Page 41 of What a Wolf Wants
He was listening to the bear snuffing around, waiting for it to go away. But Ethan’s injured arm was really aching. He hadn’t planned to climb cliffs anytime soon! He would have left that activity for a later time when he was completely healed.
“How are you doing?” Charlene called out to Ethan.
“Good. How are you doing?”
“I need to make it up the cliff soon or I’m not going to have the strength.”
“I’m listening to the bear.” Ethan didn’t want to tell her he was eating their berries, which was the reason the bear was sticking around.
“He is eating our berries, isn’t he!”
“I’m afraid he is.” Then he glanced down at her, and damn, she was climbing up to reach him. “Be careful, honey.” He hadn’t called her a term of endearment yet, but it sounded so natural to call her that.
She smiled. “I am, thanks. How is your injured arm doing?”
He had to be honest with her. “It’s killing me.”
“Ohmigod, Ethan. We’ve got to get you out of here.”
“And you. I think the bear might have moved on.” Then Ethan’s phone started to ring in his backpack. “They’ll have to leave a voicemail.”
“If it is one of your friends, they wouldn’t be able to come rescue us anyway. It would take too long.”
“No. We’ll be out of here before you know it.” He began tomove up the cliff, and when he reached the edge, he looked to see if the bear was there to make sure it was safe for Charlene to join him. The bear had knocked over their buckets and the berries all were gone. Ethan could smell the bear’s scent where it had headed off into the woods and disappeared. “It’s all clear.”
“Good. I need to get on solid ground and give my arms a rest.”
“Yeah, I hear you.”
“I’m sorry. You have to be way worse off than me,” she said.
“Nah. I have more muscle mass than you and it had to be tough to hold on as long as you have.” He climbed onto the ridge and reached down to help her up if she needed it.
She was nearly there, and he grabbed her arm and hauled her all the rest of the way up and into his arms.
“God, you scared the life out of me when you slipped off the cliff,” he said.
“Yeah, me too.” She hugged him tight. “Thanks for coming to my rescue.”
He chuckled. “I wanted to come for you, but I was trying to get out of the way of the bear too.”
She smiled and kissed him, then glanced at the berry buckets. “He ateeveryone of our blackberries.”
“Yeah, I know. So are we done for now or—”
“Let’s get some more. I want to do this.”
He gave her another kiss and hug. He was so proud of her for not giving up. Though if the bear came back, they would probably call it a day. But he was ready to collect the blackberries and make jelly with her after that.
They had to go in another direction where they hadn’t already cleaned out the wild fruit though. They finally found some more patches of blackberries and picked them all, filling their buckets.
“Woo-hoo! We got them before the bear did. But we better head back to the house before he decides to see if we picked some more blackberries for him. All the blackberries we collected should be enough to make a good batch of jelly out of them.” She took Ethan’s hand and headed for home. “Oh, who called you on your phone?”
“Let me check.” Ethan let go of her hand and pulled his phone out of his backpack. When he saw the caller ID, he shook his head. “Oh, you won’t believe this. Noah was the one who had called.”
“Ohmigod, no way!”
“Yeah, I take it he’s an alpha wolf.”
