Wild Action (11 page)

“Nick, if you let them stay on those ponies the entire afternoon, there wasn’t any
trying
involved. They’d practically never ridden before and…Oh, Lord, you know what’s going to happen, don’t you? Tomorrow, when Jay wants to shoot them running from Attila, they’re going to be so stiff and sore they’ll barely be able to walk.”

“Oh, come on, don’t you think you’re exaggerating? More than a little? It’s not as if Paint and Brush are big workhorses. They’re just little ponies.”

“Yes, but in case you didn’t notice, Kyle and Brock are just little boys.”

“D
ID YOU HEAR ALL
the activity in the camp this morning?” Carly asked over breakfast. “I mean, how early people were up and around?”

“Yeah,” Nick said between bites of toast.

“They were serious about starting to set up at dawn.”

When he merely nodded, she poured herself more coffee, then topped up his mug without bothering to ask whether or not he wanted a refill. Crackers was being more talkative than Nick, and since her questions were barely getting grunts in reply, it didn’t seem worth the effort of speaking.

She looked across the table and let her eyes linger on her business partner, certain there was no risk he’d catch her watching him this time. Not when he’d been avoiding eye contact since the moment he’d walked into the kitchen.

Yesterday, she’d never dreamed he’d still be upset with her this morning, but he obviously was. And she was certain he’d slept late solely to avoid her. The man really did not take well to criticism. And it had hardly even
been
criticism. She’d merely pointed out that he’d made an error in judgment by letting the boys ride for so long. It wasn’t as if she’d accused him of being a deranged killer or something.

Nevertheless, it had been enough to make him decide he’d rather go for a walk than continue sitting on the porch with her. And when he’d come back to the house, it had only been to tell her that some crew member he’d been talking to had invited him to have dinner at the camp.

That was the last she’d seen of him. When he hadn’t been back by midnight, she’d simply gone to bed.

Of course, she hadn’t been able to fall asleep until she’d heard him come in. And after that, she’d still lain awake forever, unable to stop thinking about his
jealousy of Royce. Finally she’d told herself that, given their situation, whatever his jealousy said about his feelings toward her was irrelevant. But even then, she’d found it hard to get to sleep.

From here on in, she was going to have to do a lot more sleeping and a lot less lying awake thinking about Nick Montgomery. If she didn’t, she’d be a zombie long before he went back to Edmonton.

He glanced at his watch, then said, “Okay, let’s get this show on the road. Otherwise, by the time we feed Attila, we’ll be late.”

“We don’t have to feed him. I asked Dylan to come a bit early this morning and give him breakfast first thing. And I’ve already packed a cooler full of treats in case we need them to make him run. So all there’s left to do is take him to the shoot site—just put him on his chain and go.”

“Ahh. And once he’s out of his field, if he wants to head in one direction and we want to go in another, who wins?”

She gave him a look that said she didn’t find the question amusing. “He’s a
trained
bear, remember? So he’d walk nicely even if he wasn’t on a chain. But Gus felt that when we were on a job with him we should always use one—to make the cast and crew feel safer.”

“Because nobody would ever realize that walking a six-hundred-pound bear on a chain is like walking a rottweiler on a piece of string?”

Carly pushed herself away from the table, thinking she’d rather Nick had stuck to his grunts than switched into his dry sense of humor mode. She was darned worried about whether or not Attila was going
to perform well this morning, and what Nick considered witty was doing nothing to alleviate her anxiety.

“Bye-bye,” Crackers said when she took Attila’s collar and chain off the peg.

“Bye-bye, Crackers. You talk to the Marx brothers while we’re gone.”

Leaving the dogs sulking because they couldn’t come along, she and Nick headed down to Attila’s field, where Jonathan was just arriving to take over from the night-shift boy.

After chatting with them for a minute, she and Nick went into the field. When she put Attila’s collar and chain on him, Nick was positively smirking. She didn’t say a word about it, though, because at least his mood seemed to have improved. And the last thing she wanted to do was de-improve it again just before he had to work with Attila.

