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Kitty looked at the rangy bear. Its legs were like tree trunks, but its pristine coat hung loose around its frame where body mass was supposed to be.
‘He does look hungry,’ she said, softly. ‘How long since he’s eaten?’
‘Hard to know. The fact he’s swum upriver might be a sign he’s got energy from a recent feed, or it might be a sign he’s getting desperate. Ranging more widely.’
And every week the ice didn’t come was a week longer this bear had to go hungry.
‘He looks pretty relaxed.’
‘Polar bears love their alone time,’ Will murmured. ‘They can be social but they like nothing better than striking out alone on the ice and hunting.’
Kitty stole a glance at him.
‘What?’ he said when he caught the direction of her stare.
‘I was thinking that it takes one to know one.’
‘Nothing wrong with keeping to yourself,’ he said, somewhat defensively.
She went back to staring at the bear from their high position. As her first polar bear went, it wasn’t quite what she’d been expecting.
‘Why isn’t it white?’
‘Blubber again,’ he said.
She turned from the bear to him.
‘High oil content of their winter diet,’ he expanded. ‘The seal fat stains their coat from the inside out.’
She huffed out her disappointment. ‘Seal-fat-yellow. Wouldn’t that be a good name for a paint swatch?’
‘Give him time.’ Will chuckled. ‘This fella looks scrappy now but when his moult is finished and he starts feeding up he’ll be absolutely breathtaking. You expecting him to tap dance?’
‘Skinny and lipid yellow was not what I imagined my first bear would be like.’
‘A wild polar bear just hauled himself out of the river right in front of you. Have you really changed that much?’
The criticism bit as sharply as the wind still whipping around them. The implication that nature wasn’t good enough for her now.
‘It’s hard to buy into the wild part when he’s stretched out in the middle of a marina car park,’ she improvised to shift his focus. ‘Maybe I should try and see one somewhere a bit less manmade.’
There was a time she’d have gone crazy for a first sighting like that. Back when life was still an adventure. Before everything got so very...structured.
Will snorted. ‘I’ll take you out there if we get a chance.’
Kitty hopped from foot to foot to stay warm and turned to look at Bose, who had finally ceased his busy laps up and down the stairs and lingered on the metal platform, whimpering piteously.
‘Is he upset by the bear?’ Kitty frowned.
‘His feet hurt on the frozen metal,’ Will murmured, bending down to the agitated dog. A moment later he cursed. ‘I need your lip balm, Kitty. His feet were wet from his swim. His pads are freezing to the structure.’
The cold must have been affecting her brain; she wasn’t usually this slow to connect the dots.
‘Your lip balm,’ he repeated, more urgently. ‘Come on, city girl, you had it out earlier. I know you have it on you somewhere.’
She rifled in the pocket of Will’s jacket and produced the little squeeze tube of mint lip jelly. The one arctic-useful thing she’d had on the plane with her.
Will folded himself right down and squeezed a slimy trail of jelly around each of Bose’s bonded paws.
He massaged the balm into each pad, loosening the ice’s hold on the dog’s feet and preventing them from rebonding. Without waiting, Will hoisted him up onto his shoulders. Bose didn’t look thrilled to be so awkwardly positioned but it was clearly preferable to being stuck to the watchtower, suffering.
Across the clearing, the bear took offence at all the commotion and hauled itself onto massive feet before wandering off into the distant trees.
‘Sorry, big fella,’ Will murmured as it departed.
He took his time clanking noisily down the three levels of steel watchtower, balancing the dog precariously over his shoulders and giving the bear enough time and motivation to get well clear, before standing aside so Kitty could unlatch the heavy steel safety gate. As soon as they were out, Will relinquished Bose to the snow-protected ground, and he immediately sprinted over to where the bear had been lying to discover its scent. None the worse for his misadventure.
The surreality of the whole morning caught up with her as they got back to the quad bike and she took a moment to just stare at Will.
‘Two days ago I was in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Europe at a posh product launch,’ she said, over the wind. ‘It was all suits, caviar, and networking. Now I’m stranded a thousand miles from anywhere with Grizzly bloody Adams, a pack of domesticated wolves and a bear.’ She lifted her eyes to him. ‘And there’s dog hair in my lip balm.’
‘Welcome to the north.’
Will’s easy grin warmed her even as the wind cut bitterly across her face. She stared at the mangled, near-empty little tube of lip balm.
‘Maybe you can claim it on insurance,’ he chuckled.
But when she continued to blink at him silently he laughed outright, the first time she’d heard that particular aphrodisiac in five long years.
‘Could be worse, Kit. Be grateful I didn’t ask you to pee on his paws.’
* * *
Had half a decade changed him as much as it had changed her?
Will tethered the last of his dogs after their early afternoon run. Around him their tongues lolled like happy tentacles. All but Starsky, who was still on puppy-guarding duty.
The Kitty Callaghan who’d stepped off that crippled aircraft was highly strung, driven, and more concerned with what her employers wanted than what she did. Half falling out of the sky didn’t seem to bother her anywhere near as much as possibly missing a deadline.
Who was she?
The woman he remembered was a free spirit, endlessly passionate, full of creativity and curiosity. Nothing had deterred her from pursuing her dream—right up until that last morning, anyway.
She’d blown into Nepal chasing a story about the world’s oldest woman and come across his canine rescue unit on her way through. Like the rest of the world, she’d assumed that all alpine rescue in the Himalayas was done by helicopter or by Sherpas with yaks, and she’d assumed that Everest was the only mountain worth falling off. The beautiful Annapurna range—and the team of dogs he ran on them recovering hikers in trouble—were a revelation to her. Just like that, her plans flipped from a week-long visit to a full-month stay.
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