“So you don’t have to carry it. You’re welcome.” He disappeared around a bend.
“But it has my phone. And my wallet, and my water, and everything else I need…and you’re gone.”
Jodie tried to get up but the second she put any weight on her ankle, she buckled in pain and fell.
“Shit! Shit-shit-shit!”
She had no way to call anyone, no water, no food, and she was eight miles from civilization. They hadn’t seen anyone else on the trail all day.
Jodie sat on the ground with her sprained ankle and the afternoon light shifting through the aspens and the very clear understanding that she was going to need to be stronger than this if she ever wanted to get down off this mountain.
“Okay, self-rescuing princess it is.”
She was trying to decide between attempting to hop downhill for seven-ish miles or just scooting on her butt when she heard footsteps on the trail below her.
“Hello? Is someone there?”
Mac came around the bend.
Thomas MacAllister of Alberta, Canada. A year and a half at Watchdog Mountain Division, recruited by Kyle, who had made some joke about never expecting to employ a real Mountie that Mac had clearly heard seventeen thousand times and still smiled at politely. He was tall, had an incredible build, and just radiated warmth.
But beyond all that goodness, it was his attitude that got her every time. He was kind and curious and friendly. Some people were wired to be suspicious of everything, but Mac had apparently been wired to find the world genuinely interesting and the people in it worth his time.
On the days he didn’t have a principal to guard, he walked past her desk in the morning coming in and in the evening goingout, and he always smiled when he greeted her, and he was like that with everyone, which was the whole problem.
She wasn’t special. She was just Jodie the receptionist. Which was just fine with her.
Except when it came to him. She wanted Mac toseeher for once.
Well, he sure could see her now, sitting on the trail and looking pathetic.
“Jodie? Is that you?”
“Hey, Mac. Fancy meeting you here.”
He jogged up to her, crouched down, looked at her ankle, and then looked at her face.
“Oof. That looks unpleasant.”
“It is.”
“What happened?”
“I got mugged by a tree root.” She pointed to the root sticking up that he had almost unconsciously avoided as he’d jogged up to her.
He nodded once. “Yup, they will do that.”
Then without saying another word, he tucked one arm behind Jodie’s knees and one behind her back and stood up with her.
Jodie grabbed his shoulder out of pure reflex and found herself approximately four feet off the ground, cradled against the chest of a man she’d been trying not to think about for the better part of a year.
Well, she thought.This is fine. Everything is fine.
“I can probably hop,” she said.
“For seven, eight miles?”
“Possibly. It’s downhill.”
