Wild Action. Dawn Stewardson
up the pail full of raw, boned chicken, which she’d told him was the bear’s favorite treat, Nick followed her out the back door.
As they walked down the hill toward Attila’s field, he tried to convince himself it was only the heat that had him sweating buckets.
Every instinct for self-preservation was telling him to turn around and run, and the farther they walked, the harder it became to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Raising his forearm to his nose, he sniffed the sleeve of Gus’s shirt. He didn’t smell a damn thing, but Attila would. Carly had said bears had an incredible sense of smell. So Attila would smell Gus’s scent, but he’d know Nick wasn’t Gus. And he’d think…
What if he thought this guy who smelled like Gus was trying to put something over on him? And what if it made him mad as hell?
Nick wanted to ask Carly about that, but his heart was suddenly in his throat, making it impossible to speak. He could see the bear now. It had spotted them and was ambling in the direction of the fence.
“Hey, Attila,” Carly called.
The bear plonked down on his haunches about ten feet away from the gate. The next thing Nick knew, he and Carly had reached the fence.
He tried not to look at Attila while she sorted through the keys on her ring. Instead, he gazed at the pond, then eyed the hibernation cave. But despite his best efforts, his gaze was drawn back to the bear, and all he could think about was how damn big it was.
“Poor baby looks a little unkempt because he’s molting,” Carly said, sticking a key into the padlock.
Nick nodded, but he was far less interested in the condition of the bear’s fur than he was in the fact that its thick claws looked about a foot long. And its teeth were undoubtedly even bigger and sharper. The only small things about Attila were his rounded ears and beady little eyes.
“He’s not exactly Winnie the Pooh,” he whispered nervously as Carly opened the gate.
“He’s going to love you,” she whispered back. “Just follow me inside and put the pail down for the time being. He knows he doesn’t get the chicken until after he’s been good.
“Hi, Attila,” she added to the bear as Nick set the pail beside the fence. “I’ve brought someone to meet you.”
Attila grunted, then fixed Nick with a glare that didn’t look even remotely loving.
Not that he really wanted the bear’s love. He’d be happy if it just didn’t eat him. After all, Carly had admitted she couldn’t really count on Attila to listen to her at the moment.
“Now, I know you’re probably feeling a little uneasy,” she said, glancing at Nick and slipping into her queen-of-understatement routine again. “But just try to remember everything I told you. Especially that you should never excite his predatory instinct by running.”
With that, she slowly walked over to the bear and scratched him behind the ear.
“You still okay?” she asked, looking at Nick once more.
“Sure,” he said. In truth, of course, he was as far from okay as he could ever remember being. He couldn’t keep his eyes off those claws, and he couldn’t stop thinking a scratch from them would make one of Blackie’s feel like a pinprick.
Carly rubbed the bear’s nose for a minute, then said, “Attila, that’s Nick over there. I want you to go and say hello to him. Two feet.”
The bear glared over again. Then he pushed himself up onto his hind feet—sending a rush of utter terror through Nick. Standing up, he looked like an enormous sumo wrestler in a fur coat.
“Good boy,” Carly said. “Now go say hello.”
Attila gave a little snort and started toward Nick, stopping a couple of feet away. Nick stood stock-still, even though the urge to run was almost overwhelming. In his cowboy boots, he was well over six feet tall, but the bear’s eyes were level with his. And it was so close he could smell its earthy scent and hear it breathing.
“Nick?” Carly whispered. “Say hello to him.”
He swallowed hard. “Hello, Attila.”
The bear eyed him for another second, then took a final step forward, wrapped its arms around him and began squeezing him to death.
Boys Will Be Boys
“CARLY, I can’t breathe!”
She was so thrilled to see that Attila liked Nick, his words didn’t register for a second. Then she realized Attila was getting carried away with his bear hug.
“Attila, enough,” she said. When he didn’t stop, she felt a flutter of concern. An enthusiastic bear was hardly the same as an enthusiastic puppy. “You tell him, Nick,” she quickly suggested. “Enough is the command, and be firm.”
“Enough,” he said, sounding more strangled than firm.
Miraculously, Attila grunted and backed off. Dropping to all fours, he began snuffling the leg of Nick’s jeans.
Carly almost jumped for joy. If Attila was going to listen to Nick, things just might work out.
“He obeyed you!” she said excitedly.
“Obeyed me? He practically killed me!”
“No he didn’t. He was being friendly.” And she was so relieved. She hadn’t told Nick about the phone call, because she hadn’t wanted him feeling even more stressed when he met Attila, but now she could.
Before she had a chance, though, he took a backward step and said, “Listen, if that’s his way of being friendly, I sure as hell don’t want to be near him when he’s being grouchy. This isn’t going to work, Carly. We’ve got to figure out some way of making him listen to you better.”
“Give him his chicken.”
“What?”
She pointed at the pail. “Give him his chicken or he will be grouchy.”
Nick grabbed the pail, then turned back toward her. “I just put it down in front of him?”
“You could. But if you feed him by hand, it’ll help the two of you bond.”
“Bond? Did you go deaf in the past minute? I said this isn’t going to work. I’m not…comfortable close to this animal. You’re going to have to handle him.”
“Nick, do you want Jay Wall to be happy with us or not?”
“Of course I do. I just don’t want to work with a bear.”
“Well, it could take months to figure out how to get him to listen to me better. And the chemistry’s obviously right between you two.”
“No. It was right between him and Gus. I’m wearing Gus’s clothes, remember, so it’s his scent on them—his chemistry. And what happens after they get washed?”
“Well, maybe there are enough of his things to last through the filming.”
“Not a chance. His closet’s practically empty. And after I wear something once or twice, there’ll be more of my scent on it than Gus’s. How will Attila take to that?”
Carly told herself he’d be okay with it, but she knew it might be a problem.
“Maybe the scent’s not really important,” she said hopefully. “Maybe it’s your deep voice Attila responded to. I mean, he did what you told him even though you didn’t sound very authoritative.”
“What