Dawn Stewardson - Wild Action

“But now?” Nick prompted, the uncertainty in her voice making him nervous.

“Well, it’s still the limit. And this movie will really help with the bottom line. Gus negotiated a great fee for the animals, plus Jay’s doing a lot of the shooting on our land and we’ll get paid for that So Wild Action will have cash in the bank—assuming things go well.”

“You mean we won’t get paid if they don’t?”

“Well…if we don’t fulfill our end of the contract… If the animals didn’t perform well enough or something.”

“Is that a real possibility?”

Carly shrugged uneasily. “I’m afraid that with Gus gone there are some problems. And if Jay doesn ’t end up happy, not getting all our money for the film wouldn’t be our only worry. He’s the type who’d go out of his way to ensure Wild Action’s name was mud.”

That possibility was enough to make Nick break into a cold sweat. He owned forty-nine percent of land that was mortgaged to the hilt and a company that might self-destruct if Carly didn’t please some hotshot director.

If that happened, forty-nine percent of Wild Action would probably be worth about a dollar and a quarter.

“But if you do make Jay happy?” he said.

“It would open the door to more Hollywood deals, and Wild Action would have so much money coming in that you wouldn’t have to look for a buyer. I’d be able to buy you out in no time.”

Which meant, Nick realized, the only intelligent thing for him to do was help make Jay Wall as happy as hell. And if that required a stint of playing zookeeper…

The prospect sure wasn’t appealing, but it seemed like the only sensible solution. Of course, he had to move at the end of the month, but he could always get some of his buddies to put his things in storage for a while.

“How long will this movie take?” he asked Carly.

“It’s hard to be sure. When Jay’s on location he shoots every day—assuming the weather’s right for the scenes. But the animals don’t always cooperate, and without Gus…

“But if things go right, they shouldn’t be filming on our property for more than a month or so.”

Nick nodded, his decision made. He could stand anything if it was only for a month or so. Besides, he assumed that if you weren’t pretty hard-nosed, those Hollywood types would walk all over you. And after a couple of looks into Carly’s big brown eyes, he figured she was about as tough as a marshmallow.

“What if I stuck around for a while?” he suggested. “As a working partner. That would get you through this movie and let you look for someone to hire.”

“You could do that? What about your job?”

He shrugged. Damned if he was going to admit he’d been such an idiot yesterday. “I’m sure I could work out some kind of leave.”

“That would be ideal,” Harris said. “Having someone with a vested interest helping out.”

“Why don’t you see about it right now,” Brown suggested, sliding his phone across the desk. “I’d feel a lot better if I knew things were arranged.”

Nick desperately tried to think of a reason for not seeing about it right now, but no divine inspiration came. So either he had to admit he’d quit his job— barely two seconds after saying he could take a leave from it—or he had to pick up that phone.

“Well?” Brown said.

Wishing to hell he’d been thinking more and talking less, Nick reached for the phone, punched in his own number and had a brief conversation with his answering machine.

“Done,” he said, clicking off. “I can take up to six weeks.”

The sick-looking smile Carly gave him said she wasn’t exactly thrilled about that—which he found darned irritating.

She needed help and he was offering to help her. Of course, he’d be looking after his own interests as well as hers, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that instead of being grateful, she looked as if she were racking her brain for some alternative solution.

“Is there a problem with this idea?” he finally asked.

Carly hesitated. There were several problems with it, but she did need someone. More specifically, she was pretty sure what she needed was a man with a deep voice. Like Nick’s. And her odds of getting anyone else on short notice…

She just wished she weren’t certain Nick would have a fit when he found out what he’d have to do. It was hardly a matter of helping out with horses and cattle.

“No,” she said at last. “There’s no problem. You just took me by surprise.”

“Fine. Then it’s settled. I mean, I’m assuming there’s a spare bedroom in the house?”

“Ahh…yes, of course. It has four bedrooms.” She reminded herself Nick was a police detective, which surely meant he wasn’t into rape and pillage. But that only alleviated one worry.

The scratch he was sporting hardly boded well for his ability to work with animals—in which case he might turn out to be more of a liability than an asset.

Just for starters, what if Attila didn’t like him? Or what if Nick was too frightened of the bear to try working with him?

For a moment, she considered telling him that was what she really needed help with. Then she decided she’d better save it for later. Nick obviously expected her to say something, though, so she asked if he knew anything about the movie industry.

“No, but I’ve always been a quick study.”

She managed a smile.

He gave her a warm one in return.

Roger and Bill were positively beaming.

But if the three of them figured this was such a great arrangement, why was her intuition saying it had all the makings of a catastrophe?

WHILE SHE WAS ATTEMPTING to get them out of downtown Toronto, Carly got lost so many times Nick stopped counting.

Instead, he started thinking that if she proved to be as good at running a business as she was at navigating, he’d made a wise move by deciding to stick around and keep an eye on his inheritance.

Their conversation was interrupted every time she pulled over to check her street map, which made it awfully disjointed, but by the time they found the Don Valley Parkway and were headed north, she’d managed to tell him a little about most of the animals they owned.

To his relief, the bear was the only potential mankiller in the bunch. Aside from Attila, there were the birds in the aviary, a couple of ponies named Paint and Brush, a parrot called Crackers and a few cats and dogs.

Oh, and she’d mentioned rabbits, as well, but they didn’t sound like much work. They wandered around loose, so it was only a matter of giving them food and keeping an eye on them. Similarly, Rocky, the trained coon, did his own thing at night and slept on the porch roof during the day.

Actually, Nick had assumed there’d be a lot more animals than there were, but when he told Carly that, she gave him a sidelong glance and said, “Trained animals all need to be worked with or they don’t stay trained. That’s where the agency part comes in. We have a lot of animals under contract that are owned by other people. Everything from lizards and snakes to tigers and an elephant.”

When she lapsed into silence, he immediately started thinking about the bear again. “This Attila,” he said. “How did you end up with him?”

“He was orphaned by a hunter—would have died if we hadn’t taken him in. He’d either have starved to death or been eaten by an adult bear.”

Bears didn’t exactly sound like charming animals, but Nick kept the thought to himself.

“So Gus and I bottle-raised him,” Carly went on, “until he got too big to live in the house.”