Kate pondered the question before lowering her eye to the viewfinder once more. “I thought the soundtrack to The Little Mermaid was one of my better efforts.”
“That was pretty rough…although I prefer it over Mariah Carey. At least the way you sing it.”
Kate made herself sound more exasperated than she was. “Can I help you with something, Ty?”
“Don’t you miss the van? I do.”
She sighed. “I don’t know what I miss the most…the Naugahyde ripping the skin off the backs of my thighs in the Mexican heat, the leak above the passenger seat. The way it broke down every five thousand miles so we had to sleep in the back.”
“Don’t forget the mysterious latex smell,” Ty added.
“It’ll still be there when we get back to L.A. For now I’m actually enjoying having a vehicle with a working radio for a change.”
“Well, not me.” Ty fell silent a few moments as Kate resumed filming, then she felt him toying with her short ponytail. “You fancy a snowball fight?” he asked. “I’ll give you first throw.”
“Please go back to work, Ty. Get me twenty more minutes of commentary. We need to pack up in an hour, anyhow. Do your MacGyver challenge.”
He gave her ponytail a final flick before he left her, tromping back toward the campsite, belting out Los Lobos. She shook her head. It was like herding toddlers some days, though to be fair, once the work was done, she was just as bad. All the time she’d spent traveling with Ty had brought out facets of her personality she hadn’t even known were there. He saw her at her stinkiest and bitchiest and least lovable, and he still stuck around, totally unfazed. It was the closest thing to unconditional love she’d ever known.
A few minutes later Kate clicked the camera off and headed back to camp to find Ty crouching a few paces from a tripod, addressing the mic. She checked to make sure her shadow wasn’t about to creep into his shot then tiptoed around him to get to her pack. He was good. When the camera was on, Ty could ignore her presence like she wasn’t even there.
“…and ptarmigans and some larger rodents, although as you’ve noticed, I haven’t been so lucky. Let’s pretend I was, though, for the sake of storytelling—let me show you another way to make a fire. We’ve got some decent sun right now, so I want to try something with that disposable camera the crew included in my little arsenal.” He abandoned the shot to gather a few things, returning to show their future audience how to smash up a cheap point-and-click to get the lens out and use it to ignite the cardboard housing.
Kate walked over as he wrapped the segment. “Very nice. See how fun it is to do your job?”
“Thanks for the disposable.”
“That was an easy one,” she said. “Your MacGyver rating was only about a three.”
“You ought to be challenging me a bit more, then. Time to head to town?”
Kate consulted her waterproof watch. “Yeah. Let’s get packed up.”
The snowmobile team would arrive in short order to bring them back to the one-traffic-light-town they’d based the expedition in. They’d drop their stuff off at the motor court and go in search of dinner, and in just a few short hours the other Ty would come knocking. The thought made Kate shiver inside her more-than-adequately-warm coat.
2
“AH, CIVILIZATION.” Ty slid onto a bar stool beside Kate, relieved for a bit of padding under his frozen, beaten body. He sat on her right as always. She’d never told him exactly what had happened to her left ear, but he didn’t pry. Getting questioned about her childhood snapped Kate up tighter than a bear trap…and besides, Ty didn’t particularly fancy returning the favor. Secrets didn’t bother him. What he had with Kate was better. They lived in the present and took each other at face value.
He studied her in the red-and-blue glow of the beer signs and settled into the warmth, as easily as he settled into his friend’s company. He loved that about Kate—the comfort. Ty hadn’t felt that with anyone else, not girlfriends or drinking buddies or old college mates, not even his family, at least not since he’d been very young. But with Kate…effortless. Set loose in the current of their no-frills rapport, Ty was able to let go and simply drift.
She ordered a pint and a cheeseburger and Ty waved politely but dismissively at the bartender. He watched Kate grab some napkins, already preparing for her feast. Then Ty nudged her shoulder with his. “God, you’re mean.”
She turned to him, resting her elbow on the shiny wooden bar and her chin in her hand. “It’s your rule, Ty. No one told you you’re not allowed to eat.”
He shifted on his stool, trying to twist some of the achiness from his muscles. Saskatchewan was cold and damp and its early darkness made him miss Australia with a rare but tangible pang. Or maybe that was just his empty stomach. He looked at Kate. “Well, you’d think you might want to join me, you know, out of solidarity. Just once.”
“Don’t hold your breath, boss.”
“You know my idea for when we run out of places to film in the wild?” he asked, spinning a coaster around on the bar.
Her eyebrow rose. “That thing where you pose as a homeless person and survive for a week on the streets of Detroit?”
He shrugged. “Or Delhi, or Lagos. What d’you reckon? It’s sounding pretty good right now. At least I could go to a soup kitchen.” He picked up the coaster and balanced it on Kate’s head.
She gave a contemptuous snort. “Nobody’s going to fall for you as a homeless person.” She took the coaster off her head and poked his upper arm with it. “Not with triceps like those. And you can’t do an American accent to save your life. You sound like a South African Rocky Balboa.”
“I could get a voice coach.”
She shook her head. “No way.”
“What about my other idea, then? ‘Dom Tyler: Undercover in San Quentin. Survive This, Law-Abider!’ Prison food’s sounding pretty good right about now. Showers.”
“And shivs and gang wars and dropped soap? Forget it.”
The barman delivered Kate’s beer. She drew it close, sucking the foam off the top before picking up the glass, gazing over the rim at Ty with indulgent cruelty. Maybe it was his own maddening hunger, but every time she did that Ty couldn’t help but imagine it was the sort of look she’d give a man right after she tossed the handcuff keys all the way across the room.
She groaned with obscene satisfaction. “Damn, that’s good.”
“I’ll bet.” Ty offered her a smile that said he wasn’t finding her the least bit cute. And that was sort of true. She wasn’t cute. She was dead sexy.
Ty squinted at her as her French fries arrived. People called Kate cute all the time. She was petite, with the clearest, most luminous skin Ty had ever seen, like a face wash model. And shoulder-length dark brown hair, straighter and shinier than even a shampoo ad would dare to promise. Sure, she looked cute. Much the way a rabid kitten might seem adorable, right up until you made the mistake of petting it.
“What are you staring at, Ty? Do I have ketchup on my face?” She wiped a thumb over the corners of her mouth.
Cute… Ty knew better. He saw Kate when no one else was around, at all hours of the day and night, at her best and her worst. In dresses and heels at cocktail parties and in his own boxers and undershirt while her filthy clothes were drying by a bonfire in some godforsaken stretch of remote wilderness. Sexy. Sexy when she chased him down to exact her revenge for a well-aimed snowball to the face, sexy when she greeted him half-asleep, grudging smile framed behind the chain-lock of her motel room door at 3 a.m.
Kate’s burger arrived and she luxuriated in it, a cat in a sunbeam.
“I