Page 17 of Out of the Cold

Should she call Gabriel? No, that was crazy. She was inside the house and perfectly safe.

But Hilde was beside herself. She paced and quivered, whining at the wall. Lucy got back into bed and called to her, but the dog kept up her vigil for several more minutes. Eventually the bear must have left, because Hilde finally came back to her doggie bed to lie down.

Lucy fell into an exhausted sleep, her thoughts filled with shadowy, bulky creatures, bear-like but always on their hind legs.

The next morning, she was sitting down for breakfast when Gabriel came to her door.

He was as big as she remembered, but today he was in running shorts and a short-sleeve top. For a few seconds, she was too busy admiring his truly spectacular thighs to wonder why he was there. His chest and arms were nothing to sneeze at, either. He could probably bench press her car.

“Have you seen the side of your house this morning?” he demanded.

“Good morning to you, too.”

“It’s not, actually. Something tore your garbage apart last night. It’s all over the damn place.”

She pulled on her sneakers and followed him outside and around the corner of the house. Trash was strewn everywhere. Chicken bones, coffee grinds, paper towels, the remains of a head of lettuce.

Her heart sank at the sight.

“I, uh, I heard a bear out here last night, but it didn’t occur to me to worry about the garbage.”

“The bear might have got into it first, but I’m guessing raccoons and maybe a few other things had a party afterward.”

She bit her lip and stared down at the ground. She’d done it again.

“You’re not in the city anymore, and we don’t have curbside trash removal. Garbage is an easy food source, and once a bear finds it, it comes looking for it again and again.”

“You’ve made your point.”

The heat went out of his eyes. “I didn’t mean to sound—”

“Well, you did. Whatever. It was stupid, and now I know better.” She didn’t know who she was angrier at, him or herself.

“I’ll give you a hand. Let me get—”

“This is my mess. I’ll take care of it.”

He looked uncomfortable. “Lucy...”

“What am I supposed to do with my trash if I can’t put it outside?”

“There are trash cans in the shed. I take them to the transfer station on Thursdays.”

“Someone could have told me that.”

He dragged his hand through his hair. “Len told me he had.”

“I guess maybe he did. I’m not sure.”

He’d emailed her all kinds of information, but she’d been a mess at that point. All she’d cared about was that he was offering her a free place to stay.

She looked at the carnage in front of her, a seemingly concrete manifestation of the mess her life had become. Angry tears threatened to spill, but she held them in, determined not to show more weakness than she already had.

“You can’t be careless like this, not up here.” His tone was almost gentle.

“So what happens now? You’re saying this bear will be coming around every day? Do I have to worry about going outside?”

“You’ll need to be aware of your surroundings in case it comes back, though it may only come around at night. We only have black bears around here, and they rarely attack people, but they can get more aggressive around food, and they do go after small animals.”

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