The road Jay’s people had cut through the woods was wide enough that she and Nick could walk side by side. And as she’d predicted, Attila ambled along behind them like a perfect lamb. It was only when they were nearing the shoot site that he started to get a little frisky.

“Do we have a problem?” Nick asked anxiously.

“No, he always gets excited when he realizes he’ll be working in front of a camera. He likes to be the center of attention.”

One of the assistant cameramen wandered out of the clearing and nodded to them. “You’re a little early. They’re still lighting the bear’s stand-in, but it shouldn’t take much longer.”

A few more steps and most of the site became visible through the trees. There were klieg lights set up all around the perimeter, portable generators to provide
power, three cameras on large dollies and a small horde of crew members—most of whom were near Chef Raffaello’s snack table, drinking coffee.

“Those people all get paid for standing around doing nothing?” Nick said.

“That’s the way shoots work. It’s always hurry up and wait.”

Attila made a funny little snorting noise, stopped walking and raised up on his hind legs.

“Why’s he doing that?” Nick asked.

“He just wants a better look.”

“You’re sure he’s not thinking about misbehaving? I mean, what if he decides to take a run at someone or something?”

“Nick, he’s never done anything like that. Besides, bears don’t rear up when they’re going to attack. They lower their heads and flatten their ears back.”

“Well, even so, maybe you’d better give
me
the chain, just in case.”

She handed it over, congratulating herself on keeping quiet again. But Nick’s playing macho man was awfully silly. He knew as well as she did that, regardless of who was holding the chain, if Attila decided to take off, he’d be gone. Not that he ever would.

He dropped back down onto all fours, and before she realized anything was wrong he gave such a threatening snort that she jumped. Then, in a flash, he lowered his head, flattened his ears, and charged toward the clearing—yanking Nick completely off his feet and dragging him a few yards before he let go of the chain.

“Attila,
stop!”
she shouted, racing after him in utter horror.

By the time she reached the clearing, it was in pandemonium. Some of the crew were running for their lives, others were trying to climb trees. And Attila was attacking some sort of big furry monster at the far end of the clearing.

“Attila,
off!”
she shouted.

“Get him under control!” Jay was screaming. “Get him under control!”

Her heart in her throat, she slowly and cautiously crossed the clearing. Attila had totally flattened his victim, and when she realized it wasn’t anything alive—only some bearskins and pieces of lumber— she offered up a prayer of thanks.

Now that all the pieces were lying motionless, Attila simply poked at the skins a few times with his snout, then turned and looked at her.

“Okay, boy,” she murmured. “It’s okay.
Come.”

As gentle as a lamb again, he walked over to her. “Good boy.” She stroked his nose. “Good boy.
Sit.”

“What the hell was that about?” Nick whispered, materializing beside her.

“Oh, Lord, you’re not hurt, are you?”

“No, but both Jay and Goodie look apoplectic. What the hell went wrong?”

“That was the problem.” She waved her hand toward the things on the ground. “Those bearskins. It doesn’t matter how well they’re cured. There’s always some scent of the bear left. So Attila smelled it and thought it was real.”

“And instinctively attacked it.”

She nodded. “When they were live bears, they must have been males.”

“Dammit,” Nick muttered. “All that worrying about him not running on command when what we
should
have been worrying about was him not stopping on command.”

He looked over to where Jay was cringing behind a tree and demanded, “What the hell
was
this pile of rubble?”

“Our stand-in for Attila,” the director said shakily.

“Well, why didn’t you tell us you were planning on using bearskins? He thought they were a live bear. So, look, we’re going to take him into the woods, where he can’t see what’s going on, and you have someone get those things the hell away from here.”

Nick reached down to where the end of the chain was lying and picked it up—which Carly realized would have struck her as funny under different circumstances. After all, everyone on the site had just seen how effective it was.

But as things stood, she felt a whole lot more like crying than laughing.

“You just wait a minute,” Jay said from behind the cover of his tree. “This is impossible. I’m not working with a killer bear.”

“He’s
not
a killer,” she protested, growing closer to tears by the second. “If you hadn’t used those stupid bearskins, he’d have been just fine.”

