“Remember you said probably.” As he left her tent, River called after him, “Don’t think I won’t put your foot fetish in the movie, Easton.”

• • •

The excitement in the air was palpable. They were going through the Veil today.

For once, Easton didn’t ask them to break camp. Instead, they were going to climb up to the Veil, go through, then come back down again, retracing their steps. They were high enough on the mountain that pauses to acclimate were necessary. Easton had said if the Veil went well, he’d decide if they would summit. The way to the top was through the Veil, and if they failed to successfully pull it off when more rested, no one was summiting, then coming back down through the Veil when exhausted.

Today was the day to prove to him that River’s team had what it took.

Knowing she was getting close to the summit helped River push through the increasingly difficult task of navigating through dangerous terrain. Even with the distraction of Easton in front of her, River found herself looking more and more to the highest point of the peak above them.

Summiting wasn’t a hope. Summiting would happen.

As they climbed, Easton would turn to check on the progress of the team. Each time his attention turned to her, a sexy smile would curve his lips. A dangerously distracting one that was literally capable of causing a woman to fall to her death.

“You shouldn’t do that,” she told him once. “It’s highly irresponsible. I could report you to your superiors.”

“I don’t have superiors,” Easton reminded her.

“I’ve met your sister. You definitely have superiors.”

“That’s still being decided. What am I doing?”

River snorted. “Oh, you know what you’re doing.”

Considering his low, sexy chuckle, Easton did know. Instead of arguing his innocence, he turned back to the climb. When they finally crested the ridge they’d been ascending for the past hour, River stood back to catch her breath.

It didn’t work. Not when what was in front of her took her breath away all over again.

“You wanted to know what the Veil was.” Easton stopped, gazing above them. “That is the Veil.”

Even from several hundred feet below, they could all see the billow of snow across the mountainside, funneling out of a steeply sloped canyon cutting through the landscape. The result was an undulating cloud of swirling snow covering the side of the mountain, like a bride’s wedding veil blowing in the wind. At first, River didn’t understand what she was looking at until she realized the walls of the canyon were made of deep-blue glacier ice. As if someone had stuck a knife in the glacier and dragged it through, the jagged wound had only cut deeper with every year of unceasing winds.