it to air, just off camera stood Kate, armed with the stern poise of a lion tamer and a hastily acquired vocabulary to rival David Attenborough’s. She researched and wrote nearly half of the show’s narration. It was Dom Tyler’s name in the title and face on the screen, but she was the one behind him, cracking the whip, keeping the show and its host on track.
She let the camera roll a few more seconds before shouldering it and fumbling back down the trunk, hopping the last few feet to the soggy ground.
“Ty?” Ty, because he winced whenever anyone called him Dominic. Kate headed toward the fire they’d set up by the river, shouting to him as she picked pine needles from the front of her jacket. “We’re going to need to get you up there. I want some climbing and hand shots. I made some notes you can record in postproduction.”
She rounded the bend at the edge of the woods and discovered why Ty wasn’t shouting back. Sitting splay-legged on a fallen tree, he had one of the other cameras perched on his broad shoulder, its lens trained on Kate, red light blinking. As she neared, she heard him narrating for his own amusement, a raised whisper in the Australian accent that earned them at least a quarter of their ratings.
“…the natural habitat of the Kate Somersby. We can see from her stance that this approach is one of postured aggression, though the look in the female’s eyes suggests that mating may be on her mind. Let’s wait and see what she’s after.” Ty abandoned the voice-over as Kate pushed her boot against the front of his vest, toppling him harmlessly backward into the wet snow.
She crossed her arms over her chest and mustered her best fed-up assistant glare. It was day two of their three-day exile in this snowy wasteland, and cold was not her strong suit. “Some of us have been scaling trees, Ty. Earning our saddle sores.”
“That’s one way to get your rocks off.”
“I need you up there.” She stared down at her professional partner of the past two and a half years, blatantly appraising all six feet three inches of him, from his boot-clad feet up to his unruly golden-brown hair and sideburns, and that evil, evil eyebrow. His chin and jaw were peppered with several days’ blond stubble. By the time they got back to L.A. he’d probably have a full-on beard. It wouldn’t do a thing to disguise his movie-star good looks, just as his clothes couldn’t trick their viewers into forgetting what was hidden beneath, once they’d caught a glimpse.
Kate knew what lay beneath the thermal shirt Ty currently wore under his vest, too. She knew it with more familiarity than she’d known the body of any former lover, despite the fact that she and Ty had never so much as kissed. That disappointed certain parts of her, relieved others. She loved her job too much to risk it over something as stupid as hormones. And she loved Ty, too—as a friend. She wouldn’t risk losing him, either…though the thought of such a mistake had certainly kept her warm on a few cold nights.
She gave Ty’s hovering foot a soft kick. “C’mon, up you get. Eggs.”
Ty groaned. “God, eggs.”
“Tell me about it.” She grabbed the hand he stuck out and yanked him up to sitting. “I’ve got a few of my own that’ll be going to waste in a few years, if I keep running around the globe with the likes of you.”
“So you keep telling me…but don’t pretend you don’t love this.” He wiped wet snow off the backs of his arms, zipped the camera into its sturdy bag and set it aside.
Kate sat down beside him on a log. He was right, of course. For all its ridiculous moments, she adored this job. And not just the job—but their partnership. Plus she was an unapologetic control freak and this gig allowed her to do what she did best on a grand scale, and get paid for it. At twenty-eight, thoughts of settling into a normal life could wait a few more years, or as long as the network continued to renew their contract.
Ty took her handheld camera and reviewed the footage, frowning. “Why is it you never find us wild rib-eye?”
“Why is it you never find us anything, period?” she asked, though it was a mean exaggeration. Ty more than pulled his weight, but today he was noticeably unfocused. Kate wasn’t surprised. He was running on very little food and even less sleep.
He handed the camera back and stared at her with the unearthly blue-green eyes that earned them another quarter of their ratings. “What?”
“Nothing.” His tone suggested otherwise. “Take me to your eggs.”
“Terrifying choice of words, Ty.” They stood and she tossed him the wool hat he’d been wearing in the previous scene. He tugged it on and followed her back to the tree. “Third limb.”
He squinted upward. “I see it.”
She trained the camera on Ty as he demonstrated how to loop a length of climbing rope around the trunk to make the task easier. Kate frowned at her ruined jeans and savaged thighs. In three minutes he was up and back again with the eggs in his vest pocket.
“What d’you fancy?” he asked, his perpetually mischievous eyebrow cocked at her. “Raw or boiled?”
“It’s your lunch, Ty. I’m having an energy bar.”
“What’ll look better?” he asked.
“You cooked that goose, yesterday. Better do an ‘if you can’t build a fire’ scenario.”
“You’re the boss.”
She pursed her lips, skeptical. “Care to put that in writing?”
Ty merely smirked, a dimple forming beside one corner of his mouth. Technically speaking, of course, he was the boss. It wasn’t just his name on the show, either—in addition to being the host and narrator of the wildly popular reality program, he was also its creator. He’d dreamed it up, pitched it, got himself the contract and come to the table with much of his survival experience already hard-earned from a stint in his twenties as a globe-trekking rock climber.
“How are we getting to tomorrow’s location?” Ty asked as he set up a tripod for the raw-egg-eating shot.
“Do you even look at the itineraries I write up for you?”
He angled the lens, fiddled with the settings. “Don’t need to, Katie. I’ve got you.”
“May God have mercy on the woman you trick into marrying you one day, Ty.” Not that you’re the marrying kind, she added to herself. She pulled her copy of the meticulous memorandum from the back pocket of her filthy jeans. “We’re meeting the dogsled folks tomorrow morning at five. The trip should take about three hours, then we’re doing an ice-fishing spot if the lake up there’s still frozen. Snowmobile team’s picking us up at sundown.”
“Beautiful. And after tomorrow?”
Kate smiled at the thought. “You know.”
Ty met her eyes above the camera. “Tell me anyhow, Katie. I love to hear you say it.”
“After tomorrow, we’re done for another season.”
Ty sighed, loud and dramatic. “And so our next destination will be…?”
“I don’t know about you, but mine’ll be my bed.” She could practically feel her cool sheets and soft pillows now.
“Sounds good. I’ll see you there.”
Kate waited until Ty glanced at her before she fixed him with a look she hoped conveyed her grumpy exhaustion. “While we’re on the topic, may I make a suggestion or two, for next season’s locales?”
“Mmm?”
“I’m thinking Maui. Saint John’s? Fiji? Please? This snow is killing me.”
“You’re from New England,” he said, eyes swiveling back to the camera’s screen.
“And I hated snow growing up, too. Come on, Ty…lost at sea? Even that’s got to be better than this.”
He shook his head. “No