Page 114 of Full Mountie

He turns my sadness into something else. Anticipation. I chase him for another kiss, and when we finish, he picks me up and spins me around. “We just have to be loud. That’s all. We’re sharing their space with them, it’s only fair to give them a heads up that we’re coming.”

We head off, singing camp songs at first, then just talking. We play a couple of rounds of twenty questions, too. It’s easy to make noise with him, it turns out, and before I know it we’re nearly back at the rail bridge again.

We can see it just ahead, but Lachlan holds up his hand for me to stop as we cross under hydro lines. Their path is carved out of the woods, and the clearing to our left is a meandering hill down to the river.

“You want to go down there and check it out?” he asks.

Heck yeah.

He reminds me to go slow over the uneven ground, and it takes us half an hour to pick our way down to the rushing water.

It was totally worth the detour.

“Wow,” I say as we come to a stop at the river’s edge. The river bed is wider than the actual flow of water right now. It must get wider and deeper in the winter and spring. Right now we can walk a ways across rocks and logs before we reach the crystal clear water.

I kneel and dangle my fingers in it. It’s cool, but not as cold as I expected. I stand and glance across the river. Then I look back at Lachlan.

“What are you thinking?” he asks, but his smile tells me he has a good idea.

And itisa good idea, too. “Is it safe to cross?”

He shrugs. “Yeah. Should be.”

“Shoes off or on?” I narrow my eyes at the water ahead of us. Lots of rocks. Some sand and logs, but…

Lachlan makes the call easy. “Shoes on. Easier to climb the bank on the other side.”

“Fair enough.” I take a deep breath, and step into the water. Oh, God. That’s colder on my ankle than it was on my fingertips.

I take another two steps, then I can get out of the water and onto a dry log. Then another, and pretty soon I’m in the middle of the river, Lachlan right behind me.

I laugh and hoot, throwing my hands in the air. This is amazing.

This is what I needed today.

We’re almost at the other side of the river, the cabin side, when Lachlan taps my arm.

“Don’t freak out,” he says quietly. “But there’s a bear on the other side of the river, about a hundred metres away.”

I freeze.

“Keep going,” he prods. “We’re almost there.”

Bear. Bear. Bear.

“Beth!”

I squeak and force my legs forward, splashing a bit. My pulse is going a mile a minute, and if I have a heart attack in the middle of this river, that will ruin the whole this-day-is-getting-better thing I was rocking a few minutes earlier.

“We’re good, don’t worry, keep moving.” His voice is even and steady in my ear, and when we step out of the water, he takes my shoulders and forces me to turn around. “See?”

Bear. Bear.Bear.

I gasp at the black furry butt ambling back into the woods on the opposite side.

Bear.

“Oh my God,” I whisper.

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