She knew she could outrun Zander in the dark, even on the side of a mountain that he appeared to be quite familiar with. She didn’t know where that confidence came from. She’d quit track in elementary school in favor of private violin lessons. She wasn’t … shouldn’t be in shape for a race in the forest.

She looked down and had no trouble seeing the hard muscle on her arms that looked as though she’d been in training for the Olympics or something.

She deserved an Olympic medal.

She waited for the strange thought to go somewhere. When it didn’t, she continued to take stock of her oddly alien body. She’d never been the kind of girl who obsessed about being in shape. But this wasn’t just her arms. She could feel the strength in her legs. When she reached up to touch her biceps, she encountered hard flesh.

For an instant she smelled pine and felt the snow give under her as she ran in joyous abandon.

While she was still processing that, Zander’s hand wrapped around her upper arm just above her own. Relief washed over her. She was safe with him.

Run.

C H A P T E R

12

It started to rain. A light pattering rain at first, blown a little by a breeze. But it wasn’t long before the rain was pelting down and the wind was blowing so hard that Anna had trouble keeping her hair out of her face so she could see.

“Are you cold?” Zander asked, concerned. “You should have brought a jacket.”

She pulled the now-wet flannel shirt around her protectively. “I’m fine,” she said. And it was true. Though the rain was cold, it didn’t seem to be chilling her as she would have expected.

“In Montana,” she told Zander, “a storm this late in the fall would probably be a snowstorm, not a rainstorm. A little rain won’t stop me.”

And then she wondered why in the world she’d been talking about Montana. She’d never been to—

She had a sudden vision of looking at a magnificent snow-covered landscape, unfolding below her in shades of blue. Of the cold biting her nose and the snow squeaking under her snowshoes, sounding a little like bedsprings.

She stumbled to a halt. Bedsprings.

“Stop lollygagging,” Zander said, smiling as he tugged on her arm. “We’ve got a few miles to go and we’re only going to get wetter.”

Zander seemed to have trouble seeing their path through the night-dark woods, stumbling over rocks and roots that Anna had no trouble with. She scrambled up a steep place in the trail, and waited at the top while he found his own path up.

“The last person I took up here was part mountain goat, too,” he complained cheerfully. “I’ve spent my life climbing mountainsides, and you show me up.”