away!” Claire turned and stumbled along the path, flailing her weapon from side to side. The cub was on her heels, making eager grunts and groans. It still wanted to play!
The night air seemed to shift, and she could feel the adult bear right behind her, large and hot and hulking. Oh, please, Sweet Mary, mother of God—
The bear reached past her shoulder and tugged at the flailing branch. Claire started to tug back out of sheer stubbornness, then realized how foolish, how futile—
For one instant, her mind blanked out. Then it clicked on again.
Bears didn’t reach. They swiped. And they probably didn’t tug. They snatched.
“Hey, Babe Ruth, want to turn over the weapon before you hit one out of the ballpark?” said a deep, resonant, masculine voice. Without a doubt, a human voice.
Claire let go of the branch. She turned, stiff and slow, her wobbly knee joints locked into place. “You’re not a bear.”
“Nope.”
“I thought you were a bear.” Her voice rasped like an old rusty hinge.
“Didn’t mean to scare you, lady.”
Lady? She was shaking in her shoes, fearing for her life, and this unkempt beast was calling her lady?
Even though the man wasn’t a bear, he was an astonishing sight. Not seven feet, but close to six and a half, maybe. He was huge and muscular, bearded, with thick, shaggy hair that was dark underneath but golden brown on top. No wonder she’d mistaken him for a bear. The man had never made acquaintance with a razor in his life!
“Hello, Grizzly Adams,” she said under her breath, not realizing she’d spoken until he tossed his head and laughed.
She took a step back.
His straightforward gaze swept her face. “You’re not the first to say so.”
Claire offered him a tentative smile, though she was not altogether comforted. He was a stranger, one who looked quite capable of tearing her from limb to limb. At five-eight and one hundred sixty pounds, she was no flyweight herself, but this man was huge all over, from his teeth to his immense chest and the broad hands gripped around the length of wood, right down to his gunboat feet, shod in a pair of tough leather boots with rawhide laces and thick lug soles.
Every instinct told her there was something not quite civilized about him. Perhaps it was his scent—wild and woodsy and musky, utterly foreign to her. Or perhaps it was his barbaric aura—as if he could wrestle a cougar and crunch bones between his teeth.
Claire shivered. She prided herself on her self-sufficiency and adaptability, but this encounter was too much even for her. The man was overwhelming.
Not to mention his sidekick, the bear cub. The little beast stood on its hind legs and batted at her thigh, snagging her trousers. She cried out, backing away. DKNY separates weren’t made for bear cub abuse. The lightweight wool would not hold up to even a playful clawing.
“Stop it, Scrap,” said the man. He threw Claire’s impromptu baseball bat into the brush, and the cub scrambled after it to investigate, grunting with pleasure as it worried at the undergrowth, rolling back and forth like a giddy toddler.
Claire scrubbed a hand over her face in disbelief. Nope, he was still there. Solid as a tree trunk. And watching her, his eyes predatory beneath a pair of thick brown brows. “What are you doing in the woods at night with a bear cub?” she asked, sounding accusatory rather than merely curious. Her nerves were on edge, and it showed.
“Out for a walk.” Almost self-consciously, he touched a brown paper package that lay flat against his right side, tucked inside his belt.
Claire’s insides went hollow. She thought of the paper-wrapped bottles her father and his cronies passed around the back room of the family gas station. Then she thought of the liquor signs in the window of the Buck Stop and drew herself up haughtily in defense. “I see.” Her hands shook, so she tucked them into fists inside the cuffs of her sweater.
Between the night and the man’s beard, she couldn’t tell for sure, but she thought he smiled. Briefly. “Fact is, you’re the one who’s out of place,” he said, his deep voice seeming as mild as he could make it. He squatted to pet the cub, who’d emerged from the brush dragging the stick.
Claire blinked. He’d crouched purposely, she thought. To minimize his size.
He knew she was afraid of him.
“You ran your car off the road?” he asked.
“Um, no…” She wasn’t sure she wanted him to know the full extent of the situation. Her position was too vulnerable.
“I heard the crash.” The cub tumbled head over heels, and he scratched its belly. It really was rather cute and cuddly, no bigger than an oversize teddy bear. “That’s why I backtracked.”
“I didn’t run it off the road,” she insisted. “It was your fault.”
The fleeting smile again. “Mine?”
“I saw you on the side of the road. I thought you were a bear. You distracted me.”
“That so?”
She swallowed thickly. “There was a deer—it might be injured.”
He stood, stepping closer so he loomed over her. “You hit it?”
Claire fought not to back away from his sudden aggression. Never show fear. Having faced down corporate connivers and street toughs alike, she was not a weakling. She would not cower.
“I don’t know for sure. It jumped—right over the car. But there was a thud. And it left a dent. That’s why I was looking. I thought— I mean, I had to know…”
He let out a breath and backed off to a less invasive distance. “If the deer jumped your car, it’s probably all right. There’s no sign of it?”
“N-no.”
“Was the thud hard enough to rock the car?”
“Not really. More of a glancing blow. The car went off the road because I lost control after I slammed on the brakes. I wasn’t going very fast in the first place.”
“Then the deer will probably survive.”
“Oh, thank heaven,” Claire gushed. “I’ve been having Bambi trauma flashbacks. I’d probably cry if—” She felt her cheeks coloring. Now, why had she said that? Female emotions were not valued in the cutthroat corporate world; they probably weren’t acceptable here, either.
She continued more briskly. “Tell me, is this sort of thing common in these parts? Do bear cubs substitute for domestic pets? Are the woods populated with Grizzly Adams look-alikes?” Her tone lightened. “Do deer fly?”
Do bearded, disreputable—yet strangely compelling—backwoods characters lurk in the bushes specifically to ambush spooked foreigners?
The man drew his eyebrows down, further screening
