"You stopped for an injured animal in the road." There's something in his voice. I can’t place it. It’s not quite amusement, more like amusement that's keeping itself on a leash. Is he trying to keep from laughing at me? "That's not the wrong thing to do."
"I'm so sorry about your bumper."
"Don't worry about the bumper." He looks at me again, and I get the full weight of that evaluating gaze. "Are you hurt?"
"What? No. I'm fine."
"You're pale."
"I'm naturally pale."
"You're paler than naturally pale."
I open my mouth to argue and then close it, because he's probably right. I can feel my heart trying to exit through my sternum. "Adrenaline," I say. "It'll pass."
"Put your hazards on if they're not already and stand by your vehicle." He's already moving toward the calf, slowly, in a wide easy arc that gives the animal room to track him. "I'll be a few minutes."
“My hazards are already on,” I tell him. Not sure why. Maybe, because I want him to think I’m competent?
“Stand by your vehicle. It’s safer over there.” It's not phrased as a question.
I stand by my vehicle.
And I watch.
I don't have a word for what he does with that calf. I've planned safaris and wildlife tours and I've written the words 'up close with nature' approximately four hundred times in blog posts, and I have never actually seen anything like this.
He talks to it. The whole time. His voice is low and deep and a hundred percent all male.
He’s not talking to it in a baby-talk way. Instead, he uses a low, steady, matter-of-fact tone like he’s calming a toddler about to get a vaccine at the pediatrician’s office. Why do I want him to talk to me like that?He’s daddying the baby elk. I realize howcrazy that thought is the second it pops into my brain, but… he is, and doing it so well.
He’s telling him exactly what he's about to do before he does it. Where he's going to touch it. What's going to happen next. Like it deserves the courtesy of a heads-up, and his job is just to make sure it gets one. As if he’s asking for consent. I’ve never in my life seen anything as sexy. Not in movies, not in the books I read; and I reada lotof books, and never ever in person. If love at first sight was a thing…
As he talked to the calf, it stopped trembling. And I find myself trembling with something I can’t identify. Need? Lust? I’m not really sure. When he bends over, all I can see is the delicious outline of his ass.
Okay. That's it. I need to not be watching this so intently.
I pull out my phone.
HOLLY: Are you okay?? Where are you? Justin is about to send out a search party. You were supposed to be here almost an hour ago!
HOLLY: Actual quote: 'She's probably stopped to photograph something'
MAYA: Okay so
MAYA: There was a situation.
CHLOE: ...
EMILY: Define situation
MAYA: An injured elk calf was in the road. I had to stop.
MAYA: There was some bumper contact. Nobody died.
MADISON: MAYA
LILY: BUMPER CONTACT
