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drank it, he fixed them a quick breakfast.
    â€œIt’s not my real name,” she said after the silence between them stretched to a breaking point.
    â€œWendy?”
    â€œNo, Willa.” She shot him an irritated look. “It was made up for me.”
    â€œBy who?”
    She shrugged. “A man I used to know.”
    â€œOne of the guys in that picture?”
    The shock that registered on her face turned instantly to annoyance. “I didn’t know game wardens read those kinds of newspapers.”
    He flashed her a look, but didn’t respond. He divided a panful of scrambled eggs between two plates, topped them with buttered toast and handed her one.
    He expected her to refuse it, but she didn’t. Silently she accepted the food and began to eat. That was another thing that surprised him about her—she had one hell of an appetite for someone so petite.
    â€œThat picture isn’t what you think.” She glanced up at him as he joined her at the table. “We weren’t…you know.”
    â€œBuck naked?”
    She speared him with a nasty smirk. “The male models were wearing Speedos. I was in a strapless tank suit. The tabloid cropped the photo to make the situation seem like something it wasn’t. The whole thing was completely innocent. I was on a shoot—at a public beach, for God’s sake. Besides, that photo had nothing to do with the incident.”
    He let that bit of information sink in while he watched her viciously jab a forkful of scrambled egg.
    This morning she had dressed in her own clothes again, and had left Cat’s sweatshirt and jeans in a neatly folded pile on the made-up sofa bed. Her feet were bare, except for the squares of moleskin she’d applied to her blisters. She sat sideways on her chair, her legs crossed, affording him a good view of her slender ankles. Her toenails were polished, too, he noticed.
    â€œNew boots?” He nodded at her bandaged feet.
    â€œNew everything. My luggage was stolen at the airport, so I had to buy all new stuff.”
    â€œFairbanks or Anchorage?” That kind of thing didn’t happen too often in Alaska.
    â€œAnchorage, when I first arrived. A guy nabbed my suitcase off the conveyor and took off with it.Thank God I had my camera bag on me. I’d never be able to afford to replace my Nikon.”
    He watched her as she finished her toast. A dab of butter clung to the edge of her lip, and he caught himself wondering what it would feel like, what she would taste like, if he flicked it away with his tongue.
    His attraction to her disgusted him.
    He adjusted his position on the hard kitchen chair and croaked, “Tough break,” not really meaning it. Someone like her deserved what she got.
    â€œYeah, well…” She waved her fork in the air in a dismissive gesture. “That’s the least of my worries at this point.”
    â€œI’ll bet.”
    She shot him a cool look and continued eating.
    With his back to her, as he rinsed out the coffee carafe and ground beans for another pot, he asked her about some of the things he’d read about her in the tabloid article. She immediately changed the subject.
    â€œThe only other road into the reserve is this one.” She whipped the folded map—the one she’d tried to get him to look at last night—out of her pants pocket and spread it on the table. “If I leave my car here—” she pointed to a remote spot on a little-used Jeep trail “—and walk in from the east…”
    â€œYou’re likely to get yourself killed.”
    She glared up at him.
    â€œBesides, the caribou won’t be there. They’ll be here.” He leaned over the table and jabbed a finger at another spot, more than forty miles from where she was planning on leaving her car.
    â€œOh.” Her expression darkened as she consideredexactly what a forty-mile hike in a remote Alaskan wilderness area