Page 85 of Wild Sanctuary

In here, he’s exactly what he’s always been with me.

Polite. Careful. A man honoring an obligation.

The orchard was the anomaly.

This is the baseline.

A table near the window has two place cards side by side.

Wyatt Hartley.

Daisy Monroe.

Two other auction pairs are already seated: a guy from the feed store I vaguely recognize with a brunette who keeps touching her hair, and a woman in her forties with the spa package seated across from a man who looks like he’d rather be anywhere else.

Wyatt pulls my chair out, and I sit. He sits beside me, gazing at the menu like it requires his full attention.

He didn’t wear his hat tonight. I knew that the moment I opened the cabin door and the full unshielded reality of Wyatt Hartley hit me in the chest like a truck. The chambray. The rolled cuffs. The jaw and the scar and the green eyes with no hat brim to hide behind.

I managed the truck. Barely. But the truck didn’t have candlelight, and candlelight is a different kind of cruel.

“So,” the brunette says brightly, leaning forward. “How did you two meet?”

The question lands in the middle of the table and stays there.

“Her father worked with my family,” Wyatt states flatly, without looking up from the menu. “Long time ago.”

Practically a speech by his standards.

“Oh, that’s sweet,” the brunette coos. “So you’ve known each other forever?”

“Since she was six.”

The brunette’s eyes widen. She does the math the way everyone does the math, her gaze moving between us, recalculating. “Wait, so how old were you?”

“Fifteen.”

“Oh.” A small, loaded syllable. Then she recovers, smile brightening. “That’s kind of adorable, though. Like a big brother thing.”

Wyatt turns a page of the menu. “Steak looks good.”

A big brother thing.

The brunette pivots to her own date, who seems relieved to be talking about literally anything else. I pick up my menu and study it like I haven’t already decided on the salmon.

Dinner is fine.

The food is good.

Wyatt orders the steak, I order the salmon, and we eat side by side making polite conversation with the other couples while maintaining exactly enough distance that no part of us touches. His elbow stays on his side. My arm stays on mine. Every time he reaches for something, the muscle in his forearm shifts under tanned skin in the candlelight and I focus very carefully on my salmon.

The breadbasket passes between us without contact, which feels like an achievement until I reach for my water glass just as he reaches for the salt. Our knuckles brush and we both pull back like the table’s caught fire.

Neither of us acknowledges it. I try to push my head toward Cutter and Mountain West, toward anything with a thread to pull, but none of it sticks. Every time his forearm shifts, I lose my train of thought.

The Gazette photographer stops at our table twice. Wyatt tolerates it the way he tolerates weather.

The first shot is the table, all six of us, candles and white linen. The second is Wyatt and me, and the photographer asks, “Maybe a little closer, folks?”