Page 32 of Duty Preserved

“I thought you left the bar because you weren’t interested,” I said. I heard my voice go small. The old script was right there, ready and waiting. “I figured I’d read the whole thing wrong and you just didn’t want to deal with me.”

“Sarah.”

“It’s fine. I’m just saying, I understand. You were working. I was drunk and in the way and⁠—”

“That’s not what happened.”

“No, I know. You just explained⁠—”

“Working or not,” he said it quietly, eyes on the track, “under any other circumstances, I’d have been very interested.”

The truck hit a rut. We both jolted. I grabbed the door handle and held on, and the words caught up with me in the silence that followed.

I’d have been very interested.

He hadn’t dressed it up or softened it or turned it into a line. He’d just said it and left it there between us as a simple matter of fact.

I didn’t know what to do with it. Three days ago, I’d filed this away as a one-sided thing, mine alone to manage. And in one sentence, he’d cracked the wall I’d built around it, and the light coming through was so bright I couldn’t look at it.

I turned toward the window. The bush was thicker now, the terrain rising toward the ridge where the rhino ranged. My heart was doing something it had no business doing in a work vehicle on a Tuesday.

“The collar site is just past that ridge,” I said.

He nodded and drove.

We found her in a clearing on the far side, a black rhino browsing in the shade of a knob thorn. From the looks of it, she appeared healthy—browsing with her head low. But I’d have to get closer to be sure. I stepped out of the truck and started unpacking my field kit.

“I need to dart her,” I told him. “Once she’s down, I’ll have about twenty minutes to check and refit the collar and run my assessment. She’ll be sedated, but she’s still a fifteen-hundred-kilogram animal, so stay behind me and do what I tell you.”

He didn’t argue. He didn’t offer tactical advice or explain how he’d handle it. He just said, “Tell me where you need me.”

I loaded the dart rifle, checked the dosage, and moved downwind until I had a clean angle on her shoulder. I’d done this dozens of times. My hands knew every step before my brain gave the order, and out here, with the dart rifle balanced and the animal in my sights, I was the one who knew what she was doing.

The dart flew true. She startled, took three heavy steps, and went down in stages, her legs folding under her until she was on her side in the grass, breathing deep and slow.

I was beside her in seconds, Donovan right behind me with the monitor bag and field kit. My hands were already moving. Pulse, respiration, eye response, temperature. I monitored everything while I worked the collar free, checked the hardware, replaced the battery unit, and refitted it snug against her neck.

“I need her head repositioned,” I said without looking up. “Lift from under the jaw and rotate toward me. Slow.”

Donovan moved in and got his hands under fifteen hundred kilograms of sedated rhino and shifted her exactly the way I’d asked, the muscles in his arms and shoulders flexing with a concerted effort to use just the right amount of force to move such a large face. My hands kept working. My body had other ideas.

He was right there. Close enough to see the veins running down his forearms, the controlled strength in his hands as he steadied the animal’s head. He’d shifted a sedated rhino head and hauled my gear across the clearing and done both like they were nothing. On the direct heels of I’d have been very interested, every part of me that wasn’t focused on the animal was focused on him.

For one perfect, suspended moment, the whole thing held. He was attracted to me. I was attracted to him. And he was right there.

Men like this don’t stay interested in women like you.

It hit me mid-breath. A voice I hadn’t invited and couldn’t shut out, old and familiar and so certain of itself that my hands faltered on the collar hardware. I fumbled the clasp and had to start over.

You’re plain. You’re not enough. He said a nice thing in a truck, and you’re already building a life around it.

My jaw tightened. I pulled the clasp through and buckled it and checked the fit twice because my fingers had gone clumsy. The warmth that had been building in my chest since the drive caved in on itself, and what rushed into the space was something cold and heavy that I’d carried so long, it fit perfectly.

I finished the collar. Rechecked her vitals. My hands were steady again because the work was the work, and the work had never once told me I wasn’t enough.

I administered the reversal agent and stepped back, pulling off my gloves.

“That’s it,” I said. “We wait.”