Page 22 of Wild Sanctuary

“One of the new ones ate from my hand today.” The corner of his mouth shifts ever so slightly.

“Rhett.”

“June set a place for me.” He says it simply, like it’s everything. June doesn’t look up from her plate, but a smile tugs at the edge of her mouth.

“Colt.”

He gestures at the table with both hands. “Cobbler.”

June closes her eyes briefly. “You haven’t even had it yet.”

“I have faith.” He presses a hand to his chest. “It’s called optimism, June.”

“It’s called being impossible.” The smirk on her lips belies her words as she turns to me. “Daisy.”

I glance around the table. At the mismatched chairs and the steam rising from the pot roast and these people who said my name as though I’d never left. “This.” I smile softly. “Exactly this.”

June shoots me a delighted smile before she moves on. “Wyatt.”

“Laughter,” he replies simply. “The real kind.”

He straightens in his seat, his knee shifting against mine again before he looks out the window.

June lets out a small breath. “I got a call today. The Bannock hotel in Bozeman wants me to pitch for their corporate events contract.” She looks around the table. “Biggest thing I’ve ever gone after.”

The table erupts. Colt bangs his fist on the wood, and Maggie whistles as June shakes her head with a soft smile before hushing everyone.

“Come on now. Eat before it gets cold.”

Dishes pass in every direction, hands reaching over hands, everyone talking at once, and Colt somehow ending up with three rolls on his plate before anyone else has one. Beau has positioned himself under the table, his massive head a warm weight against my foot.

Wyatt reaches across me for the salt, and his forearm passes six inches from my face. He’s rolled his sleeves to the elbow, and the muscle shifts under tanned skin as his hand closes around the shaker. I watch the tendons flex, the fine dark hair, the tanned skin pulled tight over muscle, and my brain just… empties.

Like someone pulled the plug on a full bathtub. Every coherent thought I possess swirls down the drain and is replaced by the single, unhelpful observation that Wyatt Hartley has forearms that could sell magazines.

“Daisy? Mashed potatoes?”

I blink to see that June is holding the serving bowl toward me with an expectant look.

“Yes. Please. Thank you.” Four words and all of them are way too loud. I take the bowl and serve myself a portion that’s frankly embarrassing, but at least my hands are busy now and not doing something unforgivable like reaching out to trace the vein on his arm with my fingertip.

I pass the potatoes across. Wyatt reaches for the roasted carrots at the same moment I do, and our fingers brush over the serving spoon. He pulls back like he’s been burned, gesturing curtly for me to go first.

“Thanks.” I smile hesitantly, ladling carrots onto my plate.

He grunts.

That’s it. Just a grunt. Not even a real word.

I study him from the corner of my eye as I pass the dish to June. His shoulders are rigid beneath that blue shirt, the fabric pulling taut across them every time he reaches for something. There’s a muscle ticking in his jaw. He’s holding his fork like it personally offended him, and his other hand is resting on the table beside his plate—big and rough, the knuckles scarred in that way working hands get, the kind of damage that accumulates over years of rope and leather and fence wire. I find myself staring at those hands and thinking about how they looked on the lead rope yesterday. Patient. Sure. Gentle with eight hundred pounds of resistance, and I wonder—just for a fraction of a second before I shut the thought down hard—what gentle hands like that would feel like somewhere softer.

Somewhere I shouldn’t be thinking about at this table.

What the hell is wrong with you?

He wasn’t like this when I was a kid. Grumpy, sure—Wyatt Hartley has been grumpy since birth, probably—but not this closed off. Not this… prickly. Maybe it’s the weight of running the ranch without his father. Without mine. Three years of carrying this place on his shoulders would grind anyone down.

I find myself wanting to lighten that load somehow. To see him smile, even once. That real smile I remember from childhood, rare as a blue moon, but worth the wait.