A gunshot cracked through the quiet forest, sending birds screeching into the sky. Candice Gray gasped and dropped her paint brush and watercolors on the pine needles scattered across the ground. She scurried to her feet, heart pounding.

Movement down the hill, in the dark shadows between the trees, caught her eye. A whining groan carried over the distance and then went still. In shock, she slipped, sliding down the hill toward the groaning sound. When she found her feet again, she scrambled forward. Had something been shot?

In the clearing, beyond a tangle of huckleberry bushes, a massive brown body lay sprawled across the ground. 

A grizzly.

The animal’s chest rose and fell one last time, and the light dimmed in its dark eyes.

A man barked at her from behind a stand of lodgepole pines. “Get out of here!” he yelled.

Candice backed away. This was all wrong. She’d just wanted to capture the light streaming through the forest canopy on her week-long summer camping trip. Coming across an illegal hunting kill had not been part of the plan.

She squinted at the shadows. The men weren’t wearing the standard orange hunting vests. She could almost make out their faces, but not quite.

“Sorry,” she stammered, trying unsuccessfully to climb back up the hill.

“Come on!” the other man yelled at the first. Candice turned to see them disappearing into the trees.

She slid down on her behind, her khaki pants smudged brown and green from dirt and pine needles. She took deep breaths, trying to calm herself from the shock.

Candice scrambled to her feet and attempted to get to her things on top of the small ridge. Try as she might, she couldn’t climb up the hill. Every time she took a step, she slid back down, leaving her at the bottom, facing the dead grizzly.

“Why does this always happen to me?” she whimpered.

“Why does what always happen to you?” a deep voice asked.

Candice gasped and snapped her eyes up to find a man standing over the grizzly. He held a shotgun in his hand, was dressed in blue jeans and a brown uniform top, and had a shiny badge on his chest.

He turned his face to her, his dark eyes hidden under the brim of a black cowboy hat.

“What happened here, ma’am?” he asked in a rumbling, gritty voice.

“I…I was painting,” she stammered, struggling to her feet. Her behind was dirty and damp from the fall. Blood pulsed in her ears, but her breathing began to calm.

“I’m Warden Wyatt McCloud. What is your name?”

“Candice…Candice Gray. I was just painting, and there was a shot. The bear. I think it’s dead. The hunters ran. I didn’t think hunting was allowed here.”

“It’s not.” Wyatt strode around the bear, his heavy boots moving lightly over the ground. He sniffed the air and bent down to a squat, resting his arm on his thigh. “You saw the hunters?”

“I did, but I don’t think I could recognize them if I saw them again. They were in the shadows between the trees over there.” She pointed to where the hunters had been.

Wyatt growled and stood. His long strides carried him effortlessly through the forest to where she’d pointed. He came back a moment later with a shotgun shell. He sniffed it and angled the walkie-talkie on his shoulder to his lips.

“McCloud here. I’ve got a dead grizzly up on the north face of the mountain. Going to need backup to clear it out.”

He turned to Candice as she stood helplessly at the bottom of the hill, her painting things still at the top. The light streamed through the treetops and caught Wyatt’s features. The planes of his masculine face were illuminated by the diffused light. Sun sparked in his deep green eyes, and they danced with amber around the irises.

Catching her breath for the first time, Candice took him in. Holy crap is he good looking. Six foot six and built like an athlete. Maybe it was the adrenaline talking, but she’d never seen a man so unbelievably…male.

His dark brown hair curled around the back of his neck, under his cowboy hat, and a five o’clock shadow dusted his manly, square jaw. She bit her lip and took a step back, her heart beating anew. He looked her up and down, nostrils flaring, and then made a growling sound in the back of his throat.

“You said you were painting?” he asked her.

“Yes. I was on a hike, painting the forest, when I heard a shot. It scared me to death. Then I fell. My stuff’s still up there.” She gave him a weak smile and pointed up the hill. “I can’t get back to it.”

He made that growly sound again and charged up the hill. In a few deft movements, he gathered her things and brought them to her.

A handful of forest rangers came up the hillside on ATVs. She glanced at the bear and then tripped backward at the sight. Falling into Wyatt’s arms, she heard a woman scream, but didn’t know where it had come from.

Everyone stopped. The rangers gasped. Wyatt growled.

“No!” Candice yelled.

On the ground, naked and covered in blood and dirt, was a dead man.