Sophie couldn’t help but giggle. It was hard to believe that this man once looked at that puppy with anything but love and adoration. She’d never seen anyone fall so hard for an animal before—and she’d seen her fair share of happy placements.

He reached a hand down to help Sophie to her feet, pausing just long enough to meet her eye with a look of mingled pleasure and embarrassment. She could tell he wanted to say something that would rob the moment of awkwardness, but there was no opportunity.

Sophie found she didn’t mind too much. This…conversation would hold.

“I guess you’d better take me to him,” Harrison said, giving in with a sigh. “But I swear to everything that man holds dear, if he’s not bleeding out somewhere at the bottom of a ravine, I’m going to truss him up and toss him in the back of my truck for the rest of this trip. And you’ll be back there with him, Sophie, if you don’t stop laughing.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, not sorry at all—not even when Jessica relaxed enough to laugh with her.

“I’d say it’s just a muscle contusion, but you’re our best medic,” Jessica said. “I really am sorry. It looks like you were—”

“There’s no need to finish that sentence,” Harrison said, but it was too late. Any and all fear Jessica may have felt at interrupting her superior in the middle of frolicking in the wilderness had all but disappeared.

I should probably feel guilty for ruining his reputation, Sophie thought. But she didn’t. Not when her body was still thrumming with the memory of his touch.

Not when she had high hopes that, this time, the wall was so far gone she could get him to touch her again.

Chapter 15

“Your card is a four of hearts,” Sophie said, her face lit by firelight and a shy smile. “Either that or the queen of spades, but I think Marcus has that one.”

“Goddammit, she’s right again!” Derek thumped his good foot on the hard-packed earth. His other not-so-good one was elevated and had an ice pack pressed against the calf.

A muscle contusion, just as Jessica had suspected. A muscle contusion that Harrison could only consider the best—and worst—timed injury known to mankind. Five minutes later, and he had no doubts that he would have fulfilled Sophie’s wishes right then and there.

On the ground. In the cold. Unaware of anything except the suppleness of her every goddamn curve.

“I thought for sure I had you that time.” With the flick of his wrist, Derek consigned his card to the campfire, offering only a glimpse of four hearts before it flared and disappeared from view. “You tricked me.”