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“There you go. Keep doing that. It’s kinda important.”
“Yeah,” he gasped and forced himself to suck in air. “Kinda.”
Bree patted his cheek. “Do you want to take over? It’s wide open here. Good place to practice.”
He glanced down at the ice again. It seemed stable. Actually, solid as rock. He could do this. “All right. Yeah. Let’s do this.”
Bree hopped off the skids and walked around to the front of the sled. She climbed on. “I’ll be right up here if you need help. You have to trust them to find their way, but also know when they need help staying on track. It’s a balance. Remember gee, right. Haw, left. Easy to slow down. Whoa to stop. On by means to keep going. You’ll want to use it if we see any distractions, like fox or caribou. Diggy likes to chase them. And the command to go?”
He sucked in another breath, tightened his grip on the handlebar, and said, “Hike!”
The dogs shot forward, eight furry bullets. They had so much impressive power in their little bodies—Norte was the biggest dog at fifty-five pounds, Moonbeam the smallest at forty—and being at the helm of all that power was exhilarating. The wind sliced through his many layers and snow kicked up by the dogs pelted his face and he…
He didn’t care.
Suddenly the cold didn’t matter. Nor did the biting teeth of the snow. He wanted to see what these animals were capable of and kissed the air to signal faster. Aleu glanced back with unbridled glee in her blue eyes. Tongues lolled out in wild doggie grins.
He loved it.
He took them around the frozen lake several times, practicing the commands.
“Good! You’re a natural,” Bree shouted back to him. “Now take them west.” She pointed in the direction and he spotted a trail through the trees a half-second after the dogs did. Bree had said to trust them, so he let Aleu do what she did best—lead.
* * *
He really was a natural.He handled the team gracefully with the kind of intuition that only came from years spent working with—and loving—dogs. And he looked damn fine doing it. She couldn’t see any of his body under all the layers, but it didn’t matter. The way he looked standing on the skids, the way his deep voice boomed out commands to her dogs, was unbelievably sexy.
The dogs crested a small rise, and the sled went airborne for a few feet. He laughed. Threw his head back and laughed. She saw it but she couldn’t hear it. The wind ripped the sound away the moment it left his lips.
Wait.
The wind.
It roared in her ears now, despite the layers protecting her head.
Oh, no.
Her stomach dropped and her heart gave one hard thump. That was it— all the warning she had. She twisted in her seat, saw the incoming wall of white swallow her dogs. The wind picked them up one by one and flung them away into the white like unwanted toys.
“Ellis!” She spun back to him, reached out. He reached for her, too, but the wind snatched him away before their fingers touched. Then she was flying, rolling, tumbling. She could do nothing but curl into a ball and protect her head as the storm viciously played with her. She was little more than a bouncy ball. No control. Nothing to grab for an anchor until her shoulder jammed against a large boulder. She dug her fingers into a crevice and held on with everything she had, dragging herself up to sit under the tiny bit of shelter provided by the rock. She squinted into the storm and ignored the sting of the snow in her eyes as she scanned for any sight of Ellis or her dogs. Admittedly, she was more worried about Ellis than her dogs. The dogs were made for this and they’d experienced worse. They would curl up and ride out the weather, their thick coats shielding them. But Ellis was already hypothermic. If the storm didn’t break soon, he could die.
Disoriented.
Alone.
Dammit.
She had to find him.
She tried to stand up, but the wind instantly blew her off her feet. She scrambled back to her shelter and swore viciously. Until the wind let up, she wasn’t going anywhere.
15
Was that… a snowmobile?
Bree lifted her head from the cradle of her arms to listen. The wind still howled, but it had calmed some, no longer a constant scream tearing across the landscape.
Yes. That sure sounded like a snowmobile engine, but it couldn’t be. Not out here. The wind had to be playing tricks on her ears. No snowmobiler would be stupid enough to ride in this kind of weather. They’d have seen the signs of an approaching storm, as she should have, and made camp.
