North Country Man

“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 his eyes. She had no clear idea of his face—it was obscured by the beard and the deep shadows. She almost wanted him to come closer again, just to see the shape of his lips. The color of his eyes.

Almost.

“Do wolves howl at the moon or the man in it?” he said, unexpectedly.

Her eyes widened. “Good question.” She hesitated, but her wry sense of humor had kicked in. “Do sharks swim at midnight?” she countered.

“Ah. Do the stars twinkle at noon?”

“If a cell phone rings in the forest and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound?”

He laughed. A nice, rumbling laugh. “I sure hope not, eh?” Again, he sobered quickly. Obviously he hadn’t opened the liquor yet. “Did you bring one—a cell phone?” he asked. “Have you called Triple A?”

“So there is Triple A out here in the boonies?”

“Sure.” He shifted from foot to foot. Considering his size, the movement was on a par with the tremors of an avalanche. “Jimmy Jarvi at the Five-Star Oil station takes Triple A calls. Might take him a while to reach you, is all.”

“Yeah. Like what—a week?”

“I couldn’t say. Never signed up for Triple A myself.”

“Well, I’m not sure that I need the assistance. My car’s running—”

“Do cars ever run wild?” he cut in, musing out loud, then seemed sheepish that he had. “Sorry.”

A smile twitched the corners of Claire’s mouth, but she purposely returned to the matter at hand. “I crashed into the bushes. Hit a log. If I can get the car onto the road, it should run—” her lips curved “—just fine.”

“I’ll give you a push.”

She shoved her bangs out of her eyes and looked him up and down. His clothes—a faded chambray shirt and sturdy canvas pants—were worn but clean. Perhaps he wasn’t as disreputable as all that. And he certainly looked like he could push a semitrailer out of a swamp. One-handed.

“Thank you,” she said. Wings fluttered in her stomach. A disconcerting reaction, seeing as she’d decided he was safe despite the bottle tucked inside his belt. And her judgment was always sound. Always. “I would appreciate that.”

He stepped into the long grass to let her go first. She glanced from the disturbing stranger to the playful cub, her sense of the absurd expanding proportionally. None of this was what she’d expected, but for some reason she couldn’t wait to see what came next.

There were times in every woman’s life when all she could do was roll with the punches.

Or the cub, as the case may be.

WITH THE TOE of his boot, Noah Saari gave Scrap a boost off the rotting log. The orphaned bear cub grunted with surprise and sat down hard on its round rump, confused by its abrupt removal from the center of action.

Noah leaned over the hood of the woman’s sedan, keeping one eye on Scrap and the other on the spinning front wheels. “Goose it,” he hollered over the sound of the engine, applying his muscle to the task of getting her car on the road.

The stranded city woman nodded, clenching her jaw as she gripped the wheel and brought her foot down on the gas pedal. She looked deadly serious yet still a little pale and wide-eyed. Noah smiled, oddly tickled by her reaction to him. He put his head down and pushed harder, his shoulder muscles bunching with the effort.

The wheels spun, eating through a thick layer of humus and pine needles before the car gave a lurch and began to roll backward. Too speedily. Branches snapped beneath the wheels. Noah gave a shout. “Hold up!”

He stepped over the log, one hand shading his eyes from the harsh glare of the headlights slicing through the undergrowth. The woman eased the car backward out of the brush slowly, her head swiveling to check for clearance. So she wasn’t one of those completely self-centered clear-the-roads-I’m-coming-through city drivers.

Not even close.

Noah didn’t blame her for the deer, even if she had been naive enough to mistake him for a bear. Plenty of lifelong Yoopers who knew to be on the lookout could be surprised by a fleet deer bounding from the brush. The creatures seemed to have no sense when it came to traffic, crossing right when a car came along, running the wrong way, freezing in the lights.

Stopping so abruptly might not have been the woman’s initial intention, but he gave her credit for going back to look for an injured deer. Deluxe rental car, cell phone and high-heeled boots notwithstanding, she had more guts than your usual tourist. She’d even faced down a bear. That the bear had only been Scrap, who’d never met a stranger he wouldn’t slobber over, was not the point.

The car turned onto the shoulder of the road and rolled to a stop. For a moment it idled, lights cutting a swath in the dark night. Noah thought she was going to take off with only a wave of thanks for his trouble. Normally he’d be just as happy for their contact to be as brief as possible, but with this woman… Well, he couldn’t put his finger on what it was, but she had a way about her that had engaged his dormant interest.

It might have been the jut of her jaw and the tremble in her hands when she’d raised the club, ready to knock his block off. Maybe it was the perfectly smooth column of her throat and the strong pulse beating in the hollow at the base of it when she’d studied him with rounded eyes and a tilted chin. Or most likely it was the up-front femininity of her flagrantly curvy shape, undeniably sexy beneath the rich fabrics and tailored cut of her designer styles.

Then again, it could be a matter of simple deprivation. He’d been holed up in his cabin for so long the sight of a woman, especially one who smelled like lilacs in the spring, was a shock. Probably any woman—any but Wild Rose Robbin, the only female tough enough to take on the nighttime shift at the Buck Stop—would look as good to him.

The damsel in distress flicked off the headlights and stepped from the car. She didn’t look like a typical skinny, scaredy-cat city woman any more than she acted like one, although beneath the polished veneer of a stylish haircut and manicured nails, a certain wariness—and weariness—showed in her face. But he could also see that her legs were long, her body strong. And that her breasts were full and round beneath the thick cable-knit sweater she’d buttoned all the way to her neck.