Wild Action. Dawn Stewardson
he found appealing. And when you added that to the way she looked…Well, he’d just better watch himself.
He’d had his share of relationships with women, but none of them had ever felt as if they might last forever. And he sure didn’t want to find himself in one that did feel right when the time and place were entirely wrong.
His life plans didn’t include either animal actors or rural Ontario. All he wanted was enough money to go back home to Edmonton and set up his agency.
“Nick?”
When he glanced at Carly again there was a tiny drop of perspiration on her throat, trickling ever so slowly toward the V of her neckline. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t keep from following it with his eyes.
Finally, it disappeared beneath her blouse, but by then he was following it with his imagination.
“Nick, there’s something we have to talk about.”
He looked up quickly, feeling like the proverbial kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“We have a bit of a problem with Attila.”
Aha! His imagination instantly shut down and he switched into cop alert. He’d known there was something she’d been holding back about that bear, and her expression told him it was more than a bit of a problem.
“Did I mention that he’s the star of Two for Trouble? The animal star, I mean?”
“No, I think you just said he was in it.”
“Oh. Well, he is. The star, I mean.”
Nick waited for her to go on, doing his best to hide his annoyance. But he’d bet that she’d been intentionally avoiding talking about the bear—that she’d been waiting until she got her newfound partner out here, away from civilization, before she hit him with whatever this problem was.
“You see,” she finally continued, “the boys’ encounter with Attila is a really pivotal scene in the movie. And there’ll be a lot of earlier shots of him— foreshadowing the encounter.”
“I see. And the problem is…?” he asked, bringing her back to the important issue.
“Well, Attila hasn’t been himself lately. I know he misses Gus, but from our point of view…The problem is that he’s taken to only doing what I tell him when he feels like it.”
“Because he’s in mourning? That’s bear behavior?”
“Well, I’m sure missing Gus is at least part of it.”
Nick uneasily thought back to something she’d told him in Brown’s office—that if Jay Wall wasn’t pleased with their animals, the agency’s name would be mud.
“If missing Gus is only part of the problem,” he said, picking up on her last words, “what’s the other part?”
“Well, Attila always worked better for Gus than he did for me. So I suspect he considers me just a backup trainer. And now he’s acting like a child who’s trying to see just how much he can get away with.”
“But if he worked better for Gus, then the two of you must have done things differently. Why don’t you try doing everything exactly the way he did?”
“I already do. We always used the same tone and commands and hand signals. You have to with animals or they get confused. So there’s got to be some thing else involved. Maybe something as simple as the fact that Gus was a lot bigger than me.”
Nick eyed her, doubting she’d weigh a hundred and fifteen pounds sopping wet.
“Or maybe it’s that bears find a deeper male voice more authoritative.”
“That’s a fact?”
“No, it’s just a possibility. Nick, the only real facts I have are that Attila responded better to Gus and that right now I can’t count on him to listen. So I can’t help thinking…”
Carly paused, then the rest of her words came rushing out all at once. “It would make a lot of sense to try another man working with Attila. Ideally, one who resembles Gus. And if you wore some of Gus’s clothes, his scent would even be mingled with yours.”
Nick simply stared at her, the words you and yours flashing like neon signs in front of his eyes.
She gave him a weak smile.
“Oh, no,” he said at last. “Absolutely, unequivocably no. You are the one who bottle-raised that bear. You are the one who figures he’s a pet. You are the animal expert here.
“I, on the other hand, don’t know a damn thing about bears except that they can kill people. Plus, I’m a complete stranger to him—one he outweighs by more than four hundred pounds. I’d have to be out of my tree to try working with him.”
Carly gazed at her sandals for a long minute, then finally shrugged. “I didn’t really think you’d like the idea.”
Nick resisted the urge to tell her she was the queen of understatement.
“I just…” She shrugged again, looking at him this time. “I guess it was a dumb suggestion, even though he really wouldn’t hurt you. We’ve done all kinds of shoots with him, and he’s never tried to harm anyone. And I’m so worried that if I can’t make him cooperate for Jay, and the agency ends up going down the tubes because of it…Well, I’m worried about what would happen to the animals if I couldn’t keep things going. Especially to Attila. It would be incredibly hard to find him a good home.”
Nick shoved himself out of his chair and began pacing the porch, thinking he was insane to even consider her idea. But if Attila didn’t perform, Jay Wall would bad-mouth them. And if that led to the agency going bust, there’d be no income to pay the mortgage—which would mean they’d lose the property, as well.
Still, he’d rather face a man pointing a .350 Magnum at him than get within mauling range of a bear.
“Why don’t we give Attila a little more time,” he finally suggested. “Maybe he’ll come around.”
“Or maybe he won’t.”
Turning away from Carly, Nick stared out across the clearing. He had no job and not much money. And if they blew this chance to establish a Hollywood connection, he’d probably have no inheritance to speak of, either.
But at least he’d still be alive, rather than—quite possibly—bear breakfast. That was certainly an important point to consider.
He weighed the issue for another minute, then took a deep breath and said, “You’re positive he’s never tried to harm anyone?”
“PUT THE HAT ON, TOO,” Carly said. “Gus always wore his hat.”
Nick took the cowboy hat off its peg and slapped it on his head, even though he knew damn well Attila wasn’t going to think he was Gus. Not for a second.
Clothes don’t make the man, the saying went. And the fact he had on a pair of Gus’s jeans and one of his shirts wasn’t going to fool a bear any more than it would a person.
“Good,” Carly said, eyeing him approvingly. “If you look and smell like Gus, it’s bound to help.”
That, Nick knew, was not a fact. It was merely another of her possibilities, and he didn’t like them any more than he liked her.
Maybe she’d initially seemed to be a nice woman, but first impressions could be wrong. And in this case there was no ‘could’ about it. That easy manner he’d liked had been hiding her true self—a manipulative woman who’d maneuvered him into doing this. And he hated being either manipulated or maneuvered. The problem was, he suspected he’d hate a life of poverty even more.
“Ready?” she said with a bright smile.
“Dying to meet him,”