Warrior Read Online Free PDF Page B

she worked, she tried not to notice the clean, powerful lines of his body. It was impossible. He was a large, healthy male animal, and he called to her senses in ways that disconcerted her.
    Nevada licked the last drop of coffee from his mustache and watched Eden working over his legs. Her motions were sure, efficient and productive. Obviously she wasn’t going to come apart in an emergency.
    He liked that as much as he liked the breasts swaying beneath her ski jersey and pullover sweater and the decidedly female curves of her hips. But admiring Eden’s body was having a pronounced effect on his own, so he concentrated on her face instead, memorizing the smooth skin of her cheeks, the changing colors of her hazel eyes, the tempting sweetness of her mouth.
    Eden looked up, sensing Nevada’s intense regard. He shifted his glance to the slope.
    “You see any horses on the way here?” he asked.
    “Just tracks. A big horse and a smaller one. Both are wearing winter shoes. Both are drifting south and east in front of the wind.” Stones clattered and rattled, pushed by Eden’s hands as she resumed digging. “I might have seen one of them under a big evergreen about five minutes up the trail, but I couldn’t be sure. The smaller horse is dragging a rope or a rein. Neither of the horses is limping, although the bigger one rolled down the same slope you did. If there was any blood, it wasn’t much. So relax. Your horses are better off than you are.”
    “Big horse. Small horse. Winter shoes. Rope.” Nevada looked at Eden’s clean profile and asked neutrally, “Where did you learn how to track?”
    “Alaska.”
    “Horses?” he asked skeptically.
    “Cats,” Eden said, struggling to shove aside a rock that was smaller than a pony, but not much. “I studied lynx in the north woods. I came to Colorado to study cougars. After cats, tracking horses is a piece of cake.”
    Nevada’s eyes changed, intensity returning. Eden was going to be living in the remote area around Wildfire Canyon, tracking the cougars that had returned to the Rocking M.
    And so was he.
    “Damn,” Eden said under her breath. She braced her shoulder and tried again to shift the smaller of the two boulders that had trapped Nevada’s foot. “Did you try pulling your foot out of your boot?”
    “Yes. Rest before you start sweating.”
    She hesitated, then nodded. He was right. She sat back on her heels and breathed deeply, trying not to let her worry show. Nevada’s left foot was securely wedged between a rock that was too big for her to shift and the massive boulder that had broken the back of the landslide. Loose rubble slithered and stirred and eased downhill every time she tried to dig him out.
    “How’s your head?” As Eden asked the question, her eyes were searching the slope for something to use as a lever against the smaller of the two boulders that were holding Nevada captive.
    “I’ll live.”
    “Dizzy? Double vision? Nausea?”
    “No. I have a hard skull.”
    She smiled without looking at him, still searching for a lever. “I won’t touch that line. How bad is your foot?”
    “Cold is a good anesthetic.”
    “Too good. You were unconscious when I got here.”
    “I would have awakened in ten minutes and fired three more rounds.”
    Nevada’s certainty made Eden look back at him.
    “Hypothermia—” she began.
    “It’s not a problem yet,” he interrupted flatly. “I’ve been a lot colder under a lot worse conditions and functioned just fine.”
    Eden tugged off one glove, grabbed Nevada’s wrist and started counting. His pulse was strong. Cold hadn’t slowed his body processes yet. And the quart of hot coffee would help hold the chill of the ground at bay.
    “All right.” Unconsciously Eden caressed Nevada’s left wrist and his palm with her fingertips, reassured by his tangible heat and the resilience of his flesh, like Baby, Nevada fairly radiated an elemental vitality. “Where did you learn to sleep and wake