everyone’s lives had taken different turns.
She vowed to think of this time with Luke that same way, minus the continued email connection. She doubted he’d want that. For the next few weeks, she’d pretend to be on vacation with Luke Griffin, her traveling companion on the road to sexual adventure.
Satisfied with her conclusions, she hurried toward the campsite. Fortunately it was as she’d left it. The tent was secure. After stowing her food supplies in a canvas sack attached to a pulley, she hoisted it out of bear reach. Then she opened the outside tent flaps to air it out and tucked her clean clothes in another canvas sack inside the tent.
At last she was ready to check on the eagles. With her computer, her camera and her binoculars in a smaller backpack, she climbed the ladder to her platform. Like an absent mother coming home to her children, she was eager to see what had happened to her charges while she’d been gone.
And like that same mother, when she looked through her binoculars and spotted the two nestlings, she was sure they appeared bigger than they had the day before. Her scientific self knew that one day wouldn’t have made much of a difference. Yet they seemed to be moving around more. The larger of the two lifted its fuzzy head and looked in her direction.
“Hi there,” she murmured with a smile. “Miss me?”
The nestling turned, giving her a profile view, and blinked.
“Someday you’re going to be a magnificent eagle with a snowy head and talons strong enough to grip a small deer. I won’t recognize you.”
She wouldn’t have any artificial means of tracking them, either. She agreed with the professor’s decision not to use telemetry to keep tabs on these birds after they left the nest. Radio tracking could help researchers learn about the eagles’ habits, but Naomi disliked anything that might interfere with their normal behavior.
Yet at times like these, when she felt a kinship with the creatures she’d been studying, she longed for a way to trace their journey after they left this meadow. She thought she’d be able to recognize the parents if they returned next spring. The male had a scar above his right eye, and the female was missing one toe on her left claw. But even if the babies came back here, too, they would have changed drastically by then.
Lowering the binoculars, she set up her folding table and camp stool. Then she turned on her computer and checked the webcam feed. She hadn’t updated Professor Scranton recently, so she sent him a report and received an immediate and grateful response.
The guy could easily be in his nineties, and he had done his share of fieldwork in his day, but now health issues prevented him from doing the research for his paper. He’d told Naomi that her information provided the energy boost he needed to keep writing.
Even so, he’d urged her to take breaks and not neglect her normal life while observing the eagles. She’d assured him that at the moment, she didn’t have a particularly exciting life and would be happy to spend most of her time focused on the nest and its occupants. Of course, that had been before Luke Griffin had ridden under her tree.
But Luke didn’t want her to drop everything for him, even if she’d been so inclined. He actively wanted her to be involved in her career, because that guaranteed she wouldn’t become needy. She began to see the sense in what he’d been trying to tell her. He was a man for the new breed of independent women, of which she was definitely one.
An eagle’s shrill cry caught her attention. Raising her binoculars, she watched the female glide into the nest with another fish in her talons. Feeding time. Naomi grabbed her digital camera and took several shots. Then, using