Opal sighed as she dropped her camera. She thought she’d gotten good shots of the mother bear pulling her cubs back to safety, and the natural instinct of the mama to protect her babies overwhelmed her.

Tears welled in her eyes as she dropped her head, and when Bernard wrapped his arm around her, she let her head fall on his shoulder and wept. Wept at the beauty of nature, the wonder of the world and her good fortune to witness something so magical, so lovely, as a mother’s love for her babies.

When Bernard pulled her chin toward his and she felt his warm lips on hers, she sank into the moment and let her tears fall.

She thought of her own mother, and how she missed her, of Bernard’s mother and how his heart must ache without a mother’s love...but most of all, she thought of how tender his lips felt on hers. How much she wished he’d felt the love of his mother, and how much she missed her own.

She smiled as he pulled back and brushed his thumb across her cheek.

“Well, that was unexpected,” she said as she reached for her camera.

“Which part?” he asked as he lifted his binoculars and looked out over the valley.

“All of it,” she answered as she took several more shots.

She cleared her throat as he gathered the remnants of their breakfast and placed them in his backpack.

“Yes,” he said slowly. He clicked the lens cap back on his camera, and she did the same with hers.

“We’d better get back down to the ranch to tell Belinda what we saw. She was pretty adamant that we let her know if we saw cubs, or a mother bear in particular.”

“Right,” he said.

She reached for his hand as he held it out to her and pulled her to her feet. She was surprised that her legs were a little wobbly, and grateful that he wrapped his arm around her waist to steady her.

They fell into silence as they followed the trail back down the hill, each in their own thoughts.

Opal replayed the scene with the mama bear and the cubs over and over in her mind, re-living the joy of that as well as the unexpected kiss. She wasn’t quite sure how she felt about it—she’d let him into her life, but even though he’d kissed her, he hadn’t let her into his.

She hadn’t thought about meeting anyone as she had her father to take care of, but if she did, she wanted it to be someone who shared as much with her as she did with him. And so far, Bernard hadn’t been willing to do that.

As they reached the ranch, Opal pulled Belinda’s card from her pocket. She reached for her cell phone, but realized she had no reception.

“Do you have any bars on your phone?” she asked Bernard.

He glanced at his phone and shook his head. “Nope.”

“I know I have reception at the cafe.”

Bernard smiled as her stomach grumbled.

“Good call on both counts. We can get something to eat, too, and look at the pictures you took. And we’ll have to tell Kelsi sometime.”

She looked up at him in surprise as he took her hand and pulled her toward the cafe. She’d thought that the kiss had been a spontaneous outpouring of emotion, a reaction to seeing the bears and the splendor of the moment. But now that her hand was in his, she wasn’t quite sure.

Bernard rested his hand on the small of her back as he opened the door of the cafe for her, gesturing for her to go in ahead of him.

She stomped her boots for a moment, and clapped her hands together as she entered the warm cafe and headed for her regular booth.

“Hi,” Kelsi said as she waved from behind the counter, and Opal and Bernard exchanged glances. She imagined that he wasn’t looking forward to crushing Kelsi’s hopes about Bigfoot any more than she was.

They slid into the booth and took off their gloves, reaching for their cameras almost in unison. She remembered at the last moment that she’d been taking pictures with his camera and set hers back down on the table as Kelsi came up to take their order.

Kelsi set down a pitcher of cream and held the pot of coffee as Bernard splashed some in his mug.

“So, did you find anything?” Kelsi asked as she poured a cup of coffee for Opal, her eyebrows raised as she looked from Bernard to Opal.

Bernard cleared his throat and flipped through some of the pictures.

“Well, I think we have some good news and some bad news,” he said as he held the camera out to Kelsi.

She set the coffee pot on the table and reached for the camera, her eyes wide.

“Oh, these are really cute. What great pictures of bear cubs. They’re darling. And there’s their mama,” she said as she flipped through the pictures. “Great shots, you guys, but...”

“And that’s the bad news,” Opal said as she patted Kelsi’s elbow. “They’re bear cubs, not Bigfoot.”

“Oh, shoot,” Kelsi said as she handed the camera back to Bernard. She took in a big breath. “Well, I was prepared for anything. I was very hopeful, mind you, that you two would be the ones, but I guess you’re not. Good pictures, though. Thanks for trying!”

Opal blinked a few times as Kelsi walked back behind the counter, and when she glanced at Bernard, they both covered their smiles with their hands.

Opal sighed. “I have to say that I truly hope someday Kelsi finds Bigfoot. She deserves it.”

“She sure does,” Bernard agreed.

“So, we need to call Belinda, don’t we? She said if we found out there were bears, we needed to call right away.”

“Right,” Bernard said, but he was already flipping through pictures again.

Opal pulled out her phone and the card with Belinda’s number on it. She punched in the numbers, and when Belinda answered, she told her what had happened.

“Yes, we have pictures,” she said when Belinda asked. “Yes, we could take you to the knoll and show you exactly where the bears are. Okay, I’ll wait to hear from you.”

She clicked off her phone, and smiled as Bernard was still looking through the pictures.

“These are absolutely amazing. You got some great shots,” he said as he shook his head. “Look at this one.” She took the camera from her and studied the picture.

“Oh, this one is awesome,” she said, her eyes tearing up again. “It’s perfect of the mother with the cubs...so cute. It shows how much she loves them, doesn’t it?”

She looked up and her eyes met Bernard’s. His eyes clouded for a moment and he looked away.

“Yes, it does. Lovely.”

Opal’s heart tugged, happy that she’d have pictures to look at in addition to the memory of the cubs that would be etched on her heart forever.

“It really was a spectacular moment, wasn’t it?”

Bernard continued to flip through the camera, and she cocked her head as she frowned at him. He was so engrossed in the pictures that he hadn’t asked what Opal had said, and he hadn’t even touched his coffee.

“Bernard?”

“Hm? What?” He didn’t lift his head from the camera.

“I said, wasn’t that a spectacular moment?”

He looked up at her and blinked a few times.

“Oh, yes, it was. It was great. It’s amazing to capture something like that on film, and you did a great job. The lighting is perfect, and you got tons of action shots.”

He looked back down at the camera, and Opal leaned back in the booth and crossed her arms over her chest.

Was he really just interested in the shots she’d taken? Hadn’t he been moved at the sight of the bear cubs and their mother, as she was?

She thought that’s why he’d kissed her—that they’d shared a special moment together that few humans ever had—but maybe she was wrong. He hadn’t even answered the phone when his own mother had called.

She lifted her coffee cup toward Kelsi, signaling for a refill, and sighed.