Climbing felt magnificent.

As soon as Max’s hands touched the rocky cliff, his years of training and experience took over. Many of the handholds were loose; even more of the footholds gave way as soon as he shifted and tried to use them as leverage. Neither one of those things mattered. It was his goal to do as much freeform climbing as possible to keep Elena from doing too much of the work down below—a challenge he loved under almost all conditions, including this one.

It was terrible, he knew, but this kind of rescue was exactly what he lived for. It was dangerous and fraught with hazards. People’s lives were at stake. And poor Elena, waiting down below, would have preferred to be literally anywhere else in the world right now.

But he still loved it. For a few minutes, he got to dwindle down into nothing more than straining muscles and taut energy. For a few minutes, he was no longer all those things expected of him: father, ex-husband, low-level climbing instructor, once nominated for a Piolet d’Or. For a few minutes, he was just Max Stafford, man.

Then he looked down.

He didn’t know what drove him to do it. The first rule in any situation like this was to keep his eyes up and on the mission ahead. Not because it made him dizzy to look at how far away the ground was, but because he needed to focus on the rescue mission. The Georges seemed to be all right, anxiously waiting to pull him up onto the ledge should the need arise, but Wilcox was suffering in the cold. From what he could see, the older man was huddled and semi-unconscious, wrapped in blankets that did little to protect him from the piercing winds at that elevation.

Save the Georges. Bring Wilcox down. Then worry about Elena.

It wasn’t the priority of his heart, but it was the priority of the rescue—and the rescue came first. It always would. Elena, despite her many anxieties, knew it. He hadn’t thought to find that quality in any woman—let alone one like her—but there it was.

She understood him. She accepted him. She loved him.

Which was why he never should have looked down.

“Jesus fuck, you’ve got to be kidding me,” he said as soon as he caught a flash of black at the edge of his peripheral vision. For one merciful second, he thought it was a trick of the light—those scattered snowflakes transforming tree branches into monsters—but another glance set him to rights. He wasn’t so high up he couldn’t make out the shaggy shape of a black bear, lean from hibernation and none too pleased at being awoken from it, ambling along the cliff’s base.

The rockslide. Oh, hell. When Ace brought this part of the cliff down, he must have created a rumble large enough to awaken the slumbering beast—may have even expelled it forcefully from its den.

Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have panicked. Despite their ferocious reputation, most black bears wanted nothing to do with humans. It was a common myth that they were out prowling for human flesh at all hours of the day and night; it was only when they were with cubs or hungry that people needed to worry. No cubs were in sight, but that didn’t make him feel much better. This bear would be hungry and angry and disoriented, which wasn’t a combination he looked on with any favor.

Especially not while Elena was the only one down there for it to take its hunger and anger and disorientation out on.

“Is everything okay?” male George called down to him from over the side of the ledge. He was close enough now that Max could make out his worried expression. “Wilcox lost consciousness about ten minutes ago. We need to get him out of here. It’s too cold.”

Max swore. What he wouldn’t give for one of their fucking Bigfoots right about now. At least it might be counted on to help keep the bear at bay. Beast versus beast, and plenty of time for him to extract everyone in the meanwhile.

But Bigfoot wasn’t real. Elena was, and he’d forced her into this situation by promising he’d be here to take care of her.

With one quick check to make sure Elena hadn’t noticed the bear yet—she hadn’t, thank God—he gestured at where he’d seen the animal slip through the trees. “We have company,” he called through his teeth. Then, because it was ridiculous to hold this conversation over a distance of twenty vertical feet, he quickly climbed up the rest of the rock cliff to the ledge, taking the time to drill one last anchor at the top so they could rappel down.

“Oh, man. I sure am glad to see y—” female George began, but she stopped the moment she saw his face. “Uh-oh. What is it?”

“A bear. At about three o’clock. The cliff coming down must have woken him up.” He didn’t wait to point the creature out. Falling into a quick crouch, he performed a perfunctory check of Wilcox, who lay prostrate toward the back of the ledge, away from the worst of the wind. Out here in the open elevation, the temperature was a good ten degrees colder than it was down below—a fact that seemed to be taking a hard toll on the older man. His breathing was shallow and his color bad. “Is it coming any closer?”

He didn’t know what he’d do if the answer to that question was yes. There was little he could do to protect Elena from this height; he was bound by inactivity and helplessness of the highest order. In a flash of insight—too little and too late—he realized this was what it must have been like for Quinn to watch him walk out the door for every rescue. To know that she could lose everything in a single moment, to know even more that there was nothing she could do to stop it. She was at the mercy of the wild and of a man who refused to even once acknowledge how hard life must have been for her.

“No, it’s still a ways back. It hasn’t noticed her yet—I think it must be upwind.” Female George touched him on the shoulder. “I don’t know Elena very well, obviously, but from what I’ve been able to discover—”

“I know.” He stood, his mouth a grim line. “It’s her literal worst nightmare. But we need her to stay in place long enough for you to get down.”