“I don’t care. I’m not working with him.”

“You have to,” Goodie said.

For a moment, Carly couldn’t see him. Then she spotted his head sticking up from behind a rock.

“I
don’t
have to,” Jay snapped.

“Oh, yes, you do. In the first place, we’ve got a contract with these people. And in the second place, we can’t waste time finding another bear and another place to shoot. Not unless you want to bankrupt me.”

“We’ll use hot wires,” Carly said.

“What?” Goodie demanded.

“Electric wires, like the ones they use around cattle pastures. We stretch them along stakes between Attila and the crew. Then you spray-paint them to blend in with the background. If Attila starts moving toward them, someone activates the current.”

“If he moves as fast as he did last time, that someone would have to have damn quick reactions,” Jay muttered.

“Never mind about that,” Goodie snapped. “Why the hell didn’t you mention these wires before?” he asked Carly. “Why aren’t they already in place?”

“Goodie, we only have them because some insurance policies require them. But they…” She’d been going to say they weren’t really necessary, then thought better of it. At this point, everyone except her had to believe they were.

“Have you got green and brown spray paint on the set?” Jay asked Barb.

“Uh-huh. I had to spray some patches of grass and tree trunks.”

“Well, how long will it take to get these wires set up?” Goodie asked. “How much more time are we going to waste?”

“It won’t take long,” Carly assured him. “Nick and I should stay with Attila and get him completely calmed down. But if you send somebody to find Dylan—the blond kid with the ponytail who works for us—he knows where they are. Once he brings them out here, we can get them in place pretty fast.”

“Fast enough that we can start shooting after lunch?” Jay demanded.

She nodded. “Oh, and Dylan will need a hand, because he should bring a long length of heavier
chain, too—twenty feet or so. I imagine people would feel safer if we chain Attila to a tree between takes.”

“Well…” Jay said.

“Do it,” Goodie told him.

“Nick?” Carly said. “Let’s get Attila out of here.”

“Attila,
come,”
he ordered, starting for the edge of the clearing.

She followed along, and they walked through the woods for a few minutes, finally stopping beside a narrow stream. After Attila had a drink, Nick looped the end of the chain around a huge log-and sat down on its far end.

Carly joined him, still fighting back tears, while Attila happily began digging under the log for grubs.

“Great beginning, eh?” Nick said.

That did it. The tears started streaming down her face.

“Hey,” he said quietly. “Hey, we’ll redeem ourselves. We’ll give Jay everything he wants and he’ll forget all about this.”

“But it would never have happened if Gus was here,” she managed through her tears. “I should have thought to ask what they were using as a stand-in.”

“You
did
ask. I remember. But Jay brushed the question aside.”

“Well Gus wouldn’t have let him. Gus would have made sure he knew exactly what was what. Nick, I’m not good enough to run Wild Action without him. Even if we get through this film, once you’ve gone back to Edmonton…” Her throat grew too full of tears to go on.

“Carly…” He edged nearer and tentatively put his arm around her. “It’s going to be okay,” he murmured. “We’ll work things out, you’ll see.”

It would be so wonderful to believe him that she almost did. “You really think we can?” she whispered.

“Sure, we’ll make it work.” He shifted a little so he was looking into her eyes, then he put his other arm around her and drew her close.

She melted against him, breathing in his clean male scent. When a spark began to glow in her chest and a river of warmth flowed through her, she knew the way she was feeling was dangerous as all get out. But she didn’t care. At the moment, she wanted Nick to hold her like this forever.

His chest was reassuringly solid, and his arms felt so strong around her that he made her feel he could protect her from all the evils of the world just by holding her tight.

“Know what?” he whispered against her ear.

The warmth of his breath fanned the growing ache of passion within her. “What?” she whispered back.

“From here on, things can only get better.”

That actually made her smile. “Oh, Nick,” she murmured. “Sometimes I really do like your sense of humor.”

He drew back and looked at her. “Only sometimes?”

“Well…” The way he was gazing at her, with an ocean of warmth in his eyes, she doubted she could say another word. Not even if she could think of one.