I wonder if he knows how loudly he communicates without talking.
After lunch he takes me to check on the fawn.
She's stable. Better than theprobablyhe mentioned earlier. He stands at the enclosure for a long moment, assessing, and I watch him assess her and feel something loosen in my chest in response to the loosening in his.
"She's going to make it," I say.
"Looks like it." He glances at me. "How do you know?"
"You relaxed."
He pauses before looking up at me. "You're observant."
"You're not that hard to read," I say, "once you know what you're looking for."
Something shifts in the air between us.
I said it without thinking about how it would land. It landed somewhere significant. I can feel the weight of it. I’ve just confessed to him that I’ve been watching him and not only watching, understanding.
He's looking at me and I'm looking at him and the fawn is moving quietly in the straw behind us and the thing that has been building between us is very present and very close.
"You should come back," he says. "There's more to show you."
He means the ranch. He's talking about the ranch.
He might not only be talking about the ranch.
"I want to," I say.
I also might not only be talking about the ranch.
We stand there for one more held moment, and then Colt appears in the doorway needing Anthony for something, and the moment releases, and I breathe again.
I wasn't aware I'd stopped.
He drives me back to the resort in the late afternoon.
We don't talk a lot and the space between us doesn't need filling. The truck is warm, and I have approximately three hundred photos and a full notebook and feelings I'm going to need more than one evening to sort out.
At the resort entrance he puts the truck in park but doesn't get out immediately.
"The Christmas preview event is Saturday," he says. "Holly's whole production."
"She's mentioned it several times with increasing enthusiasm."
"I'll be there. For the reindeer portion."
He's telling me he'll be there. He's not asking if I'll be there because he already knows I will be. He's just placing himself in my Saturday.
"I'll save you some ornament-decorating time," I say with a laugh.
"I don't decorate ornaments."
"You will on Saturday."
He looks at me. There's something in this particular look, a warmth that's been building since this morning, since the coffee, since his hand on my back, sincegood girl, and then it's there, the real smile, the one that goes all the way up to his eyes.
"Is that right," he says. Not a question.
