Page 39

Deke’s dogs and Monday crowded around them, wagging their tails.

“Um… well… I believe so, yes.” Her voice was shaky.

“It was a griz,” Liam told them, holding Emily’s arm. “I think we better get her inside. I’m sorry, Em. That wasn’t exactly the fishing trip I’d planned.”

But she shook her head. “I’m okay. Really. When I saw that baby bear and then the mother bear, I thought… well, quite frankly, I thought we were goners.” She gripped his hand a little too tightly. “But thanks to you, we’re still here.Alive.My God. You’re not going to see anything likethatin New York City. Or London. Who knew bears were that enormous?”

The men all looked at one another like,Yeah,wedid.

“Throwing her the fish was brilliant. W-wait until I tell Muriel what… what happened…”

Her breath was coming hard and fast and, suddenly, she threw her arms around him and her breath came in shaky sobs. “Thank you.”

*

Liam held heragainst him. Her body was quaking. Like him, the spike of adrenaline brought on by that encounter was crashing. There was a buzzing in his ears. Probably because his own blood pressure had skyrocketed down by that river. In all these years in Montana, that was the closest he’d come, ever, to buying it by a bear. The fish was simply a last resort effort to distract the sow. Emily was properly scared, but they’d come closer than he’d wanted to admit to disaster. If anything had happened to her…

“Lucky you didn’t need to use your gun,” Jake said as they walked onto the deck of the house. “You do have a gun?”

He brushed Emily’s hair out of her eyes as she released him. “You mean the pistol that’s still in the bag down by the river? That gun?”

Jake and Deke exchanged looks.

“I don’t go anywhere here without one.” Liam ran a hand down his face. “But I didn’t want to get it wet if I had to go in the river. Lesson learned.”

“Well, at least you had bear spray,” Jake said.

“Yeah. Didn’t have to use it,” he said, not wanting to make matters worse for Emily by admitting that sometimes bear spray worked and sometimes it simply enraged an attacking bear.

And the last thing he wanted to do was spray a bear with a cub for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He cursed himself for being unprepared because things could have gone much differently.

Deke explained to Emily, “This is the time of year bears are emerging from their dens, hungry from a long winter and dangerous as hell when their cubs are with them. Lucky for you, hunger won out and you had the trout to give them, which was no doubt why they were heading to the river in the first place. But glad for the heads-up. We just sent the girls out for a little exercise. And we were going to see if you were catching any fish.”

“The girls?” Color was finally returning to her cheeks, but she was still clinging to Liam’s arm.

“The falcons,” Jake said. “If not for you two showing up, we probably would have interrupted that very grizzly and her cub, fishing for her lunch.”

“Glad to be of service.” Liam led Emily inside as Deke blew a high-pitched whistle for the falcons.

“You okay?” Liam asked her quietly once they were in the living room that overlooked the valley through a huge picture window.

She nodded. “Thank you.”

“Thank you for not panicking.”

“Oh, I was panicking, all right. I’ve just learned to hide it well.”

He smiled. “Could’ve fooled me.”

She turned to face him with a grin. “What you did out there? I must say, aside from the sheer terror of it?” She pulled a finger down his shirtfront. “I must admit it turned me on a little.”

He couldn’t help the smile that curved his lips. “Yeah?”

“Mm-hm. You were rather hot fighting off that bear.”

He liked this flirty side of her. This playful, flirty side. And despite what had happened, it gave him hope that maybe this day wouldn’t be a complete bust after all. “And here I was, regretting exposing you to the Montana wilds.”

“Regret, I find, is an awful waste of time. Besides, how else would I have the full wild west experience? Or the story to take back to my oh-so-tame city-dwelling friends whose most dangerous outing is walking through midtown at night? But really. Today has been amazing. I learned to fly fish, and I even caught one! The bear got it, but still…”