Page 32 of Wild Sanctuary

The silence between us feels easy, but it’s a lie. My mind slips past it, despite my best intentions, to the thoughts that strike at two in the morning when sleep won’t come—thoughts that make my hands ache and my chest tighten.

Her moving beneath me.

Her breath hot against my neck.

Her voice in my ear⁠—

Fuck!

I’ve spent six years trying to burn those images from my mind, and yet they keep coming back. Tenfold, now that she’s here again, and therefore impossible to ignore.

Boone snorts beneath me, tossing his head like he can sense the shift in my grip on the reins. I loosen my hands. Breathe out slowly.

“Everything okay, Boss?” Rhett’s voice anchors me.

“Eyes on the herd.” My voice is sharper than intended as I nudge Boone forward, forcibly pushing all thoughts of anything aside from this cattle drive out of my head.

By Wednesday, I’m running out of places to hide.

I’ve checked fences that don’t need checking. Reorganized the feed schedule twice. Had a thirty-minute conversation with Miguel about irrigation that could have been handled in under five. And still, somehow, she’s everywhere.

Or maybe it’s ’cause you can’t stop looking.

Talking to Sarah by the main house. Walking with Old Dave toward the equipment barn. Sitting on the porch steps with her laptop. I’m aware of her location on the property at all times, like she’s a heat-seeking missile and I’m trying to stay out of range.

It’s exhausting. And humiliating. And getting harder to justify. Nobody comments on my mood. Nobody asks why I keep finding reasons to be on the opposite end of the property from wherever she is. As far as anyone can tell, I’m just busy. Focused. Same as always.

The fact that I’m barely holding it together underneath is nobody’s business but mine.

It happens just past noon.

I’m rounding the corner of the tack room with a saddle slung over one arm when she comes through the barn door from the other side, and we nearly collide. I pull up short, the saddle swinging wide, and my free hand shoots out on instinct, reaching for her shoulder, her arm, anything to stop her walking straight into sixteen pounds of leather and steel.

I stop myself before I touch her.

My hand hovers an inch from her bare shoulder—she’s wearing a tank top, some thin, faded thing the color of rust, and the strap has slipped so there’s nothing between my palm and her skin but a sliver of dusty air—and I pull back like I’ve touched a hot fence line.

Too late.

She looks up at me, startled, her lips parted on a breath she didn’t finish. From this angle, I’m looking straight down at her, the crown of her head barely clearing my chest, and this close, the barn smell disappears.

All I get is her. Not hay, not leather, not horse. Just her.

And it goes straight through me.

“Sorry.” The word comes out like gravel. “Didn’t see you.”

“No, I—my fault, I was looking at my phone, I wasn’t⁠—”

She’s rambling.

Daisy Monroe, who always has the right words, is rambling. And I’m standing here like a goddamn idiot with my hand still half-raised between us like I don’t know what to do with it now that it didn’t land where my body wanted it to.

I drop it to my side. Hitch the saddle higher on my arm.

“Watch where you’re going,” I manage, flat and clipped.

“Right.” Her voice has gone quiet. “Sorry.”