Page 72 of Wild Sanctuary

That’s the plan.

I pull on jeans and a clean sweater and drag my hair back. Then I grab my laptop charger from beside the bed, which is the only thing I forgot when I packed up last night in a hurry.

I stand there for a second, charger in hand, looking at the stripped bed and the empty windowsill and the cabin that feels like it’s exhaled.

Then the bright, unforgiving light of a Montana morning does what it always does and cuts straight through the noise.

I was wrong.

About him. About last night. About what any of it meant.

There it is. That’s the full picture.

He’s out there somewhere past the ridge, driving fence posts into the ground at Elk Creek. Not thinking about orchards or nicknames or the woman who pressed her face into his hand like she was starving for it.

Just working. Like nothing happened.

Because for him, nothing did.

Fine.

Then I’ll do the same.

I’ll focus on finishing the investigation and filing the article. Then I can get back to Colorado.

Mind made up, I head back toward the main house.

Once I let myself back in, I go upstairs first to collect my laptop and the investigation files from the nightstand. Then I shake out the shirt, and hang it back on the hook behind his door. I grab my creased dress and crumpled hat, intent on returning them to my cabin later, before making my way back downstairs to Wyatt’s office.

Like his room and his shirt, it smells just like him.

I give myself exactly three seconds to be pathetic about it.

One… Two…

I close my eyes and inhale more deeply than required before exhaling.

“Three.”

Then I open my eyes and nod once before taking in my surroundings.

The room is as spare as everything else about him. A wide oak desk with a reading lamp, alongside a banker’s chair with leather that’s worn soft from years of use, is backed by bookshelves lined with land survey maps, livestock records, and a handful of actual books.

There’s a row of Louis L’Amour paperbacks with their spines cracked from rereading, a copy of Lonesome Dove so worn the cover is held on with tape, Ivan Doig’s This House of Sky with a receipt tucked in as a bookmark, and one battered manual on ranch management that looks like it’s been consulted so many times it’s given up trying to stay together. A stack of farmers’ almanacs, three years deep, sits stacked in the window that looks out over the training paddock and the valley beyond.

I set my laptop on the desk and don’t let myself think about whose chair I’m sitting in.

I didn’t come here to sit in his space and think about him. I came here to work, so I open my files and get to it.

I’ve been at it for maybe two hours when footsteps sound in the hall, and Marcus Donnelly appears in the doorway with a stack of ledgers under one arm and a smile that reaches all the way to his eyes.

“Well now.” He steps into the room, bringing his familiar warmth. “June said someone was borrowing the office. Didn’t realize it was you, sweetheart.”

My chest loosens at the sight. Of all the people to walk through that door, Marcus Donnelly is exactly the right one.

“Marcus.” I stand. “It’s good to see you.”

“You too, sweetheart. You too.” He crosses to the desk and sets the ledgers down on the corner. “I got the quarterly accounts for Wyatt. Been dropping them off this way for twenty years.”