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“What if we do?” Derek asked. “Accidentally.”
“They might slap the ground, huff, blow, or bluff charge; then you want to—”
“What’s a bluff charge?” Tim interrupted. He seemed a little tense.
“The bear runs forward, then stops. It’s trying to make you move a safe distance away.”
“I’ll move all right,” Tim muttered. “I’ll run my ass off.”
“No,” Teo said. “You shouldn’t run.”
Gina glanced at him in surprise, but he had said he’d been camping and riding in remote areas. This was common knowledge to those who had.
“What should we do?” Derek’s eyes were wide, but unlike his father, he appeared more interested than scared, which was good. That thing about animals smelling fear? Completely true.
“Maintain eye contact, talk quietly, back away. You don’t want the bear to be any more threatened than it already is, but you can’t behave like prey, either. You run, it’ll chase you. Then…” She paused, letting her gaze meet that of every person around the fire before she continued. “It’ll catch you. A bear can outrun, outclimb…” Gina searched for another example and came up blank. “Pretty much out-anything you.”
“Maybe we should go back,” Tim began.
“No.” That was all she’d need. Everyone begging to return to the ranch in the middle of the night, wanting refunds she couldn’t afford, from money she probably no longer had because Jase had already used it to pay off the most obnoxious of their creditors. “Bears aren’t aggressive. The last person killed in the wild by a Colorado black bear was in 1993.”
“What do you mean ‘in the wild’?” Tim’s voice was getting steadily higher and louder, encroaching into the range of the As’. “Bears have killed people in their houses? Their hotels? The candy shop on Main Street?”
“No,” Gina said, keeping her own voice low, steady, and calm. “‘In the wild’ means out here, like this, not a so-called tame bear that’s a pet or a performance or a zoo animal. Those tend to flip out and attack their trainers more often than any bears in the wild jump the tourists.”
She wished she hadn’t had to tell them this now, before bed, which might lead to bear-induced nightmares or her needing to accompany them to the “facilities,” slapping the brush with a stick to prove there was nothing hiding there in the dark. But better they knew what to do, what to expect, than that she got any sleep.
“So.” Gina clapped her hands and Tim jumped, then laughed at himself for doing it. He was going to be all right. “Off to bed. I’ll be right here.” She pointed at her tent, which she’d pitched nearest the trees. “If you need anything don’t hesitate.”
“To scream,” Derek said as he followed his dad toward their tent.
Tim hooked his arm around his son’s neck and proceeded to give him noogies as Derek pretended to hate it but laughed nonetheless.
Gina’s lips curved as they disappeared into their tent.
Let the bonding begin.
CHAPTER 6
As the others melted away, leaving only Gina and Teo behind, Teo stared after the Gordons with a bemused expression.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
His gaze flicked to hers; then he shrugged as if embarrassed. “Is that normal for a dad and a son?”
“That?”
“The shoving and the teasing, the knocking on the head.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Gina answered. “I’m not a boy.”
“Mmm,” he said, the comment sounding both agreeable and slightly sexy. But then everything about him was slightly sexy.
And Gina was losing her mind.
“You didn’t shove and tease your dad?”
“I didn’t have a dad.”
