Bear Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire #2)(11)

“Cut us some slices, will you? Lennard’s out with the horses. He’s a freak about getting everything just right with the packing the day before a tour. In the hunting season, he’s even worse. I keep thinking one of these years he’ll trust us to handle everything, but he goes over and over the packing three times at least.”

“Does he ever find anything wrong with the way you pack?”

“No,” Chance called from the great room. Another magazine page sounded. “He’s just a control freak.”

“Yeah, but his diligence is why this place thrived for so long,” Jenner murmured distractedly.

She pulled a knife from a block on the countertop and smiled privately. Lennard had told her about Jenner turning down offers from other outfitters just to invest his money here and dig his heels in. She respected him more for giving Lennard the credit instead of bragging about his own importance. Jenner was a loyal man, and when his elbow bumped hers as he worked beside her, a strange fluttering feeling filled her middle.

When she’d imagined a grilled cheese dinner, she hadn’t thought it would be so grand. Jenner cooked lemon pepper asparagus in a pan while she chopped a colorful fruit salad, and the grilled cheeses he made were the fanciest she’d ever seen. Three types of cheeses were melted right into the middle of butter-toasted French bread with the perfect amount of squish and crunch. Jenner left a trio of filled plates on the counter, and as they were sitting down at the giant twelve-seater dining table with the wagon wheel chandelier above them lighting the room, Dalton appeared to tuck into their meal with them.

“Sorry,” he murmured to Jenner as he sat across the table from her.

Jenner jerked his chin dismissively from the seat right next to Lena. “Don’t worry about it.”

The tension in the air dissipated almost immediately, and Chance passed out cold beers. And bless that man, he didn’t even joke about a fruity cocktail for her as he popped the cap off and handed one over.

“To a successful trip,” Dalton toasted, holding his beer up. He’d said it to everyone, but his eyes were steady on Jenner.

Lennard walked in right as they tinked the glass bottles, then joined them with his own plate and frothy drink. Conversation was easy after that, and the joking and teasing commenced, much to Lena’s relief. She hated worrying that any of the earlier tension had been because of her. Beside her, Jenner ate four sandwiches to her one, but she supposed a man his size needed a lot of calories to sustain himself. And when she finished her last bite and pushed her plate away by inches, Jenner leaned back in his chair, his arm hooked on the ladder back of her seat.

She wanted to think he was being possessive, but from his little duck-and-run this morning, he likely was relaxed and had accepted her as one of the guys. This is how it happened with any man she had found interesting since Adam. The friend-zone swallowed her up quickly out in the field. Something about her made her great surrogate sister material, but little more. And for some reason, watching Jenner smile at something Chance had said, that thought made her really sad this time. She was attracted to him, but it was more than that. The more she got to know about the quiet giant of a man, the more she wanted to know, and the more she respected him. But he saw her as a little buddy at most, and there was tragedy in that.

“Lena,” Dalton said, looking troubled. “Did you hear me?”

“Huh?” she said, blinking rapidly and ripping her gaze away from Jenner.

“I asked how you got into wildlife photography.”

“Oh, right. Sorry. Uh, I studied for it in college. I’ve been obsessed with photography since I was little and my mom got me this—” She laughed as heat flooded her cheeks. “Too much information.”

“No, tell us,” Lennard said, leaning forward on his elbows on the other side of Dalton.

“Okay. My mom bought me this Polaroid camera when I was a kid, and I fell in love with taking pictures of things I thought people missed in the everyday.”

“Like what?” Chance asked.

She puffed air out of her cheeks and frowned, trying to recall some of her early photographs. “Like my mom’s face when my dad brought her flowers. My sisters when they were actually getting along, playing in a sandbox.” She swallowed hard and admitted low, “How beautiful and heartbroken my mom looked at my dad’s funeral. That’s weird, I know. But for me, it helped me deal with what was happening. I could see someone else’s grief, and it was real and moving, and I didn’t feel alone with my own heartache when I captured those moments that weren’t the brave-face kind. I almost ran us broke with the refills for that old Polaroid camera, so when I was able, I saved up and bought a film camera. I love animals, so I volunteered at a local zoo every summer, mostly running the youth programs, but I would bring my camera along and take pictures of the animals in their cages. But that made me sad, seeing them all cooped up, and every picture had some kind of fencing in it, no matter what angle I shot, so when I started taking my college classes for photography, I took animal sciences, behavior, and husbandry for electives so that I could work toward…well…this. I got lucky and landed an internship at Bucks and Backwoods right when they started up, and now I’m here, shooting Alaskan brown bears.”

“Lucky you,” Chance said with a snort.

“I am. I beat out some of the best photographers in the company to come here. This is my shot at having one of those careers I only dreamed of. All of my hard work has led me to this trip. Alaska has been a dream of mine since I was a kid.”