Page 46 of Wild Sanctuary

She looks professional and put together. Like the tension in the truck yesterday never happened.

Good. We’re going to pretend. I can do that.

“I said I’d bring coffee.” She sets one cup in front of me. “Black. June told me.”

“Thanks.”

She settles into the chair across from me, crossing one leg over the other as she flips open her notebook. The morning light slants through the window and catches her face, highlighting the curve of her jaw and the way a loose strand of hair has escaped her ponytail to curl against her cheek. She tucks it behind her ear without thinking, and my chest aches.

I look away. Focus on the coffee cup. The desk. Anything else.

She clicks her pen, glances up. “Ready?”

“Let’s get this over with.”

The words come out harder than I intended, and her pen stills for a beat.

Good job, asshole.

But she doesn’t take the bait. Just lifts her chin slightly and moves on like I didn’t say anything worth acknowledging. Most people shrink when I get short with them. She just straightens her spine and keeps going.

I shouldn’t find her tenacity so fucking sexy. But God help me, I do.

She takes a breath and sits up a little straighter.

“Okay. Let’s start simple.” She taps her pen against her bottom lip while she scans her notes. Just a small, absent thing she probably doesn’t even realize she’s doing. But my eyes follow the movement before I can stop them, settling on the soft curve of her mouth, the way the pen drags slightly as she pulls it away. Suddenly my jeans get a whole lot less comfortable, and I shift in my chair before I can stop myself. “Walk me through a typical day running an operation this size.”

Focus, idiot.

The interview limps along. She asks about cattle rotations and I give her numbers. She asks about seasonal challenges and I give her a list. Every answer is clipped and professional, nothing she couldn’t find in an agriculture textbook.

After twenty minutes, she sets her pen down and leans back in the chair.

“Okay. New approach.” Her voice softens, and she uncrosses her legs to lean forward. “Forget the article for a second. Just tell me—what do you love about this place? What makes you get up before dawn every single day?”

The question catches me off guard. No one’s asked me that in years. Maybe ever.

“It’s home.” The words are out before I can swallow them back. “It’s in my blood, is all. The land, the work, the way the valley looks at first light when the mist’s still sitting in the low places. The sound the creek makes in spring when the snowmelt’s running so high you can hear it from the house. Riding the ridge my great-great-grandfather named and seeing the same view he saw a hundred years ago. The way the mountains look at dusk when the light turns everything gold and you can’t believe anyone would choose to live anywhere else⁠—”

I stop. Clench my jaw.

She’s watching me with those brown eyes, warm and intent, like I’ve just handed her something precious.

Her voice is quiet, barely above a whisper. “That’s what I want in the article. Not statistics. That.”

I look away. “You got what you’re gettin’.”

When I look back, the softness in her expression has faded. “Why do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Open up for half a second and then slam the door in my face.”

I don’t answer. I can’t answer.

She holds my gaze for a long moment, and I brace myself for more pushing. But then she exhales and sits back in her chair. She stares at her notebook for a few seconds before flipping to a fresh page with a little more force than necessary.

“Fine. Let’s try something else.” Her voice is steady again, professional, but there’s a tightness underneath. “The article is about multigenerational ranching. Legacy. So let’s talk about the future. What does the next generation look like for Glacier Ridge?”