A promise is a promise.
He’d looked almost…regretful when he’d said it. Like he knew I wanted more—like maybe he’d always known.
But more than that, he’d looked like he might have wanted it too.
It could be that was just my imagination doing some wishful thinking. But what if it wasn’t?
I was so distracted thinking about Wyatt that I let a low-hanging tree branch catch me across the face and gave myself a nice, angry scratch. Muttering a curse at my carelessness, I forced my mind off my nonexistent love life and back onto my work.
That kind of inattention could be hazardous in the field. Traversing uneven terrain came with a high potential for accidents, even on seemingly flat ground. The layers of decomposing litterfall that made up the forest floor could conceal all manner of dangers. It was too easy to miss a hidden obstacle until you’d stepped in a hole and broken your ankle or tripped on a hidden rock or vine.
There was wildlife you needed to be wary of out here as well, like bobcats and javelina and the odd cougar. Even deer could be dangerous when cornered or provoked, especially during rutting season or when they were protecting fawns. It was always best to give Bambi a wide berth.
Additionally, the park was home to its share of venomous species, such as copperheads, coral snakes, cottonmouths, rattlers, black widows, brown recluses, asp caterpillars, velvet ants, and my favorite—Scolopendra heros, the giant Texas redheaded centipedes that could get up to eight inches long. The biggest one I’d ever spotted was five inches, but I’d love to find a full-size one of those babies.
I wasn’t afraid of the park’s wildlife—but I did have a healthy respect for it and the dangers it could pose to a person. It was my job to help protect the native species and their habitats. Blundering around carelessly out here could put both myself and the wildlife at risk.
All of which meant I needed to keep my mind on the task at hand and off Wyatt King. The task at hand being oak wilt—one of the most destructive tree diseases in the United States. It had been killing off our Central Texas oaks in epidemic numbers, and the only way to control it was early identification and removal of diseased trees to prevent fungal spread. It was easy to spot in the more common live oaks by the obvious veinal necrosis on the leaves. But other types of oaks often didn’t exhibit distinct symptoms, and required laboratory culture to confirm the presence of B. fagacearum fungus.
I spent the rest of the afternoon collecting my samples without further incident. It was only after I’d dropped them off at my office and headed home for the day that I allowed thoughts of Wyatt to preoccupy me once more.
Was Josh the reason why Wyatt never flirted with me? Never touched me in a way that could be mistaken for anything other than platonic, brotherly affection? Never directed any of his innuendos at me, or made the sort of suggestive, leading remarks he enjoyed making with everyone else—even my brother’s girlfriend?
When Mia had first moved here, before Wyatt knew Josh liked her, he’d unleashed his full charm attack on her. But as soon as he realized my brother was interested in her, Wyatt had backed way the fuck off, fast. After that, Wyatt had treated her a lot like he treated me. Friendly, but from a reserved distance, and without any suggestion behind it.
Until Josh and Mia got together. Once they were safely coupled up and disgustingly, madly in love with each other, Wyatt went back to flirting with her in that harmless, playful way he flirted with women he wanted to flatter without actually trying to lure them into his bed. The way he flirted with older or happily married women or with his lesbian friends Alexis and Xuan. Women he considered “safe” because they posed no temptation and were likewise in no danger of taking him seriously.
The kind of flirting he never did with me. Maybe because he knew I wasn’t “safe.” There was a chance I might take him seriously. But did I pose a temptation to him? That was what I didn’t know. Did he have impulses where I was concerned that he was afraid of acting on?
Or was he just afraid of giving my brother that impression? Maybe Wyatt was being extra cautious to avoid invoking my brother’s wrath over nothing. He could also be sending me a message—trying to keep me from getting the wrong idea. Showing me there was a line in the sand, and I was on the other side of it.
But would I be on the other side of that line if it wasn’t for my brother? Or did the line reflect Wyatt’s real feelings about me? I had no idea.
Ugh. I was going to make myself nuts obsessing over this. But I couldn’t stop. Not until I knew the truth. And the only way I’d ever know for sure what Wyatt was thinking was to confront him about it directly. Even then, I wasn’t certain he’d tell me the truth.
I couldn’t decide whether I should try to raise the subject with Wyatt or let it lie. On the one hand, ignoring it wasn’t likely to bring me peace of mind anytime soon. But on the other, I wasn’t sure I had the nerve to ask Wyatt outright how he felt about me—or fess up to how I felt about him.
Most people who knew me would probably be shocked to hear that. I’d earned a reputation as a feisty, tough-talking, assertive-as-hell chick who didn’t shy away from anything.
Except when it came to my heart.
Admitting I cared about someone was my Achilles’ heel. It was so much easier to pretend I was too tough to care than to let myself be seen as vulnerable. I’d messed up a couple of relationships because of it and been accused of being detached and withholding.
So baring my soul to the man I’d quietly been in love with for half my life? Not exactly something that was easy for me to do.
I was feeling good and maudlin when I parked in the driveway of the house I’d inherited from my grandmother. I had to park my car in the driveway, because the garage door had fallen partially off its tracks and wouldn’t open anymore. The front steps I walked up were similarly sagging in places, the wood grown soft and starting to rot. Peeling paint flaked off the porch railings, and patches of mildew grew on the siding, which boasted more than a few rotten boards and holes in need of repair.
It was a 1925 two-story Victorian that had originally belonged to my great-grandparents and was the house my grandmother had grown up in. She’d held on to it after her parents died, renting it out to supplement the income she and my grandfather had earned from the shop they used to have on Main Street. But after my grandfather passed, the house maintenance got to be too much for Meemaw to keep up with, especially once her own health began declining. So it had been sitting here empty for a lot of years, slowly falling into disrepair.
I wasn’t really sure why she’d left it to me instead of to her daughters—my mom and my aunt Birdie. Maybe because she’d decided to leave her other house—the one she’d lived in with my grandfather—to Birdie, who’d moved back in to take care of her. And because my parents had started talking about retiring to Maine, where my dad had already inherited property from his family. And because everyone knew Josh wanted to take over the goat farm—and I didn’t.
Maybe Meemaw just wanted me to have something for myself. I liked to think she knew how much I’d always loved this house, and she’d wanted it to go to someone who would take care of it the way it deserved.
I loved the pink siding, and the Victorian scrollwork on the gables, and the beaded trim all along the front porch. I loved the double-door front entry, and the wavy antique glass windows, and all the old tile in the bathrooms.