quietly she hadn’t heard him come outside. As though he’d been able to feel her fear from inside the cabin and had come running. Elliot shifted in front of her, attention on the mother and her young. It was only after he’d moved between her and the moose that Waylynn understood what he was trying to do. He tossed an apple in the creature’s direction. His voice leveled with reasoning. “Nobody wants your babies, Mabel. They look like a handful. So I’ll make you a deal. You can have the rest of these apples, but you have to get them to go.”
“I take it you two know each other?” Waylynn kept her voice low. She didn’t dare look away from the cow protecting her young despite the fact all she wanted to do was run.
“We’ve met.” Elliot notched his head back toward her slightly. “Mabel moved in around the same time I had the cabin built. Thing One and Thing Two there were born about two months ago, and she does not like the fact I vacation close by.”
Mabel searched for the fruit, then brought her head back up, mouth empty. A rough exhale expanded the moose’s nostrils.
“All right, Doc, she’s not taking the bait, and it looks like we’re in the middle of a standoff.” Elliot rebalanced his weight between both feet. “When I give you the signal, I want you to run as fast as you can for the cabin. Don’t look back and don’t wait for me.”
“What?” Waylynn took her eyes off Mabel. “I’m not going to leave you out here to take on a moose by your—”
A wall of muscle slammed her into the dirt. Her head snapped back against the ground; she couldn’t see straight. He’d moved so fast she didn’t have time to comprehend what’d happened until the beat of twelve hoofed feet faded into the woods. Mabel had charged, her babies had tagged along with her, and Elliot had tackled Waylynn to the ground. She struggled to breathe as he positioned his hands on either side of her, that damn gut-wrenching smile stretching his mouth thin. “That was fun.”
His exhales skittered along her oversensitized skin and her heart fought to break through her rib cage in response. He’d saved her life. From a moose. “You and I have very different ideas of fun.”
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