hall of Aurora Community Church. All alone. There wasn’t another soul in sight.
Unless the bear whose tail end was currently sticking out of the overturned trash can in the corner was to be counted. Bears had souls, didn’t they?
Posy rolled her eyes. Now wasn’t exactly the time to contemplate the eternal salvation of Smokey, Paddington and the like.
The bear grunted, its rumbling voice echoing from within the metal trash can. It sounded so...so...sinister. And hungry. Very hungry. Like every growling stomach in the universe all rolled into one. Posy’s heart thumped so hard, she thought it might beat right out of her chest. She’d never been so terrified in her life. Not even the first time she’d danced the role of Clara in The Nutcracker as a ten-year-old. Nor opening night of her debut as a soloist with the West Coast Arts Ballet Company, plucked from the corps de ballet and thrust directly into the spotlight.
She was standing in an enclosed space with a grizzly. And she was on crutches. Could it get any worse?
One sound, one telltale movement and the bear would realize she was there. And she’d be taken down like a weak zebra on the National Geographic Channel.
She tightened her grip on her crutches and took a deep, calming breath, much like the one she always took in the final seconds before the red velvet curtains parted on performance nights. Only this breath wasn’t all that calming. Her chest grew tighter. She thought she might be hyperventilating. She prayed for a paper bag. Or better yet, a can of bear repellent.
Bear repellent.
Posy hadn’t seen a can of bear spray in years. San Francisco wasn’t without its dangers, but bears didn’t exactly make the short list. Or the long list. Or any variation of the list whatsoever. Bear repellent was obviously no longer a staple in her handbag. But hair spray certainly was. Ballerina buns didn’t stay put on their own.
Without taking her eyes off the bear’s broad, furry hindquarters, she anchored her right crutch firmly under her arm and reached into her purse for the can of Aqua Net that she never went anywhere without. Okay, so it wasn’t exactly Mace for wild animals, but maybe it would do in a pinch. As carefully and quietly as she could manage, she pried off the lid. But her hands were shaking so badly that it fell to the ground before she could catch it.
To Posy’s ears, it sounded louder than a gunshot when it hit the tile floor and bounced what had to be at least a dozen times. The world came to an abrupt standstill. Save for the lid to the Aqua Net clattering around like a pinball, nothing moved. Not Posy. Not the dust in the air. Not even the bear. All rummaging had ceased. Not a muscle moved in that furry back end, until the bear slowly began walking backward, extricating itself from the trash can.
Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no.
Posy took an instinctive step backward with her left foot. The injured one. Pain shot through her plaster cast, and she stumbled. One crutch clattered to the ground. She seized on to the other with both desperate hands and teetered sideways. The crutch wobbled. And the tile floor suddenly seemed to be rising up to meet her. Just as she realized she was going down, the bear shot the rest of the way out of the trash can in a fuzzy brown blur.
Posy screamed. She no longer cared about the rules. If she was about to become bear chow, someone somewhere was going to hear about it. Her scream echoed off the walls of the fellowship hall as she tumbled to the ground.
Then, before her body made contact with the hard tile, she was lifted into the air from behind by a powerful force. Her terror grew tenfold. And her first thought was that she was being tag teamed. By bears.
Well, she wasn’t going down without a fight. She had only one weapon left at her disposal, and she didn’t hesitate to use it. She pressed down on the Aqua Net nozzle as hard as she could and aimed the can over her shoulder, screaming all the while.
“Ouch! What the...”
The talking bear—talking bear?—released its hold on her and she toppled to the floor, landing squarely on her backside, which was good. She didn’t mind a bruised behind as long as she didn’t reinjure her foot. Assuming she wasn’t about to be eaten, she needed that foot to heal in time for the spring production of Firebird.
“What was that for?”
Posy glanced up at the figure towering over her.
A man. Not another bear.
A man.
A man pressing the heels of his hands into his puffy red eyes and groaning as though he’d been doused with pepper spray or something.
Posy glanced at the can of Aqua Net still clutched in her hand. Great. Just great. Someone had actually come to her aid, and she’d maced him.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to spray you. I meant to spray him.” She pointed toward the bear, which had extricated itself from the trash can and was now spinning happy circles chasing its tail.
Posy stared at it. That didn’t seem like normal bear behavior. And now that she got a good look at the creature, it looked less like a bear and more like a...
“My dog?” the man barked. “You wanted to spray my dog with hair spray?”
“Yes.” She scrambled rather inelegantly to her feet, gathering up her crutches along the way. “I mean, no.”
“Which is it? Yes or no? Me or the dog?” He sounded angry. Angrier than a mama bear defending her cub.
Not that Posy could blame him. She’d had an eyeful of Aqua Net on more than one occasion, particularly in her early years with the dance company when she’d shared a cramped dressing room with every one of the other thirteen members of the corps. It wasn’t pleasant.
She forced herself to tear her gaze away from the dog. Not such an easy task. It was an enormous, hulking beast. Very bearlike in appearance, other than the lolling tongue and great swinging tail. She kept doing double takes to make sure it was, in fact, a dog. It let out a woof, and she finally felt safe enough to take her eyes off it.
“Again, I’m sorry. Very sorry.” Her cheeks flared with heat. “I thought your dog was a bear.”
He removed his hands from his face and looked down at her with incredulous eyes. Red, puffy, incredulous eyes.
Posy lost her balance for a moment, then righted herself. She found it difficult to breathe all of a sudden.
She stared at the man, sure she was hallucinating. A name—the name—from her past echoed in her ears, along with the pounding of her suddenly out-of-control pulse.
Liam.
No. It couldn’t be. It looked like him—same charmingly rumpled dark hair, same broad shoulders, same chiseled jaw. Except now those shoulders seemed even broader, the jaw more finely sculpted and covered with a dark shadow of masculine stubble. Six years was a long time. Long enough to change a boy into a man, apparently.
“Posy?” he said, the shock she felt down to her core mirrored in his expression.
And for the briefest of moments she was eighteen again, living in a snow-globe world of young love, cozy Alaskan winters and wild-heartbeat romance. Laughter. Long walks among snow-laden evergreens. The thrill of her frosty first kiss while swirling snowflakes gathered in her hair.
She swallowed. “Liam.”
His name felt somehow both familiar and foreign on her tongue. Like a favorite thick, cozy cardigan sweater that looked the same as it always had, but no longer seemed to fit once you slipped it on.
“Posy,” he said again, a coldness creeping into his voice.
She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but then Liam’s gaze dropped lower. To her foot. And the ugly anchor attached to it—her plaster cast.
Breathe. Just breathe.
Without even realizing