Smiling a little, he added, “Dad will be ticked if he catches you smoking.”

She flashed him a quick smirk. “Then I’d better smoke another so he doesn’t miss it.”

Falling silent, she finished her cigarette, then pinched the end out with her bare fingertips.

“You need anything before I leave?” he asked her.

“Nah, I’m good.” Ash stood, then nudged his leg with her foot. “Hey, East? Be careful up there.”

Mountaineering was dangerous, and they both knew it. So Easton rose to his feet and wrapped her up in the kind of hug he knew his twin needed. Dropping a kiss to the top of her head, he whispered the same promise he’d made every time he left.

“I always am.”

Chapter 8

The man was hot, but damn, Easton was boring.

River was trying, she really was. The beard and the bun made trying less difficult than it otherwise would have been, but the reality was they could only be lectured about caching equipment, acclimatization strategies, and avalanche safety for so long before they wanted to flop on the floor and cry mercy.

Easton had gathered everyone at the tiny airstrip on the outskirts of town, holding court out of the bed of his truck as they waited for Ash and her helicopter to return from a morning supply run two towns over. No one had minded the idea of a quick safety briefing, but that had been well over an hour ago. Easton kept droning on and on.

Being hot would only get him so far. There was no fixing boring.

“Can you go over it one more time for me?” Bree asked, blinking innocently. “I always have the receiver on, right?”

With inhuman patience, Easton nodded, holding up a bright yellow avalanche transceiver. “No, not at camp. We only turn these on when we’re climbing.”

“She’s screwing with you, man,” Jessie said. “You’ve gone over this four times already. We know, okay? Besides, all of us have RECCO reflectors imbedded in our jackets. See?”

Jessie flipped open the jacket next to his hip, showing a leather tab protecting the radio signal boosting reflector from the elements.

Looking less than impressed, Easton handed a receiver to each of them. “Those help but aren’t a replacement for a transceiver in the kind of terrain we’re going into. This isn’t a ski slope, kid.”

“Did he call me a kid?” Jessie sounded affronted.

Bree eyed Jessie critically. “I mean, standing next to him, you do kind of look like you should be eating pizza and playing Unicorns and Magpies at the high school lunch table.”

Wounded to the core, Jessie drew himself up with righteous indignation. “You did not go there. UniMagP is a deeply philosophical representation of the sexism in the current gaming culture—”

“I didn’t criticize it. I’m saying that’s what you used to do—”