“I could always free climb—”

“No.” Tempting though it might be to lift this terrible burden from Elena’s shoulders, asking George to do that wasn’t an option. Besides, she’d still be down there at the bear’s mercy. There wasn’t a shelter for miles. “George—the other one—I need you to start gathering every rock you can find. As George—this one—works her way down, you and I are going to try to pull the bear’s attention as far from them as possible.”

“Should we aim directly for it?”

“No. We don’t want to anger it—we want to scare it away. We just need to buy ourselves some time.”

Female George was already in the act of removing Max’s harness and hooking herself up to the equipment in his place. Having her take over the mechanics freed him to keep his eyes trained on the scene below, which meant he knew the exact moment when Elena saw the bear.

For the most part, she kept her gaze up and locked on him, watching his every movement as if waiting for his inevitable plunge off the side of the ledge. But she must have heard the rustle of the bear breaking through the outer edge of the forest, because she glanced sharply to her left. It was a good thing he was ready for it, because the yank on the rope as Elena reared back in alarm could have sent both him and George over the edge.

She didn’t, as he feared, scream. Nor did she unfasten herself and run—or, worse, keep herself attached and run. Like a doe—always that delicate doe—caught in headlights, she stopped moving altogether. Not up in a scared jump. Not down in a faint. He would have put good money on the likelihood that she wasn’t breathing, either. All she did was turn her head to look up at him.

Even from this distance, he could see the panic in her eyes. Not the specifics of it—the pupils darkened with adrenaline or the natural light gone cold—but in the way she held his stare for far too long considering there was a bear not more than a hundred feet away from her. She was looking to him for support, to save her and provide much-needed protection.

After all, that’s what she kept saying, right? That she had faith in his ability to shield her from harm? That nothing could touch her while he was near?

Consider this a harsh lesson to them both. He was just a man—and, if his relationship with Quinn was any indication, not a very good one at that.

“What’s she going to do?” George asked, almost finished with her harness. She stood still while Max tightened the bands on her legs. “Is she going to run?”

“No.”

“She looks like she might run.”

“She won’t.”

George tore her gaze from the scene below just long enough to blink at him. “How do you know?”

“Because I told her to stay put no matter what, and that woman has a heart crafted of steel. She’ll stand there and hold your slack even if it means a bear will tear her limb from limb while she does it.” Even though there was no need to put it into words, he did it anyway. “Move quickly, George. If anything happens to her…”

“Got it. You can count on me.”

He wished rather than believed that to be true. It wasn’t that George was a bad climber or even that she hesitated as she swung herself off the edge of the ledge and began rappelling down. She was actually quite good. Under any other circumstances, he might have taken a moment to admire her technique and offer a few pointers. But this wasn’t a teaching moment—at least, not one in which he was the teacher. If anything, he was here to learn. They could all take lessons in bravery from Elena Villanova, Harry Styles fan and nanny extraordinaire.

The bear took notice of the women when George reached the halfway point. The constant swinging movement would have been difficult for any creature to miss—and a bear snuffling around the undergrowth was no exception. It lifted its head and stared, alarmingly humanlike, as George continued her efficient descent.

Why, oh why, had he picked a goddamned bazooka for the letter B? Black bear would have been a double B, and he could have told Elena all the things she needed to know to survive this encounter. He didn’t even know if she could tell the difference between this smaller, less aggressive beast and the grizzlies that most people associated with death and dismemberment. Which meant that instead of being equipped to handle this situation, the best information she had at her fingertips was to tuck and roll should the bear pull out a bazooka and point it her way.

CRASH.

Behind him, male George started picking up rocks and hurtling them over the side of the ledge, drawing the animal’s attention.

“I got you, Georgie,” he called down to his wife. “Just make sure that poor girl is okay.”

Max didn’t waste any time hefting a few projectiles of his own. It felt good to do something to help Elena, even if it was from a height of several hundred ineffectual feet. He went for the biggest rocks he could find, straining to lift and hurl, knowing he’d pay for it later and not giving a single living damn. He’d gladly take on an eternity of this, Sisyphus staving off disaster, if it meant Elena would get out of this alive.

The next thirty seconds seemed an eternity. Max and male George threw as many rocks as they could, risking proximity to the bear in hopes it would take the hint and go away. Wilcox groaned as the constant crashing awakened him from his semi-conscious state. Female George almost jumped the rest of the way down the wall, forgoing climbing safety to get to Elena.

And through it all, Elena stood her ground—not looking at the bear but not threatening it, either. Performing her duties without adding to the chaos of the scene.

In other words, she performed the textbook response to a situation that didn’t exist in any textbooks Max had ever seen.

By the time George touched down, the bear had decided no potential food source was worth the constant crashing of stones overhead. With one last look at Elena, it lowered its head and plunged into the undergrowth, its loping steps carrying it out of sight in an echo of broken branches.

What followed should have been a moment for triumph, but triumph was the last thing Max felt as George finally reached Elena. Now that the danger had passed and her strength was no longer needed, Elena dropped to her knees in the snow and wept.

And Max, still with two more men to get to safety—one of whom needed immediate medical attention—could do nothing more than stand by and watch.